Modern Russian spiritual prose in literature classes with foreign students (based on the story “Gift” by archpriest Alexander Dyachenko)

The article describes the role and place of modern Orthodox fiction in teaching the Russian literature to foreign students (language proficiency level B1-B2). The author analyses the features of the work content perception by Chinese students on the example of the story “Gift” by archpriest Alexander Dyachenko. The study revealed main difficulties experienced by students in the working process. These include the original stereotypical ideas of students about spiritual literature like texts devoted exclusively to church-dogmatic issues; the idea of the insularity of the image system in the framework of the religious-corporate model; absence of the “partnership” understanding context that determines the content of a number of works related to the literary phenomenon.