Digitalization of a textbook on Russian as a foreign language: the experience of Slovak Russianists

Abstract

The focus of the study is the new format of Russian as a foreign language textbook - digital, or digitalized. The relevance of the research is determined by the need to create such textbooks due to the changed audience for which they are intended - the generations of so-called millennials and postmillennials, who acquire new information through imagery, speed, technical capabilities. The aim of the research is to analyze a digitalized Russian language textbook for a Slovak secondary school (gymnasium) from the point of view of its conceptual framework, technical features, and design. On the material of the Russian language textbook for Slovak secondary schools “Meetings with Russia. Today” (E. Kollárová et al.) where new technologies are used, the authors analyze a nationally oriented digital textbook, which is an element of Russian-language education in Slovakia. The methods of research include the analysis of theoretical and educational literature, the method of linguodidactic analysis, comparative and descriptive methods. The authors argue that the conceptual foundations of digital textbooks - cognitivism, constructivism, and behaviorism - are aimed at the rational selection of culturally relevant educational content and the construction of a communicatively directed methodological component. Modern technical capabilities allow to include in these textbooks a variety of video, audio, television, and other authentic materials, creating a sense of “living” reality. It is concluded that the main advantages of the new form of the textbook are not only its technical capabilities, but also more effective implementation of its cultural and communicative orientation, as well as eduction (education combined with upbringing,). The problem points of the textbook are the lack of linguistic (lexical, grammatical, phonetic) exercises, as well as the lack of the minimal vocabulary. The effective interaction of the three components - digitalization, edutainment, and cultural orientation - while relying on the language system - determine the prospects of digital textbooks.