PROBLEMS OF TEACHING SCIENTIFIC STYLE TO FOREIGN GRADUATES AT THE PRE-UNIVERSITY TRAINING COURSE

Abstract

Training highly-qualified specialists is recognized as the most developed and reputed area of the Russian educational system. The currency of the declared subject is determined by the necessity of finding the new solutions in the area of providing the global competitiveness of the Russian education and increase of foreign students to be trained under the highest qualification specialists programmes (master’s degree students, postgraduates, doctoral candidacy) in the institutions of higher professional education. The specific feature of training such category of students is to foster professional skills in a foreign language. As a result every specialist has to acquire minimum extent of knowledge, skills and expertise in the scientific style of a chosen field of specialization. The paper aims at defining the regulatory, organizational and methodological issues emerging in training such category of students and showing the ways and prospects of their resolving. The regulatory issues consist in availability of the specified requirements to having a command of scientific speech and professional discourse at the level of language proficiency and non-availability of the same in the supplementary educational programmes that regulate training of the future master’s degree students and postgraduates. Organizational issues emerge when forming the training groups. Due to objective reasons one group may include the students of various nations with their own difficulties in studying Russian as well as of various fields and specialization of training. Methodological issues consist in the fact that foreign graduates come to Russia being unable to speak Russian, whereas the requirements of unassisted production of texts in the course of scientific paper development are imposed on them. Thus, a lecturer faces a challenge of methodical intensification of educational process providing for an optimum and efficient training in professional communication. The authors consider that an attempt to cope with such a challenge is in the development of a teaching aid in Russian scientific speech for master’s degree students and postgraduates of various fields. The paper discusses a methodological resource book “The Russian Language (Scientific Speech) for Master's Degree Students and Postgraduates of the Pre-University Training Course”, which was written by the authors of the paper. The book comprises units, each of which contains an original abridged general scientific text accompanied by pre-text, in-text and post-text exercises. The general idea of science, its structure, requirements to thesis work are given, and thus students get acquainted with the basics of the Russian scientific style and scientific tradition. The model and principles of compiling a teaching aid discussed in the paper are likely to help teachers to plan their work with foreign students studying for Master's Degree and postgraduates of various fields in a classroom effectively, explaining to them the peculiarities of a scientific functional style of the Russian language. As a result of their work based on the book, one is able to shape the model of a future scientific work in Russian, a student can also offer an outline of his scientific work both in a written form (theses) and orally (reports), making presentations in the Russian language.