Learning Russian and Understanding Ukrainian

Practical Ideas for Working with Ukrainian in Russian Lessons

Abstract

The article presents practical examples of how learners of Russian can be introduced to the Ukrainian language at school (secondary level Iand II), and how they can acquire both receptive and productive skillsin Ukrainian. After a brief theoretical overview of the two East Slavic languages, the author presents practical tasks based on recommendations from the field of intercomprehension. These tasks comprise phonetics, lexis, and sociopragmatics and intend to provide teachers with suggestionsand ideas on integrating Ukrainian into Russian language teaching at school, starting with the CEFRA-levels. The proposed tasks aim to raise the learners’ awareness of the differences between the two languages and to foster their languages kills.Both receptive and productive skills are considered, with an emphasis on the first one. Furthermore, the tasks tend to spark the pupils’ and students’ interest in the Ukrainian language, and to explore a (new) Slavic language with the help of Russian and familiar languages, thus promoting learners’ plurilinguistic competence.