The article is about the introductory course in practical Phonetics of Chinese Mandarin for Russian students, based on innovative phonological (zvukofonemnoy) theory of Chinese. For the first time in the practical study of Chinese Putonghua teaching is based on knowledge of the differences between orfogramma and phonological transcription of Chinese words. The purpose of this manual is to provide Russian speaking students beginning to learn Chinese with a system-theoretical and practical understanding of phoneticphonological system of Chinese. Chinese and Russian, in terms of the use of speech sounds to build words as central units of the human language, are directly opposed: vowels are more used in Chinese whereas in Russian it is consonants that are more used. There are 34 strong vowels in Chinese and 6 strong vowels in Russian. Phonetic-phonological system of the Chinese and Russian languages on one ground of comparing consonants and vowel phonemes (language rules for pronouncing consonants and vowels) are brought to a student as rationally understandable practical objects of study. Russian students get perceived ability to use their knowledge and skills of pronouncing the sounds of their native language to compare them with the consonants and vowel sounds of the Chinese language. System summary of knowledge combined with practical exercises (imitative, analytical and speechmental) allows students to effectively develop appropriate pronunciation skills and listening comprehension of speech sounds of Chinese, thereby developing an adequate phonological ear in Chinese Putonghua as the basic necessary competence for all kinds of speech activities in a given language. Introduction to practical phonetics of Putonghua for Russian-speaking students stood two editions (2013, 2015) and is used by many universities and schools of the Russian Federation as the Russians and Chinese teachers of some Confucius institutes in Russia.

The article deals with the multiple meanings of the German verb ziehen, previously studied in the works of W. Porzig, F. Hundesnursch and G. Fritz. These linguists worked at distinguishing only the selected meanings of the polysemant, not at studying the interrelation of its meanings. In this article, the invariant of the verb ziehen is developed by means of using the image-schemas, created after the study of the contextual examples taken from a German Text Corpus. The German Text Corpus DWDS (subcorpus Kernkorpus des 20./21. Jahrhunderts) was used as the source of the contextual examples. The examples were divided into 18 groups according to the image-schemas, which serve to their representation. Some image-schemas embrace several dictionary meanings, both direct and transferred, including the verb ziehen in fixed phrases (e.g.in Betracht ziehen, Konsequenzen ziehen, Kritik auf sich ziehen, in Kalkül ziehen, Nutzen ziehen, eine Niete ziehen). Despite the differences between the imageschemas, they show the linear character of the referent’s form (e.g. eine Linie, einen Strich ziehen), motion trajectory (e.g., seine Bahn ziehen, Kreise ziehen) or both (e.g. einen Draht, eine Leitung ziehen, den Faden durchs Nadelöhr ziehen). Although the image-schemas vary, they all represent the linear character of the referent’s form or motion trajectory. The latter can be regarded as the invariant of the verb ziehen, which explains its extreme polysemy.

The recurrent interest in the study of the contemporary scientific and technical texts is determined by the changes in the nature of these texts and the range of rhetorical functions they perform. Apart from purely informative and persuasive functions, many special texts also fulfill expressive function in an attempt to attract attention to the facts and evidence presented. New information is often brought into focus using various rhetorical devices, such as verbal metaphor, personification, epithet, and allusion. The application of stylistically marked vocabulary within the special text allows focusing the attention of the readers on a particular information cluster, ensuring that the new information is not disregarded or missed. The issue of acceptability of the more expressive ways of communicating information in the special texts is still open to discussion, but despite the differences in opinions, this tendency is ongoing and is not likely to revert in the nearest future.

All languages change. Even over ten or twenty years enough changes have taken place to force teachers and grammarians to update their descriptions. Language change happens for various reasons. Mechanisms of change include phonetic and structural reduction, creative innovation and the influence that one form of a language can have on another. However, despite developments in specific areas, English as a whole is not changing very quickly. But it is important to keep an eye on what is happening, so as to be able to answer students’questions about new usage, and to be able to modify traditional explanations as this becomes necessary.

This article analyses transcripts and video footage of pre-election speeches (2014-2015) delivered by the Prime Minister of the united Kingdom David Cameron with the purpose of creating a linguistic portrait of the political leader. We define communicative tactics common for all the analysed speeches, which allow the speaker to achieve his pragmatic purposes, discuss the linguistic means of implementation of the defined tactics and paralinguistic means typical of the orator. We discover that the key tactics traceable through all the analysed pre-election speeches given by David Cameron are self-presentation, or positioning stategy, conflict strategy and cooperation strategy, with the emphasis on promotion of the new British values. It was found that the lexical aspect of D. Cameron’s political discourse is deprived of professional jargon, but close to everyday common speech, rich in emotive and assessment lexis. The study defines D. Cameron as an accomplished linguistic personality and brilliant speaker capable of exercising both pragmatic and emotional influence on a wide range of his audience.

The paper deals with measure words (numeral classifiers) in the Indonesian language — a special category of service tokens used for measurement (possibility of counting) of mentioned things and pointing to the noun belonging to a particular semantic class (category). Such words exist in many languages of East and South-East Asia (Vietnamese, Indonesian, Chinese, Korean, Malay, Japanese, etc.), as well as Indo-Iranian, Turk, Dravidian languages. We identified and described these categories, marked by a number of characteristic features of the use of such tokens in the Indonesian language, and made some parallels with the Russian language, which also has such category of words. The author examines about 30 measure words of the Indonesian language, describes their their category, notes a number of characteristic features of using such lexemes in the Indonesian language, makes some parallels with the Russian language, which also has the similar words. He also notes that if a category of countability is undeveloped it is measure words that indicate possibility of counting (measurement) of sujects, which explains the need for them in the Indonesian language. It is also indicated that the classifiers play an important substantiating role, i.e. they point on moving of other parts of speech into the category of nouns (moreover they play also emphasizing role that resembles the function of articles in the English language). Having substantiating role such measure words also provide referential attitude of a numeral to a specific noun, regardless of whether the noun itself is named or not.

Existing theoretical frameworks on so-called negative polarity items so far have not offered an adequate enough description of their variety. We use corpus data of modern Japanese to advance in the description of semantics and pragmatics of adverb intensifiers within this group. The method that is being used for this is twofold. First we undertake separate semantic analysis of each item, recurring to diachronic factors if relevant. In this way we can subdivide the eight intensifiers (zenzen, mattaku, tootei, ikkoo-ni, chittomo, sukoshi-mo, kesshite, totemo) by semantic features of scalability (absolute or relative), nature of modified object (abstract/concrete) and grounds for modification (evidential or epistemic). Then we compare the meaning of utterances with the adverbs used in similar contexts. And this leads us to conclude that the pragmatics of a negative-polar adverb in Japanese is closely related to the cognitive mechanisms imprinted in their semantic structure. For instance, the etymology of “down to the very bottom” as the metaphor root in the base of “complete screening of evidential data” in tootei appears related to its scope of use in argumentative, reasoning contexts. “Decisive” as the key element in kesshite, assigns this negator to comissive contexts or statements where the speaker is in full control of actions or events he refers to. Ikkoo-ni as linked to an interval of time with zero occurrence of a certain event is best suited for narratives. While mattaku, referring to a complete discordance between two representations of reality, is tailored for critical utterances.

This article deals with the peculiarities of English humor, satire and irony. The analysis of the importance of humor, satire and sarcasm is given. English humor is compared to American one. Speaking about English national character, the author highlights an unofficial rule “The importance of not being earnest”, their ability to self-irony and willingness to tell jokes or accept everything with humor. The topicality of the research is determined by the success of Conan Doyle’s books and the necessity of taking his books into consideration. Conan Doyle’s novels (“The study in scarlet”, “Sherlock Holmes at death”, “The empty house”) and his stories and narratives are given to show English humour and irony. The author goes on to say that satire was applied only to the police-officers (The character of Leistreid is described even with sarcasm). Along with the detective stories and novels of Conan Doyle, his science fictional novels and stories are characterized (“The lost world”, “The Poisoned belt”, “When the world screamed”, ”The Maracot deep”). Different kinds of humor are compared. In the end, the author concludes that humor is an integral part of Conan Doyle success”. As a conclusion, the author says about the peculiarities of English humor and its influence on the long lasting popularity of Conan Doyle’s creativity.

Foreign-language reading of artistic text is equated with cross-cultural ‎communication. Activity of such communication is motivated and has a certain goal: identification of artistic originality of well-known writer Sonalla Ibrahim's novel ‎‎"Honour", where maximally shows up the original look of author to the surrounding him world. ‎The plot of novel is saturated by major for Egypt events, they give an opportunity ‎to underline the socially-historical conditionality and the peculiarity of the writer's work, educe his civil position. It will also define ‎his role in modern Arabic literature. The reality of the novel, studied by us, passes ‎the evaluation picture of the world. For the author of novel is characteristic a sacral ‎idea about a man and surrounding world, personality is perceived ‎as inseparable part of society, here interests of society ‎are perceived as a greater value, than interests of certain man. World view of author, his ideals included in intention ‎of work reflect propensity to the marxist looks. His ‎novel became the fact of philosophical comprehension of three epochs of the totalitarian ‎mode in Egypt. Attitude of author toward the liberal "open-door policy" ‎proclaimed by Sadat is based on authorial conception of the surrounding him world. As far as strengthening of market ‎relations in the epoch of Sadat there was alienation from those moral ‎values that were founded in the epoch of President Nasser rule. ‎In forming of human personality an author finds conformity ‎to law of physiological process and public environment as ‎determinatives. Sympathy of writer on sharp and ‎sickly for Egyptian society problems was done his work ‎by actual. 

The focus of this article is to show how thematic WebQuests tackle major challenges facing students who study English as a foreign language at the Moscow Institute of International Relations. “A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all the information that learners interact with comes from recourses on the Internet, optionally supplemented with videoconferencing”. (Dodge, 1997). WebQuests are part of project-based learning; they also integrate the Program and Problem Methods and are aimed at achieving a practical result. When working on Thematic Short-term WebQuests (encompassing a 2-3 week period), the following key factors were taken into account: the topical and linguistic areas of the Masters Course of English, learners’professional areas of expertise as well as the Upper Intermediate and Advanced Level of English of students. One of the major advantages of WebQuest technology is that it is based on the idea of Discovery Learning, which implies that learners remember information better if they discover it for themselves. Students “discover” information while working on a WebQuest. In fact, WebQuest technology is a flexible teaching methodology, which enables an academic to devise an authentic WebQuest technology aimed at tackling targeted tasks of a particular course/module/semester/program etc. Today students are digital natives and integrating WebQuests (based on Internet resources) into the classroom is a major motivating factor. Another aspect the article deals with is selecting Internet resources and substitution of outdated sites by the teacher. Integration of new digital educational technologies, WebQuest technology included, match comprehensive approaches to education and combat the challenges facing the digital generation. According to UN survey, informational technologies are a key factor of economic growth. University e-education enables students to gain a competitive edge on the global arena.

The article is devoted to the role of fiction in teaching ESP at different levels. The author explores fiction’s potential for the development of students’ broad spectrum of competencies: generic, language proper, subjectand transferable skills. Among them there are ones, commonly referred to as the ‘21st century skills’ [1]. The lists of these skills and competencies vary in length and structure, but they have a common core – processing information, critical thinking, problem-solving ability, communicative competence, cooperation, team work and a number of others, embedded in MGIMO curricula. Special attention in the article is given to the vast possibilities of fiction for broadening students’ imagination, promoting creativity as well as emotional and ethical literacy. The main objective of the article is to demonstrate some ways of integrating core subject and foreign language communicative competencies at the lesson of ‘home- and individual reading’, provided the content of the book chosen is in line with the students’ field of study. The article offers various forms of studying fiction: from writing an alternate ending to a story to role-plays or project work. The author’s conclusions rest on reflective approach to the teaching practice, experimenting with various modes of teaching ‘home reading’, peer observation as well as analysis of relevant publications.

Development of business environment requires more and more experts with knowledge of English in a particular field of professional activities. Another important attribute of a modern professional is an oral presentation skill. Therefore the need for corresponding training of future workers is intensified. This article provides the analysis of efficient guides addressed at meeting both challenges: how to teach students to make a proper presentation on professional topics and facilitate the process of learning a foreign language. By adducing examples from teaching practice the author highlights the efficiency of a presentation as a tool for learning a foreign language for specific purposes, viz. for its consistent use in business environment.

Being a specific component of media discourse, electronic newspaper discourse has developed within large-scale transformations in the sphere of mass media brought about by close interaction between traditional mass media and the Internet. This discourse, which is a new type of communication characterized by such features as hypertextuality and interactivity, is shown to play a significant role in modeling professional foreign language communicative environment for educating specialists in the field of foreign regional studies. The language of quality press has always been considered a valuable source for compiling professional vocabulary and text corpus in teaching professionally oriented foreign language to students of foreign regional studies. However, the more complicated and multi format structure of electronic newspaper articles makes them a unique learning resource, which emerges as a composite of alphabet texts based on printed version content, audio and video files, thus creating opportunities for integrated development of students’language skills, the latter being realized within contextual learning methods as well. Electronic newspaper texts are useful for forming electronic corpus of regional studies discourse aiming at compiling professional vocabulary.