This research was aimed at justifying the continuity between the course «Russian language as a mother tongue» and the course «School rhetoric», as well as to actualize the semantical and methodological aspects of school rhetoric, which can serve as a pillar in the teaching of a new subject. The primary research method was a comparative analysis of the curricula «Russian language as a mother tongue» and «School rhetoric». It is shown that, despite differences in the curriculum, these subjects share the function of supporting the main course of the Russian language. Although both relying on the linguistic competence of students formed by the course «Russian language», these courses have their own goals and objectives, as well as the content and teaching methods. It is concluded that the goals of the «Russian language as a mother tongue» course are largely consistent with those of «School rhetoric», including the pedagogical objective of forming students’ respectful attitude towards their mother tongue and native culture; developing students’ civic and patriotic qualities; improving communication skills and speech technique of students; the formation of meta-subject competencies.The content of the «Russian language as a mother tongue» and «School rhetoric» courses overlap in covering the following topics: orthology, speech etiquette, the concept of a communicative situation, language activities, genres of oral and written speech, text as a unit of communication, netiquette, etc. The potential of the rhetoric method in organizing the learning activities aimed at the formation of students’ communicative competence are demonstrated on the example of the topic «Scientific and academic styles. Report, presentation» covered in Year 9 of the «Russian language as a mother tongue» course. The general conclusion is that teachers can use the experience of teaching rhetoric at school when implementing a new course «Russian language as a mother tongue».

The aim of this study was to substantiate what theoretical knowledge in the field of advertising should be taught, what criteria for the selection of advertising texts should be applied, how such practical training activities of students should be structured. The results of the study were obtained on the basis of teaching practice, literature analysis, interviews of students and teachers. It is shown that the awareness of the structure and linguistic features of advertisement is of great theoretical and practical importance for high-school students, correlating with the personal, metasubject and subject outcomes of mastering the curriculum. Knowledge in the field of advertising genres and assignments aimed at analysis of advertising texts foster students’ ability to distinguish between direct and indirect methods of persuasion, as well as to identify language tools that structure different advertising genres. It is concluded that the development of students’ knowledge about the functions and structure of advertising texts, genre varieties and speech persuasion techniques develops linguistic intuition, the ability to select compositional elements and language tools that are significant for the advertising genres.

This article discusses an urgent educational problem, i.e. a sharp decrease in the level of students’ spoken language and, in particular, the lack of willingness and ability among school students to engage in a constructive dialogue when participating in debates. It is no accident that modern federal state educational standards pay special attention to the formation of students’ communicative competence at all levels of education. The aim of this article was to investigate the current situation in the field in order to obtain primary data showing at which educational levels the techniques of debate and discussion are used; to analyse the verbal behaviour of participants implementing various communicative strategies and tactics during debates. The following research methods were used: an analysis of literature in the field of psychology, pedagogy, communication and methodology; a questionnaire survey and interviews; an analysis of the oral presentations of students; generalization of pedagogical experience. The results of the interviews and questionnaire survey conducted among first-year university show that about 60% of the respondents experience difficulties in constructing argumentative speech. Discussions in schools are held only in high school. Secondary school teachers lack the competencies of organizing and conducting debates in class. The development of communicative skills of defending one’s point of view and conducting informed debates using communicative tactics based on the principles of dialogue and politeness should be taught during teenage years. It is at this age that communicative competencies are most actively formed. Specific examples of including debates in the curriculum of the Russian language (5th grade) for developing primary discussion skills are presented.

The article is devoted to the problem of teaching the norms of the modern literary language at school. The aim is to show the features of implementing rhetoric techniques in the process of teaching the basic language norms. It is shown that high-school graduates demonstrate a low level of speech culture. Reasons for a large number of errors made by senior students in oral speech are determined along with possible approaches to improving the situation. Particular attention is paid to the principles of selecting language material for classroom activities, the formulation of teaching tasks and the peculiarities of the methodological process. Original exercises and recommendations to teachers on their implementation in Russian language lessons are presented. The results of the study confirm the efficiency of these exercises in term of improving the level of students’ speech culture and their readiness for the final qualification test in the Russian language, including an oral interview.

The article addresses the problem of frequent violations of pronunciation norms at the present stage of the language system development. Reasons for accentological errors and approaches to correcting them are considered. The methods of participant observation and text analysis were used to identify cases of errors and possible causes of violations of codified rules. Participant observation allowed the authors to identify some repeated mistakes made by schoolchildren in reproducing codified accentological norms. The analysis of modern Russian language textbooks from the standpoint of the requirements for preparing for the final assessment (USE) showed that the textbooks for different educational levels fail to cover cases, where students tend to make accentuation mistakes. In addition, the pronouncing dictionaries of the analysed textbooks often contain language units that have been fully mastered by the language and the society thus not implying any pronunciation variants. The identification of problem areas in teaching accentological norms, as well as the development of methodological techniques for organizing work on their adoption, can contribute to a more effective formation of the pronunciation culture of students.

In this paper, the methodical system of T. A. Ladyzhenskaya is characterised with the purpose of identifying her most significant and productive ideas. This goal is achieved by analyzing and generalizing the main works of T. A. Ladyzhenskaya, as well as publications describing her contribution to the methodology of speech development. The key methodological concepts include the following: rhetoric is an integrative field and a culture-forming subject that needs to be taught to everyone; in the teaching of speech, an essential role is played by moral and rhetorical ideas and the special atmosphere of verbal communication; speech training requires the creation of texts of various genres and involves instrumental knowledge, including the information about a variety of communication tools; speech education should be comprehensive, starting from kindergarten, covering all school subjects and to mastering various professional speech genres at university and postgraduate education. These ideas reflect the methodological system of T. A. Ladyzhenskaya and determine the ever-growing relevance and demand of the concept of «Rhetoric of communication» in the twenty-first century.

The article discusses the linguistic and stylistic features of D. I. Fonvizin’s comedies «The Brigadier-General» and «The Minor» («Nedorosl‘») in the context of the main trends in the development of literature and the language. The focus is on individual compositional features, the speech characteristics of various characters and ways of expressing the author’s position. The artistic technique of irony, the use of phraseological resources of the language, crossovers between styles and ways of individualizing the speech of heroes are analyzed. The place of lexical and syntactic gallicisms in the language of Fonvizin’s comedies and in the language of the representatives of educated classes of Russian society in the second half of the 18th century is determined.

E. A. Baratynsky’ influence on the 20th-century Russian philosophical lyrics is undeniable. The syntax used by the «poet of thought» demonstrates a tendency towards complication and archaization over time, which generally contradicts the aspirations for the democratization of the poetic syntax that emerged in the Karamzin era. The complexity of the syntactic structure in the poet’s search for a «metaphysical» language is achieved not by increasing the number of complex structures, which make up half of the sentences used by Baratynsky, but rather by saturating sentences with various kinds of clauses (participial, adverbial participial, adjective, noun, adverbial, infinitive) that complicate the model by conjunctive syntagms (prepositional-nominal, comparative, conjunctive), parentheses, vocatives, segments of the «nominative of the theme» type. In an effort to preserve the continuity of poetic traditions for a thoughtful, attentive reader, Baratynsky resorts to archaizing the syllable at the lexical and grammatical levels and, in particular, to using absolute clauses. Complex constructions often accompany iambic trimeter, trisyllabic metres, variable-foot verses consisting of longer and shorter lines characterised by changing the order of stress. Sentences with cumbersome isolated clauses are typical for iambic and dactylic hexameter, metres with a connotation of «high» genres. A more complex syntactic structure is observed in polymetric and variable food poems. The added complexity of syntax in long-sized verses is achieved not by increasing the number of parts of complex structures, but rather by adding clauses and homogeneous parts of the sentence. Large stanza forms are frequently divided into several simple sentences of two or three lines in length. The tradition of poetic rhythm requires a coincidence of the boundaries of quatrain and sentences – their symmetry; therefore, in quatrains, similar to couplets, the occurrence of complex and compound structures is much higher. Free stanza or the lack of stanza division additionally complicates the syntax.

The article considers the competition of verbal aspects from a new perspective. Instead of employing the traditional method of demonstrating this phenomenon — an empirical replacement of the aspect of a verb in a phrase with the opposite — the author examines Dostoevsky’s choice between the variants found in different manuscripts of the same text. For the first time, based on a two-component theory of the semantic invariant of a verb type, the aspectual meaning of the selection of a verb aspect is revealed and, as a result of contextual analysis, an artistic interpretation of the selected type is proposed.

This article describes the use of adverbs with the prefix po-  for the purposes of comparison in the Russian language. The comparative semantics and culturally significant meanings of the adverbs po-chelovecheski and po-lyudski are provided. An analysis of language material is carried out using the methods of structural semantics. Features of the adverbs are revealed in their comparison with the clauses «kak chelovek, kak lyudi». The synonymous relations of the language units, their similarities and differences are considered. This article shows that the field of synonymy is composed of sentences reflecting the human behavioural sphere, while the differences are related to ideas concerned with ethical standards.

The article discusses issues associated with teaching vocabulary at school on a systematic and thematic basis. It is proposed to use thematic dictionaries in order to generalize the results of vocabulary analysis during Russian language and literature lessons for Russian-speaking students. Principles underpinning the selection of vocabulary for such dictionaries are characterized. Using an example of the keyword glaza (Eng. eyes, thematic group «Human appearance»), the formation of the static and dynamic parts of a dictionary entry is shown. The study was conducted using a content analysis of research and methodological literature devoted to the problem of teaching vocabulary on a thematic basis. Among other research methods were a thematic and semantic analysis of vocabulary, as well as a quantitative analysis of the results of the selection of vocabulary for a thematic vocabulary.

The names of Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva are connected not only by the time period and poetry writing but also by a long-term private correspondence. This article discusses occasionalisms found in the correspondence of B. Pasternak and M. Tsvetaeva as a means of forming the individual style of the poets. The comparative, descriptive and statistical research methods were used. The author draws attention to the fact that every new word created by the poets becomes a reflection of their world, serves accuracy and capacity of reasoning, as well as often carries dominant and symbolic meanings.

The article is devoted to the genesis of personal and eponymous nicknames as a vivid phenomenon in the history of language and speech, which has irrefutable potential for developing methods of teaching and educating schoolchildren. The main varieties of nicknames, the conditions for their formation and the specifics of daily life in different historical periods are considered. The interconnections of nicknames with similar and related phenomena of Russian and European speech cultures are analyzed. The feasibility of analysing nicknames in the methodological practice of secondary school is postulated. Possible ways of the implementation of intrasubject and intersubject communications in the school teaching of humanities are offered on the basis of familiarizing students with the history of eponymous and personal nicknames.

The article is devoted to the current university system of training professional philologists. The author analyzes the requirements of the Federal state educational standard of higher education in the field of philology. The communicative component is identified as the core professional competency. The leading role of communicative competency in the implementation of the basic requirements of interactive learning technologies in higher education is discussed. The requirements for the selection of disciplines in the structure of «regional university» curricula, which ensure the employability of graduates in regions, are described. In addition, the issues of testing the general (normative) literacy of a philology student, media literacy and media education of modern professional philologists, as well as their knowledge in the field of genre studies and textology are considered. The author relies on documentary sources, reviews of didactic sources and materials of students’ independent work in real and virtual environments. Various practical exercises with different text types are proposed. In describing didactic materials, their use and approaches to their analysis, the author adheres to the principles of evaluating effective methodological support that have been developed in the research laboratory and practice of university rhetoric founded by prof. T. A. Ladyzhenskaya.

The article is devoted to the life and scientific path of D. E. Rosenthal – the author of widely acknowledged textbooks, dictionaries, reference books on the Russian language, speech culture, stylistics and spelling. This article is aimed at evaluating the linguistic heritage of D. E. Rosenthal and considering how the recommendations given in his books (including those reprinted today) are related to the prescriptions of modern dictionaries and reference books. The article lists some reference books published in the first decades of the 21st century and devoted to the same issues of spelling, grammar and speech culture investigated by D. E. Rosenthal. It is concluded that D. E. Rosenthal’s books remain to be relevant materials on the modern Russian language and writing. However, some of the recommendations given in the reference books by D. E. Rosenthal are outdated; in these cases, one should be guided by modern dictionaries and reference books.