The peculiarities of the system of teaching Chinese students Russian as a foreign language are brought about by the specificity of the Chinese language. The article substantiates the system of methods and approaches facilitating efficient acquisition of a foreign language and the culture of its speakers; the author believes that the systemic approach (allowing appropriation of linguistic norms as a system embracing deferent levels) and the process-focused approach (allowing formation of a variable communicative field of work with the text) are the leading ones. The author pays special attention to teaching reading and working with the text. The author also discusses some of the didactic techniques that can help to train students in text comprehension, and the techniques for checking understanding of the text. The author believes that the main accent in the process of teaching Russian and speech culture to Chinese students should be oriented towards enrichment of vocabulary, consolidation of morphology and syntactical constructions characteristic of certain situations of communication, as well as towards development of speech culture and acquisition of the rules of speech etiquette. The author offers a short plan of a lesson as an example of such work.