The linguistic and didactic potential of a culinary recipe in teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language

Abstract

The primary challenge in teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language is to identify language units, speech genres, or text types relevant for use in the educational process to develop the communicative and linguistic-cultural competence of learners. Given the significance of gastronomic culture in the modern world, a culinary recipe can serve as a valuable source of information about national cultural traditions and material for developing communication and intercultural skills. The article explores the concept of a ʼculinary recipeʼ and the specific characteristics that make it a distinct type of text with potential applications in teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language. It argues that the linguistic and didactic potential of a culinary recipe is grounded in its features, such as compact size, the presence or potential use of visual aids for information presentation, a typical and repeated text structure, and optimal lexical content in terms of frequency of usage and stylistic neutrality. This content includes background and non-equivalent vocabulary, borrowings, internationalisms, hyperonyms, hyponyms, words related to product names, dishware, and other kitchen utensils, gustatory and deverbative culinary adjectives, as well as culinary verbs and verbs related to food processing. The article also emphasizes the presence of typical structural models in word combinations and sentences. Special attention is given to the appropriateness and effectiveness of studying dish names and processing productive grammatical models, particularly word combinations. It highlights the importance of avoiding categorical imperatives in language materials and suggests processing culinary instructions primarily with the verb form in the 1st person plural. In conclusion, the author recommends the integration of culinary recipes into Ukrainian language classes for foreign language learners, particularly for students at proficiency levels approaching A2–B1.