Effective Techniques for Working with the Tongue Twister in the Elementary Level of Training Russian as a Foreign Language

Abstract

The selection of material for teaching phonetics is a topical problem in the practice of teaching Russian as a foreign language. In this article the tongue twister, as the material for the development of phonetic skills at the elementary level of teaching Russian to foreigners, will be discussed. It is proposed to work only with one tongue twister during daily phonetic exercises. It is also important to organize the work with different types of activities. This paper presents a set of tasks (about 20 exercises) and builds on the principle "from syllable to phrases and sentences", which can be done in a short time. In addition, this paper describes the tasks employing tongue twisters by studying grammatical material. These methods can be called effective because they develop different skills, introduce diversity, dynamism in the learning process and help to combat fatigue

Teaching classic put to the test: Do tongue twisters work for L2 pronunciation?

“…It is impossible to estimate how common the actual use of tongue twisters is in teaching, but they seem to be of great importance at least in some countries, for example, in Russia (see Korolkova et al, 2015) and Indonesia, where many of the previous studies referred to in chapter 2 have been conducted. In a study by Szyszka (2016), Polish EFL teachers ( n = 78) indicated the frequency of using tongue twisters in pronunciation teaching on a five‐point scale ( 1 = never, 5 = always ).…”

“…Another idea to support the use of tongue twisters, presented in Korolkova et al (2015), is that they can be viewed as a competitive task, which is something learners usually enjoy and find extra motivation for. Some scholars have, however, expressed criticism toward the tongue‐twister technique.…”