The use of contrastive grammar exercises in teaching Russian as a foreign / second Slavic language to students with Serbian as their native language

The aim of the research is to justify the feasibility of developing a set of contrastive exercises for teaching Russian as a Foreign Language (RFL) in the context of closely related languages (using the example of teaching students from Serbia). The article provides a definition of contrastive exercises and describes the structure of a set of contrastive exercises used in developing grammatical competence when teaching RFL to students whose native language is Serbian. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that, for the first time, the development of practical grammar material within the framework of RFL instruction for working in a closely related language environment is demonstrated and justified. As a result of analyzing various approaches, the main practical techniques of RFL methodology in the context of closely related languages were identified, the main one being comparison and translation. The application of contrastive exercises, especially in the formation of grammatical competence, opens up new opportunities for the effective assimilation of language structures and is a necessary link in the comparative methodology in a closely related language environment.