Mother Language-Based Teaching of the Russian Lexicon to Croatian Students

This article discusses the main reasons underlying the difficulties and errors experienced by Croatian native speakers in mastering the lexical structure of another Slavic language, specifically Russian, in the initial stage of learning. The author's attention is focused on the student’s substitution of meanings of lexical units in Russian with words of the native language, due to interlingual or linguistic paronymy. In teaching Russian to Croatian native speakers, it is important to maintain the thematic and situational principle of teaching, the principle of sufficiency, and the principle of relying on the mother tongue. This paper provides examples of effective vocabulary mastering: the use of visual clarity, reliance on similar sounding words in the native language, internationalisms, archaisms, application of the tacit (implicit) knowledge mechanism, unconscious reliance on equivalent, similar sounding words from close South Slavic languages, particularly Serbian and Slovenian (as positive interference). Attention is focused on the development of logical thinking and independence, the correct use of the dictionary, and working with audio recordings and video materials. The article focuses on words with connotative meaning, linguocultural lexis, non-equivalent and partially equivalent lexis, and speech etiquette.