Teaching the language of specialty to international students at the pre-university stage of preparation (specialization: “Design”)

Abstract

   The article presents our concept of teaching, at preparatory faculties, the professional sphere language to international students who plan to study at universities of the Russian Federation and specialize in “Design”. In the nomenclature of scientific specialties in the current version of the Federal State Educational Standard 3++, “Design” refers to the specialty 54.00.00 “Fine and Applied Arts”, which prescribes universities at the pre-university stage of study to place international students, who have chosen this specialization, into a humanitarian profile groups. However, the professional competencies that a designer should possess are acquired in the process of studying not only the humanities, such as “History of Arts”, “Color Studies” and “Fundamentals of Composition”, but also have knowledge of the technological processes, used in manufacturing design products, and develop design skills. Design students acquire this knowledge when doing the cycle of technical disciplines, which cannot be successful without basic vocabulary formed at the stage of international students’ preparation for university studies. A professionally oriented set of lessons was developed especially for international design students of St. Petersburg Polytechnic University based on the disciplines “Descriptive Geometry” and “Engineering Graphics”. Special attention in each lesson is paid to the introduction of terminological vocabulary, the activation of grammatical constructions, used in authentic texts, and the formation of professional and communicative skills in all types of speech activities.