Phonetic Variation and Orthoepic Norm in Russian Language Lessons: Pronunciation of the Letter Combination чн

This paper is devoted to the comparative study of the orthoepic norm in the place of chn in the speech of schoolchildren and adult speakers of literary Russian, as well as the variation of this norm. The work has the following structure. The first chapter describes the state of the norm in the XX century and at present, tells about the origin and formation of two norms of pronunciation chn, and discusses the data of normative dictionaries. The second chapter describes the experimental study of chn pronunciation in the speech of Russian speakers of different ages. The third chapter gives methodological developments that are directly related to the study of orthoepic norms in the course of Russian language at school. The conclusion makes some generalizations about the strategies of choosing the pronunciation variant and about the factors that can influence it. A list of used sources is attached to the work. The subject of the study is pronunciation of words with the letter combination chn, as well as teachers' practice in the field of this norm. Since the work has both research and methodological orientation, the purpose of the study is also twofold. On the one hand, it is to identify and explain trends in pronunciation norms among people of different ages. On the other hand, it is the development of methodological material on the example of an open lesson at school. A number of tasks have been set, among which are oral experiment among speakers and analyzing the data obtained. The study of normative dictionaries, experiment, auditory analysis of oral speech and structured interviews were the main research methods. The relevance of the topic under study lies in the fact that the question of what tendency to choose a pronunciation variant exists among speakers, what causes the choice of this or that pronunciation variant, how this choice is influenced by age and language environment remains insufficiently studied in modern Russian language.