The communicative approach to teaching Kyrgyz as a foreign language

The present article is devoted to teaching the Kyrgyz language at the Moscow State Linguistic University, the head organization for CIS languages and cultures. At present there exist various political, economic and humanitarian reasons for a growing interest in learning CIS languages across the post-Soviet area, which cannot but shape pedagogical research and practice. Since 2000, the MSLU has been implementing the program contributing to cultural and inter-linguistic communication in order to develop intercultural communicative competences and strengthen the common educational space for CIS countries. The focus of the present article is an analysis of the communicative approach to teaching Kyrgyz as a foreign language, when the communicative interaction with a speech partner serves both as a means and a goal of learning. Communicatively oriented teaching is aimed at creating communicative settings that simulate interpersonal interaction in real life. This presupposes providing learners with the necessary lexical, grammatical, phonetic and stylistic information, as well as building up their culture specific background. The acquisition of social, political and cultural information about the country, the language of which they learn, increase learners’ motivation and makes the whole process of the language learning more appealing and successful. The success of a foreign language teaching and learning is based on updating educational programs, improving teaching methods and materials, implementing social educational projects, etc. The article proves the effectiveness of using a communicative approach in teaching Kyrgyz as a foreign language, as it contributes to developing the creative potential of individuals and takes into account their interests, plans, life values and attitudes.