Developing international students’ professional communicative competence (based on the experience of working with students majoring in linguistics)

Abstract

This article analyzes both typical difficulties that the majority of international students encounter while mastering the academic style, and specific problems, caused by the differences between Russian and international students’ languages, mindsets and national cultural characteristics, and discovered in the process of working with Chinese students. The researchers’ vast experience, gained while teaching Chinese students both in Russia and China, allows them to identify the errors of students mastering the academic style, specify these errors, formulate and summarize problems in this field and propose ways of resolving them. As the leading method of the research, we used the descriptive method, as well as the methods of summarization and observation. Thus, we have found that the inclusion of academic texts in the process of teaching a foreign language gives students the opportunity to learn typical communicative situations in the academic area and expand their vocabulary and terminology. The inclusion of various learning exercises on the style of academic writing as part of the future linguists’ training enhances their teachers’ possibilities in terms of lesson planning, allows them to recreate professional language environment, as well as increases the effectiveness of mastering communicative skills in typical communicative situations. As a result of our study, we have come to the conclusion that the integration of academic texts into the teaching process requires a special approach to the material selection and highlights the need for the additional development of methodological recommendations and the creation of new teaching aids.