IMPROVING THE METHODOLOGY FOR DEVELOPING STUDENTS' COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE BASED ON INTERACTIVE AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN TEACHING RUSSIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

This article examines the theoretical and methodological foundations for improving the development of students’ communicative competence in Russian as a foreign language through interactive and digital technologies. The study draws on communicative language teaching, the action-oriented approach, constructivism, collaborative learning, and the updated CEFR model. The CEFR Companion Volume conceptualizes language use through reception, production, interaction, and mediation and gives explicit attention to online interaction and collaborative meaning-making. On this basis, the article proposes a cyclical methodology consisting of diagnostic assessment, linguistic scaffolding, an authentic communicative task, role-play or problem-based interaction, collaborative mediation, reflection, and criteria-based formative assessment. The analysis suggests that the effectiveness of interactive technology depends less on the tool itself than on its pedagogically coherent connection to communicative goals, learners’ proficiency, language material, and feedback. In higher education, a systematic combination of role-play, debate, jigsaw tasks, case studies, project work, peer feedback, LMS forums, collaborative documents, and video/audio assignments can shift students from passive knowledge reception toward active participation as social agents.