Professional training of medical students in the aspect of learning Russian as a foreign language: The content-language integrated approach

The study aims to identify problematic areas in mastering Russian as a foreign language by medical students from the perspective of the concept/approach of content-language integrated learning and subsequently define methodological solutions directed at eliminating the identified difficulties. The article presents the results of a diagnostic testing of foreign medical students in sections of this discipline such as “Vocabulary”, “Word Formation”, “Morphology”, “Russian Speech Etiquette” and provides linguodidactic recommendations that suggest optimizing the professional training of medical students in the aspect of teaching Russian as a foreign language. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that the work implements a systematic approach to identifying and analyzing the main difficulties faced by foreign medical students when learning Russian. Taking into account the most important provisions of the concept of content-language integrated learning, the article shows possible ways to overcome the specified difficulties. As a result, a number of recommendations have been formulated that are relevant for teaching Russian as a foreign language to medical students. Among these is the need to combine two heterogeneous lexical layers in the learning process, the basic layer (common vocabulary) and the professional layer (medical vocabulary), using special approaches (studying the Russian case system taking into account its communicative-functional nature and semantic aspect, mastering word-formation models in order to expand vocabulary, etc.). Another recommendation reflects the importance of increasing the level of socio-cultural competence by referring to peculiarities in representation of the Russian linguistic worldview. The significance of professional adaptation is also noted, which involves integrating language and background knowledge (such as understanding the social, age, gender, and speech characteristics of partners) with special (medical) knowledge.