Review of the supervisor, Professor, Ph.D. Pavlovskaya I.Yu.
on the M.A. paper by Maerjiang Yerken undergraduate student on the topic
"International experience of teaching Chinese as a foreign language to schoolchildren: Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan"
Direction 45.03.02 "Linguistics"
ВМ.5625.2020 "Theory of teaching foreign languages and intercultural communication"
 
	The content of the master's thesis submitted for defense by Maerjiang Yeerken is reflected in the wording of the title as accurately as possible. The author is indeed a practicing teacher and has a unique experience of teaching Chinese as a foreign language in three designated countries – Russia, China and Kyrgyzstan. The fact that teaching Chinese is becoming more and more relevant in the modern world, apparently, no one doubts. Maerjiang tried to add to her experience the theoretical basis she had learned from publications, Internet sources and lectures of her teachers, and to present the result of her research in this work. This attempt as a whole achieved some success, although not in everything. 
The qualifying paper is presented on 111 pages, including 101 pages of the main text, with a list of references, numbering 40 titles of scientific publications in Russian, English and Chinese, and three Appendices containing linguistic methodological materials. The structure of the main text of the work consists of an Introduction, two chapters with conclusions, and a Resume. The chapters are balanced in volume, the content is presented quite logically, but the conclusions are incomplete, and there are a large number of grammatical errors and typos in the text, sometimes there are excerpts from foreign sources with an unsuccessful translation, incorrect use of terms, for example, "безголосые буквы" (p. 18) or "задачный подход" (p. 31) (and this is despite the instructions to make corrections given by the supervisor). 
The Introduction correctly defines the goals, objectives, object and subject of the study. However, the methodological base indicates authors whose concepts either do not receive proper attention in the work at all (for example, the Method of General physical reaction by James Asher), or are mentioned only in the overview part and are practically not reflected in methodological developments (for example, Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligence). On the other hand, the method of contrastive analysis and the theory of errors, which the author refers to quite often both in the theoretical and practical chapters of the paper, are not indicated in the Introduction in the methodological base.  
The first chapter "Comparative analysis of language teaching in Russia, China and Kyrgyzstan" presents a fairly complete linguistic contrastive analysis of three languages at the phonetic, lexical and grammatical levels, but, unfortunately, does not end with proper conclusions indicating which differences the author considers critical and will work on in further research.
The section "Theoretical foundations of methods of teaching Chinese as a foreign language" is divided into three subsections for three countries, but all of them do not present deep analysis but only general phrases and trivial characteristics set out on 1-2 pages. It is a pity that the author did not apply in this sense the knowledge gleaned from the disciplines of the M.A. Programme "Theory of methods of teaching foreign languages" and "History of methods of teaching foreign languages", at least in relation to Russia.  
In the section "Pedagogical concepts of teaching children", the review includes a wide variety of sources, in principle useful and interesting (these are the works of Maria Montessori, Lenneberg, Vygotsky, Oyama, etc.), but the connection of these concepts with the practical part of the work is not disclosed.
The author bases the second chapter "The current situation with Chinese language teaching in Russia, China and Kyrgyzstan" on the method of case studies on the example of three schools – the Confucius School in Russia, the Chinese Alliance platform produced by China and one of the secondary schools of Beshkek in Kyrgyzstan.
After describing the external characteristics of the work of these educational institutions (descriptions of the curriculum, textbooks, teaching staff), the author describes his impressions received, apparently, when attending classes at these three sites, and gives his own recommendations for improving the techniques of working on phonology, vocabulary, grammar and calligraphy (9 examples in total for all 3 schools). 
Next, the author proceeds to test the results of training in two groups of the Confucius school. By itself, the test developed by the author and its statistical analysis is probably the most methodically developed part of the practical chapter, quite competently described and equipped with methodological tools, however, the purpose of this testing is not clear, and the conclusion looks completely unexpected: "In general, group A showed significantly better results than group B. This suggests that both the game learning method and the TPR method are suitable for teaching schoolchildren" (p.77). At the same time, the reader does not receive any information about how the training program in groups A and B differed and how the method of Total Phisical Response was used there.
The idea of conducting a survey of schoolchildren about difficulties in learning Chinese is good in itself. And the analysis of the responses of 50 informants was also performed quite competently. Compositionally, the questionnaire could be placed before testing and  the results by error categories, could be compared which is not done in the work. The questionnaire for teachers, placed in Appendix 2, has not been analyzed at all on the pages of the paper. For the reader, it remains unclear on the basis of which data Table 2.3.1 "Typical difficulties in learning Chinese" is compiled: her own observations, test results or any survey?
Despite some scattering of empirical data collected by the author and the unsystematic nature of their presentation, there is quite a lot of this data, a lot of work has been done, there are some interesting observations. Therefore, we can say that the tasks set in the work have been fulfilled: the needs and situations with teaching Chinese to schoolchildren in Russia, China and Kyrgyzstan have been studied; teaching methods and models suitable for Chinese language learners have been studied; a comparative analysis of phonetics, vocabulary and grammar of the three substrate languages has been fulfilled; the analysis of teaching Chinese in three schools representing 3 countries where Chinese is studied as a foreign language is carried out; the analysis of students' mistakes and recommendations for their elimination are given.
The genre-stylistic execution of the work leaves much to be desired, as well as the design (for example, not all drawings are numbered and have names).
The above-mentioned shortcomings may be rooted in the fact that the graduate student did not work systematically enough on the M.A. project, missed seminars, lectures and consultations of the supervisor. 
Despite the comments made, I believe that the goals, objectives and results of the study meet the requirements of the St. Petersburg State University educational standard and the educational program in terms of mastering the established competencies.
The work meets the requirements for the Master's degree program at St. Petersburg State University. The final qualifying paper by Maerjiang Yerken can be admitted to the defense and deserves a positive assessment.
Scientific supervisor,
                                                                                                          Ph.D., Prof. I.Y. Pavlovskaya						
						                                                                  12.06.2022.