Syntactic Interference in Teaching Chinese to Russian-speaking Students: Manifestations and Ways to Overcome

The article is devoted to the study of syntactic interference that occurs when Russian-speaking students learn Chinese and the testing of ways to overcome it. In this regard, the purpose of the work is to analyze syntactic interference in teaching Chinese to Russian–speaking students and identify effective ways to overcome it. The relevance of the research is determined by the fact that in the context of the transition from the Bologna system to basic higher education in Russia, the main task is to practice-oriented and increase the effectiveness of the educational process, which can be facilitated by overcoming interference phenomena, including syntactic ones, in Chinese language classes. Through comparative analysis of the syntactic structures of the Russian and Chinese languages, possible areas of interference were identified, which were considered when collecting and analyzing errors in the oral and written speech of students. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis allowed us to identify the most common errors. The article proposes a classification of syntactic interference mistakes at the level of phrases and sentences. The methods of overcoming syntactic interference have been tested, including a set of exercises designed considering the identified types of errors. Effective ways of overcoming syntactic interference are recommended: application of a linguistic approach to foster understanding of language as a system; use of a cognitive-functional approach in teaching syntax to create syntactic models; use of schema theory to visualize the syntactic structure of the Chinese language; development of grammatical skills through a set of exercises designed considering the peculiarities of syntactic interference in the contact language pair "Russian - Chinese"; application of digital technologies to visualize grammatical-syntactic rules and increase students' motivation to perform grammatical exercises.