Учебное пособие 1351

By dividing phraseologisms into individual components, it turns out that their real lexical values do not play a role. The meanings of the words c’est’ (to eat) and sobaka (a pet) do not affect the formed image of a person with great experience.

The phraseologism strelyanyj’ vorobej’ (a cunning fellow) has a similar image. Similarly to the previous PU, the components of the PU can be described as "former" words, since the actual meanings of the words strelyanyj’ (the one who was shot) and vorobej’(a small bird) are not a determining factor in the formation of the portable meaning of PU. Nevertheless, if we conduct a more detailed linguistic analysis of the phraseological units, we can establish the in- tra-word nature of the components of PU to one degree or another.

The last type of PU components according to A.V. Kunin is pseudolexems. Pseudolexemes are a rather rare language phenomenon in phraseology. Their peculiarity lies in the least degree of the verbal character, since they most often belong to the class of archaisms: bit` baklushi (twiddle one's fingers/thumbs), bit` chelom (take off one’s hat to the ground), popast` vprosak (make a floater).

The examples considered are based on the typology of the components of A.V. Kunin

(real words, potential words, "former words," pseudo-sexems). The separate formality of phraseologisms is determined by the intra-word nature of the components of any PU. Therefore, it can be concluded that the word is a key link in the formation of set expressions.

Linguistic studies show that the component composition of the PU is determined by rethinking the lexical units in the formation of a holistic meaning of phraseologism and the combination of real potential words in the formation of phraseological units with a partially reinterpreted meaning [16, p.70]. As the material shows, the component imagery is achieved due to stylistic coloration and expressiveness [17, p.830], that is, the PU components do not lose their semantic isolation (position of the intra-word approach to the nature of the PU component). Thus, the component composition of the same PU can be considered from the standpoint of extra- and intra-word approaches.

Conclusion.

To become a component of PU, lexeme must go through certain changes: deactualization, metaphorization, lexico-grammatical transformation. These transformations are manifested not only in the weakening of the connectivity and permeability of the values of the PU component, but also serve as the basis for the emergence of new values for the components.

The component composition determines the degree of idiomaticity of the entire phraseological unit. The opposite theoretical positions considered in the article regarding the nature of the PU component (extraand intra-word approaches) determine: the leading or stealthy role in constructing the value of the phraseologism depends on the verbal and non-verbal nature of the PU components themselves.

The intra-word nature of the component is, first of all, the presence of the semantic isolation from the figurative value of a phraseological unit, taking into account some parameters (partial rethinking of the meaning, forms of inflection).

The extra-word nature of the component is, first of all, the inability of the PU component to be semantically independent, and the ability to create, most likely, an idiomatic construct, rather than be reproduced outside the outside the meaning of the phraseological unit.

Thus, it can be concluded that the understanding of the nature of the PU component has a dual essence. On the one hand, the extra-word character of the PU component separates it from the usual word, depriving it of some independent features. On the other hand, the intra-word character of the PU component can be detected even with a high degree of semantic integrity of the phraseologism. We can say that the analysis of the extraand intra-word approaches of the components in most cases does not reveal the direct effect of the semantics of the free meaning of the lexeme on the semantics of a phraseologism as a whole.

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References

[1]Fedulenkova T.N. Izomorfizm i allomorfizm v germanskoj frazeologii (na materiale anglijskogo, nemeckogo i shvedskogo jazykov): Dis. … d-ra filol. nauk. Severodvinsk, 2006. – 544 s.

[2]Lapshina O. G. Komponentnyj sostav predmetnyh frazeologicheskih edinic so znacheniem social'noj harakteristiki cheloveka // Vestnik Cheljabinskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. 2009. – S. 123-128.

[3]Chepasova A. M. Izbrannye trudy: v 2-h t. Cheljabinsk: ChPGU, 2016. T. 2. Frazeologija v kontekste sovremennyh lingvisticheskih issledovanij. – 211 s.

[4]Karabulatova I. S., Vildanov K. S., Zinchenko A. A., Vasilishina E. N., Vassilenko A. P. Problems of identificative matrices transformation of modern multicultural persons in the variative discourse of electronic informative society identity // Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities. 2017. T. 25. № July. – P. 1 – 16.

[5]Shanskij N. M Frazeologija russkogo jazyka. M.: Vysshaja shkola, 1985. – 160 s.

[6]Zhukov V. P. Russkaja frazeologija. M., 1986. – 309 s.

[7]Telija V.N. Russkaja frazeologija: Semanticheskij, pragmaticheskij i lingvokul'turologicheskij aspekty / V.N. Telija. – M., 1996. – 346 s.

[8]Beljaevskaja E.G. Semantika slova. M., 1987. – 126 s.

[9]Smirnickij A.I. Leksikologija anglijskogo jazyka. – M.: Izd-vo lit. na inostr. jaz., 1956. –

260 s.

[10]Vinogradov V.V. Osnovnye ponjatija russkoj frazeologii kak lingvisticheskoj discipliny // Izbrannye trudy. Leksikologija i leksikografija. M., 1977. – 312 s.

[11]Kunin A. V. O frazeologicheskoj nominacii // Sb. nauchn. trudov MGPIIJa im. M. Toreza. – Vyp. 211. – 1983. – P. 88–100.

[12]Jemirova A. M. Russkaja frazeologija v kommunikativno-pragmaticheskom osveshhenii: monografija.– Simferopol': OOO «Izdatel'stvo «Nauchnyj mir», 2020. – 228 s.

[13]Molotkov A. I. Osnovy frazeologii russkogo jazyka. – L. Nauka, 1977. – 284 s.

[14]Darikov A. A. Rol' komponentnogo sostava v formirovanii semantiki frazeologizma // Filologicheskie nauki. Voprosy teorii i praktiki. 2019. – S. 317-321.

[15]Telija V. N. Chto takoe frazeologija. - M.: Nauka, 1966. – 86 s.

[16]Popova E.Ju., Fedulenkova T.N. Frejmovoe modelirovanie v mezh#jazykovom analize komparativnyh frazeologizmov (na materiale anglijskogo, nemeckogo i shvedskogo jazykov) // Gercenovskie chtenija. Inostrannye jazyki: Materialy konferencii. SPb, 2007. – S. 6870.

[17]Vassilenko A. P., Karabulatova I. S., Vasilishina E. N., Tukaeva R. A., Barabash V. V. The conceptual sphere of fiction in the Russian and English world picture // Opcion. 2018.

T. 34. № 85. – P. 825 – 839.

Dictionaries used

[1*] Fjodorov, A.I. Frazeologicheskij slovar' russkogo literaturnogo jazyka / A.I. Fjodorov. - M.: AST, 2008. – 904 s.

[2*] Cambridge English dictionary. – Tekst : jelektronnyj // Cambridge Dictionary : [sajt]. – URL: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ (data obrashhenija: 24.06.2021).

[3*] Samyj novejshij tolkovyj slovar' russkogo jazyka HHI veka : ok. 1500 slov / E.N. Shagalova. – M.: AST : Astrel', 2011. – 413, [3] s.

[4*] Pearson, E. L. Longman Pocket Idioms Dictionary / E. L. Pearson. : –Pearson Longman, 2001. – 297 s.

[5*] Slovar' russkogo jazyka: V 4-h tomah. – Izd. 2, ispr. i dopoln. – M.: Russkij jazyk, 1981–1984. – 749 s.

[6*] Tolkovyj slovar' sovremennogo russkogo jazyka, D. N. Ushakov – M.: «Adelant», 2013. –

800 s.

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METHODS AND DIDACTICS

DOI 10.36622/MLMDR.2021.38.26.003

UDC 378’1

GENDER NEUTRALITY IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:

TEACHER TALK AND COURSEBOOKS

A.I. Kolushkina, A.A. Korenev

Lomonosov Moscow State University Postgraduate Student, Lecturer of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies Anna Igorevna Kolushkina

email: annakolushkina@gmail.com

Lomonosov Moscow State University Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies Alexey Aleksandrovich Korenev

email: alexeykorenev@gmail.com

State of the problem. The article explores the phenomenon of gender neutrality in language education and presents the results of classroom discourse analysis and coursebook content analysis. The purpose of the study is to reveal to what extent teachers of English as a foreign language (L2 teachers) in Russia use gender-neutral language and gender-neutral behaviour strategies in the classroom and how gender neutrality is presented in the English coursebooks (created both by Russian and international authors). The novelty is determined by the fact that this is the first attempt to analyse teacher talk and English coursebook contents in terms of their gender neutrality in the Russian socio-cultural context.

Results. Results show that many lessons and coursebooks analysed use some gender-neutral vocabulary and grammar strategies, but contain gender-stereotyping and unequal representation of personalia and case names. The proposed hypothesis that English teachers in Russia use gendered lexical and grammatical means, as well as gender stereotypes in the classroom was validated to a certain extent. The overall result demonstrates that more than 60% of teachers are not gender-neutral. As for the coursebooks, most of them seem to be gender-neutral in terms of grammar, and half of them seem to be gender-neutral in terms of vocabulary. At the same time, 60% of coursebooks contain gender stereotypes and 90% do not represent males and females equally (with male superiority in number).

Conclusion. Special guidelines on gender-neutral English in the classroom for English teachers in Russia should be created to provide some recommendations on the use of gender-neutral language and the use of coursebooks. These guidelines should refer to the Russian socio-cultural context and contain all the necessary footnotes for teachers to explain to them the importance of gender neutrality in the English language and to help them to explain the phenomenon to the students, who might experience certain challenges while acquiring the concept of gender neutrality that is only minimally represented in the Russian language.

Key words: gender-neutral language, classroom discourse, EFL, TESOL, gender, gender-stereotypes.

For citation: Kolushkina A.I. Gender neutrality in the English language: teacher talk and coursebooks / A.I. Kolushkina, A.A. Korenev // Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-didactic Researches”. –

2021. - № 4 (35). – P. 26-35.

Introduction.

With the evolvement of the postmodernist way philosophy and the "second-wave" feminist movement in the 1960-1970-s, women's representation in the English language as being inferior to men starts to be criticised by feminist linguists [1]. As a result of the feminist

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© Kolushkina A.I., Korenev A.A., 2021

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critique of language, the first Guidelines for Equal Treatment of the Sexes in McGraw-Hill Book Company Publications and Guidelines for Non-sexist Use of Language in NCTE Publications appeared in the mid-1970s. After that, several international organisations (American Psychological Association [APA], United Nations [UN], United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], European Parliament [EP], and others) produced their guidelines in some points similar to those that had already existed by that time.

As it can be derived from the analysis of guidelines, the gender-neutral language includes certain lexical and grammatical strategies:

1)avoiding the use of 'man' as a generic (e.g., 'fireman' -> 'firefighter');

2)avoiding the use of gendered suffixes -ess; -ette (e.g., 'stewardess' -> 'flight attendant');

3)using parallel terms (e.g., 'men and girls' -> 'men and women');

4)avoiding the use of words and phrases that might exclude someone (e.g., 'mothering' - > 'parenting');

5)avoiding the use of the pronoun 'he' as a generic pronoun relating to an unknown an-

tecedent by using the plural or 'they' as a third-person singular pronoun.

Avoiding gender stereotyping is another important strategy presented in the guidelines. Gender stereotypes are "structured sets of beliefs about the personal attributes of women and men" [2, p. 222] and "are powerful forces of social control" [3, p. 12] and can be either descriptive (how males and females typically act) or prescriptive (how males and females should act) as well as positive or negative [4]. Gender stereotypes, on the one hand, serve an adaptive function, but on the other hand, can induce faulty assessments of people [5] and can promote gender bias.

In addition, many English teachers advise to provide equal representation of male and female case names and personalia that are used as examples in the classroom; mind the way they communicate with students and treat each individual equally; analyse coursebooks and other materials that they intend to use in the classroom in terms of their appropriateness or inappropriateness (gendered language, gender stereotypes, unequal representation of male and female characters and so on) and adapt them if necessary [6; 7; 8].

Despite the sufficient development of the research on gender-neutral language and gender stereotypes [9], some aspects of this topic are yet to be studied. Among such aspects, one can highlight, for example, ways of introducing gender neutrality while teaching English as a second language in a different socio-cultural environment and special training for English teachers who are non-native English speakers.

It is primarily concerned with English teachers in Russia as very little research has been made on the topic. Still, there is one conducted by J. Sudo in 2007; the author interviewed several students from Russia and other post-Soviet countries who stayed in the USA for some time and found out that most of them had a negative experience in situations when they were maintaining conversations with native speakers and were expected to use gender-neutral language, but they did not do so because they had limited to no understanding of it [10].

Materials and methods of the study.

Inspired by the aforementioned research, the current study aims at conducting classroom discourse analysis to see whether English teachers in Russia use gender-neutral English in the classroom. It seems to be a significant issue due to several factors; first, teachers should speak and teach an actual living language as they are one of the role-models for students; second, graduates of the teacher training degree programmes should be able to work not only in Russia but also abroad. So, to minimise the risks of misunderstanding and to promote gender equality in the classroom, English teachers in Russia should be aware of and use the gender-neutral aspects of the English language.

The working hypothesis for this research was that English teachers in Russia use gendered lexical and grammatical means as well as gender stereotypes in the classroom. This

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might occur due to the interference of the Russian language (which is gendered); lack of knowledge in the sphere of gender neutrality; psychological difficulties in accepting genderneutral language; and also due to the fact that English coursebooks contain gendered lexical and grammatical means or gender stereotypes. Thus, the article also analyses the language and contents of various English coursebooks that are used or may be used by English teachers in Russia to check their appropriateness in terms of gender neutrality.

The materials of the study consist of 13 transcripts and 10 videos of the English language lessons. The lesson transcripts were made using the videos from the project "Shaping the way we teach English in Russia" and the videos analysed were taken from the open YouTube channel "Teacher of Russia". These videos were recorded in the framework of the All-Russian contest "Teacher of Russia" in 2017. All in all, there were 23 lessons of English analysed each of different length (the designers of the video course cut the time when the students were working in pairs or groups and there was not teacher-student interaction that could be observed). The forms range from the 3rd to the 10th and the age of students ranges from about eight to 16 years old. All lesson transcripts and videos have been anonymized.

The article also analyses 10 coursebooks – five of them were created by the Russian authors and published in Russia and five were created by native speakers and published abroad. These coursebooks are aimed at different levels of education from preschool to adult learners. The coursebooks created by English teachers in Russia are selected from the Federal List of Textbooks and recommended for use in the general education programs, and Practical English Course by Arakin is chosen because it is often used as a main coursebook in language teacher education. The foreign coursebooks are selected on the basis of the popularity of the publishing house in Russia (Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Macmillan Education, Pearson Education Limited). Thus, the overall material for the analysis consists of 33 units (lessons and coursebooks).

The main research methods include discourse analysis and content analysis. This study mainly employs qualitative methodology when interpreting elements of teacher language as gender-neutral and analysing the language of the coursebooks for it is next to impossible to quantitatively measure the appearance of gendered language and stereotypes in the classroom discourse. Even when the number of such instances is provided, it cannot be considered fully reliable as it requires interpretation by the analyst. The only quantifiable element of the study is the appearance of case names and personalia in teacher talk and coursebooks.

For lesson analysis there are three main criteria outlined, which are as follows:

1)using gender-neutral lexical strategies (avoiding the use of 'man' as a generic, gendered suffixes -ess and -ette, words with semantic derogation and asymmetrically gendered language items);

2)using gender-neutral grammar strategies (avoiding the use of the pronoun 'he' and its derivatives as a generic with an unknown antecedent, and using plural or singular 'they' instead);

3)avoiding expressing gender stereotypes.

For coursebook analysis there is one more criterion that is representing equally (quantitatively) male and female personalia and case names. This criterion could not be applied in the analysis of lessons because more than half of them (mainly transcripts) lack any personalia, case names, or characters.

The results of the analysis are presented in the form of tables, which display information about the lesson (class and topic of the lesson) or coursebook (authors, title), and also list the main criteria according to which the analysis was carried out (gender neutral vocabulary, gender neutral grammar, absence of gender stereotypes, equal gender representation (concerning coursebooks only)). If there was no gendered lexis or grammar and no gender stereotypes observed in the lessons and coursebooks as well as there was equal representation of male and female personalia and case names, the corresponding units (which are listed above) are marked as 'Yes' (i.e., gender neutral). If there is gendered vocabulary or grammar, gender stereotypes,

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or unequal representation of male and female personalia and case names (concerning coursebooks), the corresponding units are marked as 'No' (meaning that the unit cannot be considered gender-neutral).

Results of the study.

Video and Transcript Analysis

As it can be observed in Table 1. and Table 2., 78% of teachers use gender-neutral lexis (18 out of 23); 74% use gender-neutral grammar means (17 out of 23); 61% do not use gender stereotypes at their lessons (14 out of 23). At the same time, 61% of teachers in total still use either gendered lexis or grammar and gender stereotypes in the classroom.

Table 1. provides the results of the analysis of the lessons conducted by the participants of the All-Russian contest "Teacher of Russia". The lessons were analysed according to three criteria: the use of gender-neutral lexis, the use of gender-neutral grammar, and the absence of gender stereotypes.

Table 1.

Video Analysis

As follows from the data given in Table 1., the majority of teachers (7 teachers out of 10) use certain elements of gendered language or gender stereotypes. The description of the results for each criterion separately is provided below.

1. Lexis

Teacher #1 uses a gendered adjective 'handsome' instead of using a gender-neutral adjective 'good-looking'.

Teacher #4 tells the students to "Give a compliment to your class mistress", although it is better to avoid the word 'mistress' and substitute it with 'teacher' to avoid the polysemy of the word.

2. Grammar

Teacher #2 tells the students the following: "Can you put your hands up those who thought only about HIS future?"; it is difficult to judge how much the teacher is aware or una-

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ware of gender-neutral grammar because this is the only sentence with an unknown antecedent that the teacher uses during the lesson.

Teacher #3 seems unaware of gender-neutral grammar, because one uses the pronoun ‘he’ as a generic pronoun several times during the lesson: "Who knows what does HE want to do in the future?", "Name the person on the board, say HIS profession" (there are two pictures of famous men and two pictures of famous women on the board).

Teacher #4 although trying to use the plural and 'they', yet cannot avoid using 'he' as a generic pronoun (although it happens only once during the lesson): "You don’t know a person, but maybe HE is nice, you should get to know HIM."

3. Gender Stereotypes

Teacher #1 from the videos introduces to the students a letter written by Harry Potter, where they mention the following: "I think I’m a normal boy who loves adventures." The idea, which this sentence demonstrates, is rather stereotypical: a "normal boy" loves adventures, that might mean that if a boy does not love adventures, he is not "normal", or if a girl loves adventures, she is acting like a boy.

Teacher #10 says that pink colour is a "colour for girls" excluding all male students who might like pink colour (although the teacher does not use any gendered language).

Table 2. presents the results of the video transcripts analysis of lessons recorded in the framework of the project "Shaping the way we teach English in Russia". The transcript analysis was carried out according to three criteria: the use of gender-neutral vocabulary, the use of gender-neutral grammar, and the absence of gender stereotypes.

Table 2. Transcript Analysis

According to the data presented in Table 2. 7 teachers out of 13 used gendered lexical and / or grammatical units, as well as gender stereotypes. The description of the results for each criterion separately is provided below.

1. Lexis

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Teacher #1 uses the word 'waiter' in the sentence "I am a waiter" while there is a suggestion to use the word 'server' as a gender-neutral equivalent [11].

Both teacher #8 and teacher #9 use the word 'actress' (the guidelines recommend to use 'actor' as a gender-neutral noun and avoid any words with gendered suffixes), e.g., the latter addresses the students with the question "Was she a good actor? actress? Was she a good actress?".

2. Grammar

Teacher #3 tells the students the following: "So, what kind of things does a person do if HE is food-wise?", and "So, think that vegetarian who should eat, bring food, HE need to somehow find it, like this".

Teacher #5 says "The Connector is doing the next, HE makes notes about <…> Culture

Collector thinks about similarities and differences between HIS own culture".

Teacher #13 says "A bully is someone who uses HIS strength or power to frighten or hurt someone who is weaker. <…> You know that almost every student in school sometimes has problems with HIS friends, classmates and so on."

3. Gender Stereotypes

Teacher #10 address the students with the following statement: "To be healthy, strong, and that means that we can be more beautiful, yes, girls?" As far as the teacher, speaking about the desire to be beautiful, addresses only female students of the class, this might be regarded as a gender stereotype.

Although the number of teachers who used gendered nouns and adjectives is relatively small, still some teachers either do not know about or do not use gender-neutral vocabulary, that is why it is important to pay attention to this phenomenon in language teacher education. The use of gendered grammar means might be explained by the influence and interference of the mother tongue as in the Russian language, it is generally acceptable to use 'he' as a generic third-person singular pronoun when the antecedent is unknown. A probable reason why the teachers express gender stereotypes in their speech may be pronounced masculinity and femininity of the Russian socio-culture that makes stereotyping a common phenomenon. The teachers might do it automatically and unconsciously. Another possible reason might be the absence of gender-neutrality as a topic in language training as part of language teacher education in Russia.

Coursebook Analysis

As the table below (Table 3. Coursebook analysis) demonstrates, five coursebooks out of 10 use gender-neutral lexis, nine coursebooks out of 10 use gender-neutral grammar, four coursebooks out of 10 avoid using gender stereotypes, and only one coursebook out of 10, represents male and female characters, personalia and case names equally. At the same time, there is no coursebook that has got all 'Yes' and, thus, no coursebook can be defined as entirely gen- der-neutral.

Table 3. Coursebook Analysis

The description of the results presented in Table 3. is provided below analysing each criterion separately.

1. Lexis

According to the data retrieved from the table, five coursebooks use gendered lexical units (three coursebooks created by Russian authors and two coursebooks created by native speakers of English). For instance, English for Kids uses such words as 'policeman' [1*, p. 136], 'fireman' [1*, p. 137], 'sportsman' [1*, p. 143] while guidelines suggest alternatives for words with a generic -man, e.g., 'police officer', 'fire fighter', 'sports person' or 'athlete', etc. The same situation can be observed in Practical English Course: First University Year and Cutting Edge: Advanced [5*; 10*]. At the same time, the authors of the coursebook Rainbow English 10 are aware of gender neutrality as they introduce a special section devoted to political correctness. This section provides learners with some gender-neutral noun equivalents, e.g., men – people, a businessman – a businessperson and so on [4*, p. 76]. Later on, however, they introduce a text, where ‘man’ is used to mean ‘person’, that can be explained as a single lapse in an overall gender-neutral system of the book [4*, p. 139]. The only gendered word which Complete First uses is 'waitress' [9*, p. 64]; this might be justified by the fact that there is no specific gender-neutral noun equivalent for this word agreed.

2. Grammar

As far as gender-neutral grammar is concerned, most coursebooks (nine out of 10) use the plural or he/she in the sentences with an unknown antecedent, and some even explain why it is important (for example, Rainbow English 10). Nevertheless, along with gender-neutral sentences, one of the tasks in Cutting Edge: Advanced has got the following sentence: "A invites

HIS old friend B to dinner along with some people that B can’t stand" [10*, p. 97]. Perhaps, it can be explained by poor proofreading as in Rainbow English 10. The fact that almost every coursebook uses gender-neutral grammar means to avoid any exclusions and stereotyping can be considered to be one of the greatest achievements and impacts of the feminist critique of language.

3. Gender Stereotypes

Notwithstanding, there are six coursebooks out of 10 that contain gender stereotypes. For example, English for Kids illustrates 94% of the words meaning professions (15 out of 16 words in total) with pictures of males, while the only profession word illustrated by a picture of a female is 'teacher' [1*, pp. 42, 137]. The main characters of the coursebook Forward 2 have got stereotypical hobbies: male characters like football, basketball, computers and cars, while female characters like dolls, playing the piano, painting, figure skating and cats [2*]. The coursebook Starlight 7 also demonstrates several stereotypes and gender asymmetry in the sphere of professions [3*].

Table 4. shows the number of job mentions in Starlight 7 accompanied by images of men, compared to the number of job mentions accompanied by images of women.

Table 4. Representation of Professions in Starlight 7

The data in Table 4 demonstrates that the number of mentions of men in the professional sphere is twice as large as the number of mentions of women (14 professions are illustrated with images of men and only 6 professions are illustrated with images of women). Moreover, many professions that are accompanied by images of women are rather stereotyped (for example, shop assistant, nurse, secretary).

Another coursebook, Practical English Course: First University Year aimed at the firstyear linguistic faculty students, may be considered slightly exclusive, because it contains a lot of gender stereotypes. Apart from being biased, the content is sometimes rather old-fashioned and outdated, as well as most of the realia of the English-speaking and Russian-speaking world presented in this coursebook. For example, one of the text series about Mary – a student of a pedagogical university – tells students about her daily routine, where all the household responsibilities of family members are distributed on a gender basis [5*].

Macmillan Next Move: Level 1 and Prepare! Level 2 also demonstrate some gender asymmetry and stereotypes though not that much and not that evident. For instance, Macmillan Next Move: Level 1 illustrates a teacher, a doctor, an artist and a dancer only with pictures of females [7*, p. 36], while an actor, an engineer, an inventor and a Taekwondo instructor go with the pictures of males [7*, p. 40]. At the same time, there are some professions which are illustrated by pictures of both males and females, e.g., a cook [7*, pp. 36, 39], a singer [7*, pp. 40, 44] and a football player [7*, pp. 40, 44], which signifies the authors’ intention to present a variety of opportunities for professional self-realization. As for Prepare! Level 2, three main characters that accompany students throughout the coursebook (Jack, Ravi and Molly) seem to have some stereotypical hobbies: Jack likes music and travelling, Ravi likes playing football while Molly likes swimming and going shopping with her sister [8*].

4. Male and female representation

Equal representation of male and female characters, case names, etc., seems to be another important problem (as far as it is closely connected with gender stereotyping, especially with professional representation). For example, Rainbow English 10 provides students with 10 male case names and three female case names [4*], in Cutting Edge: Advanced there are 27 male and six female case and celebrity names (among them are actors, singers, painters, writers, scientists, politicians and so on) [10*], in Macmillan Next Move: Level 1 there are 10 male characters versus six female characters [7*], and in Prepare! Level 2 there are 23 male and five female case names [8*].

Conclusion.

The proposed hypothesis that English teachers in Russia use gendered lexical and grammatical means, as well as gender stereotypes in the classroom was validated to a certain extent. If each criterion of gender neutrality is considered separately, the dynamics are generally positive: about only 20% of teachers use gendered lexis or grammar, and about 40% of teachers use

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