Keyword: «problems of modern humanities education»

Attainment of high level of communicative competence is one of the main goals implemented via competent-based approach to teaching in the Higher education system. This approach focuses on the result as the ability to act in different situations. Effective communication within the context of dynamically and rapidly developing society is the required component as in one’s professional as in private areas. The acquisition of learning experience which makes such communication possible can be provided via different methods. Among them the specialized studies of Modern Times Russian literature works which record meaningful historical (and which is more important social and cultural) facts of Russian reality appears as one of rather effective ones while applied to such humanities subjects as «Russian language» and «Culture of speech». Historical and cultural attempt in theoretical and practical areas of communicative strategies and tactics teaching provides good results proved while teaching these subjects to the St. Petersburg State University students. Awareness of the communicative behavior (including speech behavior) of the communicants of the past starting from the 18th century code of conduct «The Honest Mirror of Youth» expands students’ communicative experience providing the possibility to track continuity in ethical and behavioral principles establishing the relationship of an individual and the society and to clarify the peculiarities of communicative behavior which provoke so called communicative failures. It also helps to evaluate more consciously and adequately modern language means of communication. The set of practical tasks directed to achieving these goals is suggested in the article.

While learning Russian as the native or a foreign language one deals not only with the linguistic problems but with some pragmatic tasks connected to increasingof language proficiency level and creation of communicative skills valid for different situations. Communicative competence is an important component of a harmonic creative personality capable of self-development. Formation of students’ communicative competence is the immediate need because the lack of live experience and the absence of communicative practice in certain social groups don’t let them to choose the adequate language methods for successful communication. Russian language classes within the scope of competent-based approach provide a lot of possibilities for obtaining these results and become the main platform for such work at the non-philological High schools. Analysis of literary characters’ speech masks in Russian prosaic texts is one of the ways of communicative competence formation. A complex of the tasks orientated to the exposing of a character’s speech mask is presented in this article. While making the tasks the student should pay attention to the stylistic and functional characteristics of the words, to the pragmatic information about mutual positions of the characters and to the result of communication. Depending on the whether the students study Russian as the native or a foreign language the tasks can be varied for the different groups. Language practice provides the students with the knowledge about the usage of speech masks in order to reach the goals of communication and it also extends their knowledge on general culture.