LANGUAGE PERSONALITY OF OTHER THAN RUSSIAN LANGUAGE ORIGIN YOUNG CHILDREN LEARNING RUSSIAN: LEXICON
The present article aims to study the problem of linguistic personality formation in children of other than Russian language origin learning Russian at Russian primary school. The structure of the language personality is also observed. The focus of this study is lexicon as an important structural component of the language personality. The results of an empirical study of the vocabulary of such children are presented. First, the results of the survey with the questionnaire enabled to determine that the perception of a national language or the Russian language as the native one depended upon the language used for communication in the family which in its turn was a result of a family being international or mononational. The survey also showed that more than 61% and 72% experienced writing skills challenges in dictation and essays in Russian, at the same time, 72% cannot write their national language at all. Third, in the course of ascertaining experiment, it was found that the targeted category of children demonstrated certain specific features of language personality formation: flaws occurred in the structure of verbal-semantic level (gaps in vocabulary, agrammatism), features of the lexicon were determined by the speech input, gaps in lexicon reduced the quality of writing performance (dictations, expositions, essays) because of difficulties in understanding. Recommendations are offered for this category of learners to improve and enlarge their vocabulary.