Teaching RFL to Children — What You Need to Pay Attention to

Today we will talk about:

age and how it affects teaching Russian as a foreign language to children
what modern children want from lessons
who we are working with — children or parents
two books and why I recommend them
what to do with grammar
age and how it affects teaching Russian as a foreign language to children

The age of the student affects not only the teaching of Russian as a foreign language; age affects teaching in general. People are different at 3 years old than they are at 60 years old. I also had an article about how to teach Russian as a foreign language to people over 50.

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At what age can you start teaching RFL?

Any age. You can work with a newborn or an older child. I am currently teaching RFL lessons with a 2-year-old. Her name is Maria; she is American.

How are such RFL lessons different from lessons with a mother? The child is with the mother all the time, especially at this age. There is no communication plan and no tasks with the mother.

The teacher comes to communicate with the student for a short time. With the teacher, you need to concentrate on the material in a short lesson.

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Writing exercises in the RFL lesson with children ages 7 to 9

When our students are 7 to 9 years old, our task in the lesson is to introduce them to Russian graphics, to the Cyrillic alphabet. Our second task is to teach Russian spelling. I will tell you about the specific exercises that help us with this. This will be the first part of this article.

In the second part, I will show exercises for those who are starting to independently swim in written speech in Russian.

In the third part — i.e., at the end of the article, as I usually do — I will tell you a little about the theory. About what written speech is in general, not only for children.

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A group where all the students are of different levels: How should you work in such an environment?

Let’s talk about this, but let’s narrow the topic. I will talk about the age range of 7 to 9 years old, and about working in a weekend school with a group of Russian as a Foreign Language, or bilingual, students.

For those who don’t know — a weekend school is a place where immigrants gather to teach their children Russian. This is not a state school with programs, requirements and final exams. Classes are usually held on Saturday and Sunday, hence the name.

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How can you teach children RFL (Russian as a foreign language) without explaining grammar to them?

This is a very easy question; it is very easy to answer, because this topic has been developed for a very long time and everyone is very interested in it. Moreover, I will say that this is the topic that led me to study the methodology of teaching foreign languages.

We have three sections.

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What is better, an app, video lessons or a textbook?

All of the above are good. Each solves its own problems.

Video lessons. It is very good to watch them, especially at a young age. If you trust the channel, you can turn it on so that the child can watch and go do other things. Passive can easily become active, and that is how it should be. Language comes in through the ears. When there is a lot of language input in the environment, it is great. Video lessons are just language in the environment. Convenient for parents. Convenient for teachers to give homework: “Watch a video.” A very good option. A small note. If it is only watching a video, then this is passive perception. To turn passive into active, I would add some active forms of work: questions or discussions.

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Teaching RFL without textbooks

How do I feel about this? Absolutely positive.

For those teachers who know the methodology; the technology; in what order to give lexical topics, grammatical topics, phonetics — for those who know all these, they don’t even need a textbook.

I’ll show you how I can conduct an RFL (Russian as a foreign language) lesson without a textbook.

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‘Sarafan 2’ and other news

To my great regret, the “Sarafan 2” project is closed.

The reasons are very different, and there are many of them.

What can I do for you? I already wrote about how to choose a textbook on Russian as a foreign language for the level and objectives of your course. Here is the link. There are a lot of interesting textbooks and various courses to choose from.

I am currently working on how to make the teaching methodology simple and understandable for different teachers, especially those who are just starting to teach Russian as a foreign language and have not yet fully mastered the new profession.

I have two channels for communication: 1) I continue to maintain my blog (you are reading it now), and 2) I record videos for my YouTube channel. By the way, we uploaded the audio for Soroka’s textbooks to YouTube at the request of teachers and parents.

Subscribe to both the blog and the channel. Read the blog more often and watch the channel. Write if you have any questions.

I anticipate the question: Why do I need to register to leave a comment or ask a question? This is necessary to combat spam and bots. The same rules apply to YouTube, where you can also leave a comment only to channel owners.

I always answer all questions. My assistants , Anna Leonova and Tamara Aksyonova, can answer as well. If someone needs my consultation, the registration is still open; here is the link.

Working with vocabulary in an RFL (Russian as foreign language) lesson using numerals as an example

First, a definition: Since many beginning teachers of RFL (Russian as a foreign language) read my blog, I will explain to them that all words of the language can be called by one word — vocabulary. Therefore, sometimes I will write “working with words,” and sometimes “working with vocabulary.” Beginners, get used to the terms, because they will come in handy.

We have two parts. In the first part, I will tell you about the procedure for working with vocabulary in practice.

In the second part, we will get acquainted a little with the theory of the methods of teaching RFL.

Part 1

Stage one:

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Why do you need a unit-by-unit textbook of Russian as a foreign language?

1. Sometimes you can’t afford to buy a whole textbook. This way you can purchase a chapter at a time: Buy one chapter and finish it; buy the next, finish it; and so on. We take it gradually.

2. Sometimes you don’t need an entire textbook, just one specific topic or exercise. There’s no point in buying the entire set of three books. Let’s take one chapter at a time. I’ll tell you how to find the right chapter a little later.

3. Sometimes you might not need a complete Teacher’s Book, but only the tests. You can also buy test papers separately. I have a separate video about them.

What’s in one chapter?

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