Prompt engineering in linguodidactics: strategies for interacting with chatbots in teaching Russian as a foreign language to Chinese students

The aim of this research is to develop and theoretically substantiate a three-level model for prompt construction directed at integrating chatbots into the teaching of Russian as a foreign language to Chinese students. This article addresses the problem of methodological deficit in ensuring effective communication within the “teacher – artificial intelligence – learner” system, a challenge that is overcome through the purposeful design and optimization of prompts as a key element of pedagogical design. The scientific novelty of the research lies in creating a structural-functional concept for integrating prompt engineering into the linguodidactic process, reflecting a shift from the instrumental use of chatbots to a meaningful cognitive-communicative modeling of learning activities. As a result, a systemic correspondence between types of didactic tasks and strategies for designing student interaction with chatbots has been substantiated, within which a sequential increase in the complexity of cognitive operations is observed: from the formation of operational-contextual constructions, through mastering strategies for managing logical inference, to the creation of communicative scenarios.