Analysis of strategies for presenting lexical and grammatical material in Russian as a foreign language textbooks for Chinese students in light of chunking theory

The research aims to identify the specific strategies for presenting lexical and grammatical material, particularly nouns and verbs with inflectional alternations, in major Chinese textbooks for the Russian language. The article offers a comparative analysis of not only Chinese but also international manuals (Russian, Japanese, and English-language), examining the organization of educational material from the perspective of students’ knowledge acquisition processes. It is noted that when studying their native language and their first foreign language (English), students develop a memorization model that may negatively impact the acquisition of Russian. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that it is the first to construct a model for memorizing Russian inflectional rules for Chinese students based on the psycholinguistic theory of chunking, which allows for a reconsideration of the feasibility of material organization in Russian language textbooks. As a result of the study, it was established that to increase the effectiveness of textbooks, it is necessary to adapt the presentation of grammatical material to the students’ actual memorization model by systematizing alternation rules in inflection and increasing the number of exercises and texts containing relevant vocabulary, as well as revising the sequence of grammatical topics. Specific recommendations are provided for teachers and textbook authors.