Speech behaviour of Latvian Russian-speaking schoolchildren in argumentative texts

Abstract

The article analyses the problems, which Russian-speaking schoolchildren in Latvia meet while creating written argumentative texts. The topicality of the article lies in the peculiarities of forming the schoolchildren’s linguistic personality in the diaspore during bilingual education. The author focuses on the main problems in the schoolchildren’s written speech and their reasons. The criteria of text content-analysis were as follows: 1) the level of argumentation autonomy; 2) the quality of the arguments; 3) the level of argument unfoldedness and using different types of arguments; 4) speech expressiveness and observing language norms. The ninth-graders’ text analysis led the author to the following conclusions: the compositions of most schoolchildren partly correspond with argumentative texts (in the aspect of their contents, structure, quantity and quality of arguments, means of thought development); they lack intertextual embeddings (the texts are “poor” in the sense aspect); in the speech behaviour there dominates an explicit I-communication (reflexive observations, egocentric direction of their behaviour), pragmatic, naked outline of facts even if the topic of the text motivates to verbalize emotions; there are a lot of language errors. The results of the research are based on analysis of 3296 ninth-graders, which the schoolchildren wrote at Russian language exam on finishing secondary school in 2016-2018. The results of this and further researches will allow the author to deeply investigate the process of forming primary and secondary linguistic personality of a Russian-speaking schoolchild in Latvia.