Traditions of the Discipline Oblige and Inspire Us (Past and Present of Russian Language Didactics at the Faculty of Education, Charles University in Prague)
Abstract
The Department of Russian Language and Linguodidactics has always pursued two aspects of teachers' education simultaneously, namely the knowledge of the field and the psychological and pedagogical aspect. Departments' faculty have been developing a scientific theory of Russian language didactics based on insights of the Prague Linguistic Circle.
Since 1990's the progress in the field has benefitted from national seminars on theoretical foundations of foreign language didactics and national seminars on Russian language teaching. New design of teachers' education reflects the changed conditions for foreign language teaching since 1989 as well as requirements ensuing from international treaties.
For last 20 years the department develops a design of Russian language teaching from primary school to graduate levels. As a result of applied research, three sets of comprehensive Russian language manuals for primary and secondary schools were published.
The research was funded by several grants; the major and profiling one for the department has been the Multidisciplinary aspects of communicative competencies building in foreign language teaching.