Enriching students’ vocabulary in Russian language lessons while studying epics

The article analyzes the vocabulary of epics and the ways to form and enrich secondary school students’ vocabulary when studying epics. Texts of ancient Russian literature introduce students to the culture of Ancient Rus' and contribute to their aesthetic, moral and patriotic education, the development of their language and communication skills, and linguocultural competence; moreover, they contain rich lexical and grammatical material. However, the ancient text possibilities are not fully realized in modern textbooks of the Russian language, since they do not contain exercises aiming to study the vocabulary denoting cultural and everyday realities of Ancient Rus'. The purpose of this work is to identify the lexical composition features of epics and determine effective methods for including epic lexis in the students’ vocabulary. The study is based on the Novgorod epic “Volga and Mikula Selyaninovich,” which the seventh grade students are introduced to in literature lessons. The analysis showed that the text of the epic contains 21 obsolete words and 21 words, whose understanding may be difficult. All the vocabulary is subsumed into groups: names of persons, socio-political, everyday and natural phenomena, words characterizing humans and animals. The article contains the forms of work effective in enriching students’ vocabulary.