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Russian Language Journal

Author ORCID Identifier

0000-0003-2897-5128

Keywords

verbs of motion, cinema, film, media, cognitive studies, cognitive linguistics

Abstract

The practice of foreign language teaching is paradoxical in nature. On the one hand, such teaching is communicative; on the other hand, it often continues to rely on structuralist linguistic theory, which contradicts its communicative nature. In the case of teaching Russian verbs of motion to second-language learners, the dynamic nature of these verbs is often considered not dynamically, but statically—in the form of abstract textual examples or static images—which is also paradoxical. Such an abstract treatment of verbs of motion contradicts a number of postulates of modern cognitive science and certain areas of cognitive linguistics. From the perspective of these fields, cognitive processes are embodied by nature and conditioned by the physical environment; therefore, the teaching of Russian verbs of motion should be connected to students’ individual bodily experience or to an experience close to it. It should also be multimodal in nature, that is, not limited to symbolic representation, but also including non-symbolic representation. In my article, I present theoretical postulates from modern cognitive science that support the use of cinema as a multimodal and multimedia phenomenon in teaching Russian verbs of motion. I consider a number of scenarios for using Russophone cinema to teach Russian verbs of motion in a university setting. Using the classic Soviet film The Diamond Arm (1969) as an example, I provide four examples of tasks that can be used to teach Russian verbs of motion. The proposed tasks target the Novice and Intermediate levels of proficiency in Russian and relate to various aspects of film as a fundamentally visual and dynamic phenomenon connected to students’ personal embodied experiences. The approach I propose makes it possible to address a number of problematic aspects of teaching Russian verbs of motion and offers new ways of teaching this complex linguistic phenomenon.

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