Abstract. The article is considering the peculiarities of instructing Russian as a foreign language (RFL) in large groups and the ways of overcoming learning challenges by providing instruction forms in small groups, which increases learning motivation, intensifies acquisition of the foreign language speech experience and develops students' communication and collaboration skills.

Mental representation, as a specific cognitive model which is associated with the human perception of the world and represents a unit of such perception, reflects the existence of a certain coding format or an inner (mental) model within human consciousness. Identification of the psychological meaning of the crucial mental representations, as well as their consideration at a comparative aspect, enables students to overcome a number of ethical-psycho-linguistic difficulties in their perception of the ethical images of a foreign culture in the process of learning a foreign language. This article quotes the results of the experiment revealing figurative and emotional contents of the mental representation of the "road" in the Russian students' mind and in that of the Chinese student audience.

The paper substantiates the necessity to improve the methods of group learning of foreign languages (in this situation, Russian) in large student teams and outlines the difficulties that instructors of foreign language may face on this way. The authors give recommendations not to be apprehensive of organizational problems and to tend to use the well-known methods of group learning, adjusting them to a particular group's actual learning environment, providing a platform for improvement of each student's learning skills and, therefore, for enhancement of the entire education.

Abstract-The article cites the results of an experiment carried out amongst Russian and Chinese student populations for the purpose of identifying the visual and emotional contents of the cultural representation of the "Road".

Abstract-This article presents the findings of the experiment to identify the spatial representations pertaining to the image of 'road', conducted among Russian and Chinese students.