Despite claims about the outdatedness of teaching methods during the 1990s, contemporary practice of foreign language teaching shows that the concept of methodology has remained a relevant pedagogical framework. The aim of this research is to examine the extent to which the principles of four historically significant methods — grammar-translation, direct, audiolingual, and communicative — are present in the contemporary instruction of Russian as a foreign language in Serbia. Instead of searching for the “best” method, the focus is on identifying individual principles and the way in which they are combined in teaching practice. The research was conducted by surveying 35 Russian language teachers working in primary and secondary schools across Serbia. The questionnaire was designed to examine indirectly, through specific teaching activities, the frequency of using the key principles of the mentioned methods. The results show that teachers most often apply the principles of the audiolingual method, while the use of the principles of the communicative method is the least common. A weak positive correlation was observed between the years of teaching experience and the application of the grammar-translation method, which indicates certain generational differences in teaching styles.
Luka Medenica (Wed,) studied this question.