COGNITIVE AND LINGUOCULTURAL ASPECTS OF TEACHING THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE IN UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

The aim of the study is to theoretically substantiate and describe an integrative approach to teaching Russian in universities of the Republic of Kazakhstan, within which cognitive and linguocultural components are combined into a single didactic system aimed at developing students’ academic and intercultural Russian–language competence. The scientific novelty lies in designing a model of integrative instruction where cultural material is embedded in the structure of grammatical and lexical topics as a mandatory element that ensures the acquisition not only of the language system, but also of the norms of Russian–language communication in Kazakhstan’s multilingual environment. The methodological framework is based on systemic, linguocultural and cognitive–communicative approaches. The empirical basis consists of data from a pedagogical experiment conducted in two Almaty universities (technical and humanities profiles) in the 2024–2025 academic years with the participation of 160 first– and second–year students. The study employed pedagogical modelling, linguodidactic analysis, content analysis, as well as statistical methods (Wilcoxon and Mann–Whitney tests) with data processing in IBM SPSS Statistics 26.0. The results show that integrating cultural context into the cognitive cycle of instruction increases the awareness and durability of the acquisition of language norms and develops students’ intercultural communicative competence. The practical value of the research lies in the possibility of applying the proposed model when updating university Russian language syllabi and preparing teachers to work with multilingual student groups.