Abstract
This study examines how a philologist’s linguistic identity can be cultivated through the systematic enhancement of communicative abilities in the context of university language education. The research focused on integrating cultural precedent phenomena (CPP)—culturally embedded idioms, allusions, and expressions—into the teaching of Russian and evaluating their impact on students’ communicative performance and identity development. We hypothesized that embedding CPP in a structured pedagogical model would lead to superior communicative, lexical, and intercultural outcomes compared with traditional instruction. A cohort of philology students ( n = 29) was divided into a control group ( n = 14) and an experimental group ( n = 15) and engaged in a 12-week instructional cycle within an exploratory mixed-methods design. Data was collected through diagnostic questionnaires, classroom observations, and performance-based assessments, and analyzed using mixed quantitative and qualitative methods. The results indicate that students in the experimental group showed substantially higher gains in speech fluency, lexical variety, pragmatic accuracy, and intercultural awareness than those in the control group. In addition, participants reported increased confidence in their linguistic self-identification and cultural affiliation, suggesting a positive association between CPP-based instruction and communicative development. The study outlines methodological considerations for incorporating culturally embedded language material into university curricula and provides preliminary evidence of how cultural precedent phenomena may support reflective and context-sensitive language learning.