The article discusses some of the problems arising in preparation and presentation of classes of Russian as a foreign language in groups of students preparing for testing to assess their language competence at Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) testing. Requirements on language proficiency assessment developed by the American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) to determine the level of foreign language proficiency are considered. The authors describe the ways of new vocabulary semantization in the classroom on media language. The article presents recommendations for teachers of Russian as a foreign language (RFL) on the methodological organization of classes to prepare foreign students for successful passing the OPI test. Different types of pretext tasks are proposed, contributing to the formation in the student's mind of the Russian word meaning in the full component composition, in which it exists in the mind of a native speaker. Student participation in the discussion of the meaning of a word at the lesson enables them to participate in a spontaneous conversation with an interview tester (OPI) with a greater confidence.