The paper substantiates the relevance of dictionary culture formation as an important component of information culture and personal culture in general. In addition, the concept of "the culture of dictionary use" is defined. The vocabulary lesson is described as an innovative type of Russian lessons; this type is characterised by a specific goal and a specific content related to the personal, meta-subject, and subject levels of the results achieved in the process of education. Such lessons play a significant role in the development of students’ linguistic personality; they also stimulate learners’ cognitive activity, facilitate the mastering of linguistic norms and the acquisition of self-regulatory skills. Resource materials for a vocabulary lesson, namely vocabulary exercises, are demonstrated. Informational-orientational, activity-semantic, and activity-textual vocabulary tasks illustrate the proposed typology of vocabulary tasks.

The paper explores the potential for use of "The Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language" by V. I. Dal in Russian lessons and extracurricular activities, including preparation of research project tasks. To achieve the objectives of the study, a literature review of sources (research, educational and methodological, official), observation, search method, comparative analysis, empirical data analysis, and modelling were employed in the research. A system of tasks designed with the help of Dal’s works is presented; such exercises can be used not only in vocabulary learning, but also while studying the history of the language and its word formation, syntax, punctuation, orthography. Moreover, these tasks facilitate the formation of research skills in extracurricular activity. In addition, it is suggested that Dal’s Dictionary be utilised in science teaching. The paper presents a variety of teaching activities such as lexical commentary, data collection, language warm-up exercises, analysis, imitation, entertaining tasks. It is concluded that V. I. Dal’s Dictionary has enormous potential for the formation of modern learners’ important competences.

The paper presents the results obtained by analysing modern learners’ idiom dictionaries. The analysis was performed from linguistic and linguistic-methodological perspectives. The aim of the study is to show readers, primarily teachers of the Russian language, the ways of using data from idiom dictionaries in school practice; to propose guidelines on organising learners’ work with an idiom dictionary which is understood as a book of reference, a workbook, and a book for family reading. The application of componential, contextual, historical-etymological, linguoculturological analysis in conjunction with the techniques of etymological paraphrase and linguistic-methodological phraseographic construction enabled the authors of the paper to develop a conception of interactive aspectual and multifaceted presentation of idioms in learner’s dictionaries. The proposed conception is realized in published dictionaries and is also demonstrated in this research paper. The performed analysis of several idiom dictionaries revealed drawbacks in the formatting of such aspects of dictionary entries as the headword, the idiom definition, and the etymological commentary. The attention of those teachers who use idiom dictionaries is drawn to the mentioned shortcomings. Recommendations for choosing dictionaries presenting idioms correctly are formulated. Innovative learner’s idiom dictionaries (i.e. materials created in the Experimental laboratory of learners’ lexicography at Pskov State University) described in this paper comply with the activity approach in teaching. The correlation between the levels of mastering idioms and the parametric zones of dictionary entries in these projects is methodologically significant. Working with engaging etymological dictionaries in the classroom and at home develops young readers’ research skills, enables them to become familiar with the rich cultural and historical background of idioms. An idiom dictionary-practicum expands students’ active phraseological vocabulary and hones their speech skills. Dictionaries in stories recommended for family reading offer readers an engaging plot presentation of idioms and additionally contain a variety of tasks for joint creative work of adults and children. Thus, this comparison of modern learners’ idiom dictionaries should help teachers to select the most suitable dictionary and utilise it in class work according to the aims and objectives they want to achieve.

The paper describes the best practices for multi-aspect work with aphoristic statements in Russian lessons. Studying aphorisms at school stems on the one hand from the need to enhance learners’ abilities to understand and decode writing of a variety of genres. On the other hand, it is determined by the immaturity of secondary school students’ skills required to create original statements of ethical, civic, or philosophical nature. Such a lack of essential skills becomes a key problem area during end-of-course assessment. The eight stages of instruction proposed in this paper are based on the axiological and system-activity approaches. They include a logical sequence of exercises teaching learners to manipulate aphoristic statements and boost different types of their verbal and cogitative activity. In the process of fathoming the paradoxical nature of aphorisms special attention is paid to those methods which develop flexible thinking and cognitive activity. This is only possible with dependence on learners’ emotional intellect (surprise, doubt, guesswork). Employing these practices not only improves the subject proficiency quality, but also facilitates the achievement of meta-subject and personal results. Cognitive competences are formed while interpreting and classifying aphorisms. Universal regulatory acts are honed in the process of judging aphorism ‘competitions’, self-testing, and mutual testing. Communicative acts are assessed during group project work. Personal learning outcomes are the strengthening of learners’ axiological attitudes and the development of their aesthetic consciousness.

The paper is devoted to the study of the linguistic picture of the world in S. Dovlatov’s novella "Nature Reserve" ("Zapovednik"). The autobiographical hero’s desire to find a way out of chaos to harmony is presented as a textand plot-building feature. The linguistic representations of harmony and chaos are considered to be the two poles of existence and a paradoxical manifestation of the indivisible unity of the world surrounding the protagonist (the norm is viewed as disharmony, absurdity – as order and so on). The research is based on the analysis of the language of the novelette. The existential phenomena embodying harmony for the autobiographical hero (namely, Pushkin, creativity, God) are identified. The methods for describing the linguistic material are determined by the anthropocentric paradigm in modern linguistics.

The paper focuses on a variety of methods used by I. S. Turgenev to transform the phraseological units (PU) in his novel "Home of the Gentry" ("Dvoryanskoe gnezdo"). It is noted that it is those phraseological unities which in the language system display variation that are, as a rule, subject to transformations in the novel. Continuous sampling was employed to detect and analyse the individual author’s phraseological units while studying the text of the novel. Additionally, the common and occasional variants of such phraseological units were compared by means of referring to dictionaries. The paper highlights the mechanism of the author’s transformation of Russian phraseological units, i. e. shows the peculiarities of building occasional phraseological semantics in the text. Moreover, word-forming and morphological modifications of the common variants of phraseological units, the syntagmatic peculiarities of individual author’s idioms are described. The study investigates the role of occasional phraseologisation in the semantic space of the novel and comprehensively defines the structural-semantic and expressive-stylistic characteristics of occasional phraseological units.

The article is devoted to the generalisation of the accumulated knowledge about the decoding of Nabokov’s texts. The obtained clues were integrated and then utilised to interpret the story "Catastrophe" ("Details of a Sunset"). The research was based on the methods of immanent linguistic text analysis which were employed in conjunction with comparative analysis. The study identified numerous multilevel intratextual and intertextual repetitions. The symbols important for understanding the author’s intention were analysed. The interpretation of the text as a story about overcoming traumatic memories of Russia is substantiated.

This article presents a linguopoetic analysis of Boris Pasternak’s poem "Wind" ("Veter") from the position of the lingual embodiment of the duality of mythological worlds. This research focuses on the symbol of "the wind as a spirit", upon which the poem’s whole mystical idea relies. The purpose of this article is to reveal which the linguistic means used to translate the duality of mythological worlds, as well as how this cognition merges with the author’s experience and determines the poem’s figurative system and idea. The understanding of the duality of mythological worlds requires the law of participation (L. L vy-Bruhl) – the identification of the mental, emotional, and physical properties of a person and nature. In Pasternak’s poem, the suffering and rushing "I" of the deceased lyrical hero becomes the wind. In this study, the word-symbol "wind" is studied in the semantic and semiotic aspect as a sign. Its signifier is the lexeme wind meaning 'perceptual idea of an air flow'; signified – the symbolic meaning of 'spirit, soul, immortality', due to the etymological meaning of the word and pagan mythology. The results reveal that the symbol "wind" is the carrier of the duality of mythological worlds, and it programs the fictional world of the poem: on the one hand, these are the actual world of the lyrical heroine, the house, and the wind, which swings pine trees; on the other hand – the imaginary world of the spirit of the dead lyrical hero. The lexical resources of the poetic text translate this opposition in the ratio of the words I and wind, personal pronouns I and you, as well as the words ended and alive. At the grammatical level, the duality is expressed by the contrast of the verbal forms of the past and present time, as well as by the passage from the indirect thought (the lyrical hero’s mental monologue) to the 3rd person narrative about the wind and the pine trees and by the return of the poem to the lyrical hero’s indirect thought at the end. This is how Pasternak implements one of the main ideas of his novel "Doctor Zhivago" – the idea of immortality, which is confirmed in the article by referring to the novel’s macro context and biographical materials.

The article examines various types of verbal neologisms functioning in modern Russian speech. The aim of the research is to reveal the tendencies of verbal derivation at the turn and at the beginning of the 21st century. It is noted that verb vocabulary is regularly enriched by neologisms of different structural types despite the fact that this part of speech is less open to neologization. It has been demonstrated that suffixation, prefixation, and postfixation (grammatical suffixation) are the most productive processes of derivation. The following tendences of modern verbal derivation have been revealed: intensive formation of new verbs via borrowing from foreign languages; expansion of denominative derivation of verbs; an increase in the number of reflexive verbs expressing various aspects of subject-object relations. It is concluded that verbal neologisms are consistently used not only in media language, but also in the language of modern fiction where they enhance its expressiveness and imagery.

The study focuses on the issue of the origin of toponyms with the Gulyay– stem. The research was performed analysing ancient Russian written manuscripts and various lexicographic sources. The paper highlights the specific nature of the realization of the semantic volume of the verbal lexeme gulyay–. The reasons for spreading of South Russian toponyms with the Gulyay– stem to other regions of the country are identified. The author formulates recommendations aimed at choosing a well-grounded spelling of this type of toponyms and common names associated with them.

This paper devoted to V. I. Dal’s 220th birthday anniversary presents a short review of his creative, professional activity in the context of compiling "The Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language". Being exemplified by a brief scientific discussion which dates back to the end of the XIXth century, the role of this Dictionary in the history of the academic explanatory lexicography development is highlighted in greater detail. The aim of the study was to generalise the well-known facts about V. I. Dal and his Dictionary as well as to refer to lesser-known sources. V. I. Dal contributed significantly to each of the spheres in which he was creatively or professionally involved: he was a naval officer, a doctor, a writer, and a civil servant of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. All Dal’s professional and creative experience as well as his in-depth knowledge of folklife had an impact on the structure, form, and content of the Dictionary: they made it the yardstick and exemplar of Russian lexicography. This thesis is expounded in the course of studying I. Kh. Pachmann’s critical "Memorandum" (1899) concerning the commencement of the work on the "Shakhmatov’s revision" of the academic "Dictionary of the Russian Language". Additionally, this "Memorandum" provides certain evaluation of Dal’s edition from the perspective of its educational potential that could be exploited in school education. Despite the drawbacks revealed by his contemporaries, V. I. Dal’s dictionary inadvertently became the yardstick and exemplar in the discussion of the moot issues arising during the initiation of the new academic project. It is this dictionary that influenced the further development of explanatory academic lexicography.