The purpose of this work is to study the formation of speaking skills among graduates of the main secondary school based on the results of the final interview conducted in the 2017/2018 school year, as well as to describe the system of communication-oriented tasks, which should be included in a modern Russian textbook.
The paper uses the method of linguistic observation of students’ speaking practice.
Observations on the students’ speech in the process of constructing a monologic utterance revealed a number of problems in the formation of speaking skills: 1) ignorance or failure to follow the typical compositional structure of a text of a certain functional type; 2) ignorance of speech patterns characteristic for description, narration and argumentation; 3) failure to follow orthoepic, grammatical and speech language norms.
The solution of these problems requires that modern textbooks and coursebooks include not only theoretical material on text studies, but also a well-thought-out system of communication-oriented tasks that contribute to the development of students’ oral speech through the activation of the productive types of speech activity.

The article attempts to avoid the unjustified transfer of the features of the oral exam in a foreign language to the final interview in the Russian language. The intentionally-thematic repertoire of dialogues was expanded. The correspondence between initial intentions and variants of reactive steps (moves, actions) in dialogical fragments was established. The dialogues contained in the audio supplement to the Russian language textbooks under the editorship of A.D.Shmelev were parameterized in terms of the theme and intention / response.

The purpose of the author is to attract the attention of her colleagues to the problem of the loss of the diversity of intonation skills and abilities by modern children as compared to those possessed by the previous generations of Russian speakers, and to propose measures for improving the performance of intonation training. The article presents the conclusions made in the course of summarizing the results of several experimental studies on the use of the Russian intonation by children, on its comparison with their awareness of the English intonation and on teaching intonation design of utterances in Russian to fifth-graders.

The paper aims to demonstrate that in texts of various genres and styles misparsing attributable to the order of words cannot always be rectified by mere permutation. The author reviews the word sequencing rules in Russian and proposes alternative means of eliminating mistakes of this common type.

The article establishes the need for special work to improve the grammatical structure of the speech of senior schoolchildren and the correction of grammatical errors in their assignments. Based on the analysis of the results of the State Final Exam of graduates, the errors identified in their essays and the works of leading methodologists, the author develops approaches to working on morphological and syntactic norms in the Russian language lessons in senior secondary school.

The article attempts to establish the correlative relationship between the understanding of the lexical meaning and the stylistic qualification of a word with the peculiarities of the thinking and worldview of a student. The use of official business cliches is defined as a factor of the development and socio-psychological realization of an individual.

The author attempts to present the method of identifying the problem in the text of the Unified State Exam in the Russian language using conceptual analysis, which will make the work in this direction less formalized and develop the textual competence of students. The author describes the conceptual analysis and its main principles and offers an analysis of a specific text using the proposed methodology. Having acquired the skill of conceptual analysis, pupils will be able to define the problem of the text consciously and to formulate their opinion and assessment of the problem under consideration, as well as to participate in discussions, argue their own conclusions, and give relevant examples. 

The author describes the method of working on paronyms when studying adjectives in Russian lessons. In the learning process, the following methods were used: the cognitive methods (heuristic ones, e.g., conversation, observation of the learning material under study, and independent work of students under the guidance of a teacher) and the practical methods (consolidation of knowledge, e.g., analysis of linguistic phenomena and making tables).The optimal form of the presentation of lexical material in the form of tables contributes to the prevention and elimination of speech errors when using paronyms in oral and written speech.

The article presents the biography facts of a prominent Russian teacher, literary theorist and original writer of the second half of the XIX century, Andrey Grigorievich Filonov (1831–1908). His main methodological views, especially in the field of teaching Russian literature, are revealed. The analysis of a number of textbooks and methodological works of the teacher is carried out. It is stated that the works by A.G. Filonov retain their relevance at the present and need further study.

Metalinguistic comments contained in the fictional and fictional-publicistic prose by N.V. Gogol are considered in the article as a form of expression of the author’s worldview and as a descriptive expressive means. The author of the article draws attention to the fact that in works of different periods and different genres, Gogol demonstrates various methods of using judgments about language and speech and introduces them into the text with diverse artistic tasks. At the same time, the article speaks about Gogol’s recurring motifs of the metalinguistic discourse and the presence of permanent metalinguistic techniques in the writer’s idiostyle.

The article is devoted to one of the aspects of the compositional speech structure of the miniature «Happiness» – the ratio of two semantic fields – happiness and unhappiness – and their role in creating an image of the world. The author comes to the conclusion that the center and periphery of the field are formed around the core (happiness – sleep). Joy, beauty, and intimacy (the center) have been exclusively in the field of «happiness»; however light, breath, love and music appear ambivalent, since they can belong to both opposing worlds (the periphery).

The article explores the «music» art category in the works of I.F. Annensky. The author considers music in the poet’s lyric as a concept based on a high degree of abstractness of this category, expansion of its meaning due to etymological memory, its complex structure, and the presence of axiological and epistemological components. The article presents the concept structure of music in terms of the distribution of proper names.

The article discusses the controversy regarding the date of the first use of the letter ё in a printed form and argues that the first printed use of this letter refers to 1797. Much attention is paid to the problem of introducing the mandatory use of the letter ё in modern Russian writing. The author comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to use e in proper nouns, geographical names and words with unclear pronunciation. 

The article considers the positional conditions of the transition of [é] to [ó], the causes of this phonetic transformation, which can be traced back to the Old Russian language, as well as the conditions for its gradual weakening. On this basis, the A.A. Shakhmatov’s hypothesis, interpreting this transition as a type of regressive labialization, was defined more precisely. Stylistically and orthologically significant reflexes of transition [é] to [ó] in the literary form of the modern Russian national language and its non-literary forms have been characterized and systematized.

The article discusses the current state of the system of assimilative softening of dental consonants before soft dentals, which was compulsory and regular for Russian phonetics in the past. The factors that facilitate and hinder such regular softening are revealed. A detailed description of the orthoepic norm in the considered area is given and recommendations are formulated for presenting this material in new orthoepic reference books.

The article discusses the groups of geographical names that are perceived in the everyday consciousness of native speakers as unusual (inappropriate, unaesthetic, indecent). The analyzed repertoire of toponyms is represented by hydronyms, as well as oikonyms, reflecting the physical-geographical specifics of the area, and oikonyms, formed on the basis of non-calendar personal names or the names of the settlement owners.