Spelling Rules as Poetry: How to Teach Russian?

Abstract

Poems that include formulas of spelling rules, specially written to help teacher of Russian Language were popular during the last century: one could find numerous rhymed rules in various textbooks, in article on teaching methodology, in tutorials, and in children’s books. Such rhymed rules address spelling mistakes, speech and versification errors, and distorted linguistic information. The article focuses on the problem of children’s perception and memorization of rhymed speech and expediency of usage of rhyming as a mnemonic method. Language particularities of didactical poems in Russian language (typical speech and grammatical errors, mistakes in poetic text construction) are considered. Children’s humorous modifications of the didactical poems ultimately serve as proof of their failure to deliver the desired educational outcomes. Ways of proposing linguistic information and its possible distortion (connected with text organization) are analyzed and studied. An important component question of this study probes why the Russian language teachers are still so fond of these poems as in-class instructional material.

Keywords: child language, didactical poetry, memorization, spelling rule, mnemonics, understanding, rhyming, auditory perception