MOTIVES AND GOALS OF STUDYING RUSSIAN BY FOREIGN STUDENTS: ANALYSIS OF KEY CATEGORIES

Abstract

The article addresses a problem of categorical analysis of the popularity of the Russian language among foreign students and the application of the concepts of “goal”, “means”, “motive”, “activity”, “action”, which are most thoroughly understood in the framework of philosophy and psychology, to the methodology of teaching Russian as a foreign language in the aspect of revealing the mechanisms of interest in a foreign language and choosing it for study. The scientific novelty of the work is determined by the combination of the approaches of the theory of activity and the theory of linguistic personality of Yu.N. Karaulov. As a result, it is revealed that the motives and goals in mastering a foreign language and culture are largely determined by the thesaurus level of the language personality, which sets a value-hierarchized network of concepts associated with the country of the language being studied. The results obtained can be applied to improve the effectiveness of teaching Russian to foreign students and to solve the problem of increasing interest in the national language and culture among foreign university youth within the framework of the state educational policy.