Regional component in teaching Russian as a foreign language (exemplified by the Republic of Tatarstan)

The article emphasizes the importance and relevance of a regional component in teaching international students Russian as a foreign language. The purpose of the study is to demonstrate the didactic potential of texts with regional components for the development of culturally determined linguistic competence of foreigners studying the Russian language in a particular Russian region (based on the example of the Republic of Tatarstan). We find that the use of such texts may solve two important didactic goals: forming both linguistic and cultural competences of students. Theoretical conclusions are illustrated with examples from the original methodological development: an authentic text about the capital of Tatarstan and three types of exercises are presented. The exercises reflect the stages of working with culturally determined regional linguistic material (pretextual, textual and posttextual stages). The article focuses on the fact that a culturally determined linguistic competence is a necessary component of the key communicative competence. Communicative competence acquisition is a fundamental goal of teaching Russian as a foreign language. Due to this, the presented tasks are communicatively oriented.The obtained results may be useful for teachers of foreign languages, Russian as a foreign language and for all researchers interested in linguistic and regional cultural studies.