AbstractThe selection of material for teaching phonetics is a topical problem in the practice of teaching Russian as a foreign language. In this article the tongue twister, as the material for the development of phonetic skills at the elementary level of teaching Russian to foreigners, will be discussed. It is proposed to work only with one tongue twister during daily phonetic exercises. It is also important to organize the work with different types of activities. This paper presents a set of tasks (about 20 exercises) and builds on the principle “from syllable to phrases and sentences”, which can be done in a short time. In addition, this paper describes the tasks employing tongue twisters by studying grammatical material. These methods can be called effective because they develop different skills, introduce diversity, dynamism in the learning process and help to combat fatigue.