TO THE QUESTION OF EFFECTIVENESS OF USING ONLINE APPLICATIONS FOR STUDYING RUSSIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE AT THE ELEMENTARY LEVEL (BASED ON THE ANALYSIS OF DUOLINGO)

One of the trends in modern education is its focus on the widespread use of online resources. Often, users of online educational applications prefer to study on their own instead of going to classes at universities or specialized educational institutions. This process raises the question about the quality of such education. When searching for an answer to this question, special attention should be paid to applications for learning foreign languages, since learning another language is a complex process that requires the correct organization of educational material. The paper examines the effectiveness of using online applications in the process of learning Russian by foreign speakers at the initial stage of education. The study was conducted using the language learning app Duolingo due to the fact that it is one of the most popular apps of its type. During the study, an analysis of the thematic content of the Duolingo application was carried out in comparison with the elementary lexical minimum for the Russian language, as well as the State Standard for the Russian language at level A1. The study of the potential of the Duolingo application involved conducting a survey of students of Peoples' Friendship University of Russia named after Patrice Lumumba who are studying Russian at the initial stage. Analysis of the survey results and thematic content of the application in comparison with leading educational publications allows the authors to conclude that this application cannot act as the only resource for learning the Russian language but can be integrated into the educational process. In this regard, the work proposes conditions for integrating the application into the educational process.