ESP Teaching at the Institutions of Higher Education in Modern Russia: Problems and Perspectives.

Abstract

The author analyses ESP teaching at the institutions of higher education in modern Russia, explains the main problems and suggests the ways of their solving, details the quality control system of the students’ progress improvement, presents the complex approach to interactive ESP teaching and views it as an integral part of up-to-date interdisciplinary training. Reforming Russian higher education system in accordance with the main postulates of Bologna process is in the spotlight of Russian higher education modernization. European integration as well as labor market internationalization leads to unification of demands to graduates’ qualifications in the territory of different European countries. Concepts of the education system of the Russian Federation evolve. The third generation standards of education help to include our country into the unified educational European space. At present in Russia there exist two educational paradigms: the Russian one and the Bologna one [3, p. 344]. They can be described as following: 1) traditional Russian qualifications (specialists – postgraduates and PhDs – Doctors) – frame of reference of the Bologna process (Bachelors – Masters – Doctors); 2) subject-oriented approach – module-oriented approach to curriculum development; 3) approach «knowledge – abilities – skills» – competence approach to assessing students’ progress; 4) National Government education standards – qualification standards valid for the whole Europe; 5) academic activity within one higher educational institution, region, state – academic mobility of students and lecturers; 6) introduction of the one performance assessing system (courses, curricula, lecturers’ workload) in the terms of units clear for both students and lecturers; 7) compulsory subjects – individual curriculum modeling etc. Thus the notion “higher education” is becoming broader due to modernization. Higher educational institutions in Russia compete to each other, the competition being tough because of the labor market underdevelopment, lack of investments and the forecasted decrease of the potential students’ number in connection with demographic problems. Competitiveness of the higher educational institution depends on the quality of education, which must satisfy the target audience’s demands in intellectual, cultural Nadezhda Prudnikova 391 and moral development, i.e. knowledge base and professional and social skills base forming harmonious personality. Development, implementation and maintenance of the education quality management system become the necessary conditions for successful survival of a higher educational institution. Quality is viewed as the degree of correspondence of the actual characteristics to the norms demands. Quality control system of a higher educational institution throughout the world is based on the process-oriented approach. Process means the interconnected activities, transforming inputs into outputs. Thus, managing processes guarantees forecasted quality, from recruiting applicants to their successful employment after graduating from the higher educational institution. We can apply PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle to all the processes. The role of the higher educational institution means the following: a. assess and satisfy the needs and expectations of the target audience and the stakeholders (higher education employees, undergraduates, their parents, employers, society as a whole); b. maintain and improve the higher education institution work. We single out the four principles of quality management at the higher educational institution: meeting the target audience needs (employers’ and undergraduates’ needs); process-oriented approach; system approach; mutually beneficial relations with the partners. The main processes are planning of the educational activity, provision of education services, research. Planning of the educational activity means development of curriculum, instruction books, progress monitoring (rate system, current and final progress testing). This process is implemented by the department of foreign languages of the Balakovo branch of the Russian Presidential Academy of the National Economy and Public Administration at the high level. The department published several instruction books for students, developed rate system monitoring the students’ progress, compiled different kinds of tests and exercises for grammar, vocabulary and comprehension check. Services provision process comprises applicants’ recruitment, undergraduates teaching, and further education provision. Research process means students’ and lecturers’ research work, taking part in the conferences, publication of abstracts and articles. Students make reports at the conferences of different levels: municipal, regional, national, international; take part in the students’ exchange programs. Additional processes of the higher educational institutions are resources management, personnel management, engineering management. Resources management presupposes instruction books and audio-visual aids availability. It’s necessary to note that authentic instruction books are necessary for EFL and ESP teaching. We use Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press manuals and instruction books comprising authentic texts in English. Personnel management means upgrade courses for the lecturers according to the certain schedule. ESP teachers often attend upgrade courses organized by the ESP teaching at the institutions of higher education in modern Russia: problems and perspectives 392 leading higher educational institutions, take part in trainings and internships thus improving their skill base. Engineering management means ICT availability. There are two computer classes in our branch, all the students and lecturers have Internet access and can use Internet resources for learning. ESP teaching presupposes working with adult students (according to the Bachelors’ curriculum special courses and faculties in English language are scheduled for the second and the third years of studies). Working with the adult target audience means continuous use of the personality resources of the grown-ups. Thus, some researchers (D. B. Nikulicheva and others) suggest using cognitive potential of the grammatical system of the foreign language as the model of linguistic self-understanding and verbal self-manifestation of a person in the world [1, p. 310]. Researchers base their conclusions on the fundamental perception of the child’s ontogenesis impossible without language and speech practice. ESP study done by a gown-up, according to their opinion, has to solve the similar problem – to form the personality capable to communicate in the foreign language. This helps to achieve spontaneous fluency and authenticity of speech practice. Still it’s necessary to note that aspiration to reconstruct child’s speech development and growth during the process of teaching adults becomes a kind of simulation. Lecturers practicing communicative methods of ESP teaching are often reproached for infantilizing the education process due to ignoring cognitive potential of the gown-ups. The goal of the D. B. Nikulicheva’s method is to reconstruct such a mode of communication in a foreign language that could help to simulate intensive going through the process of personality development from the baby talk stage to verbal realizing of self-presentation, describing one’s aims, values and abilities by means of a foreign language. It’s necessary to recollect and reconstruct emotions of a child who wants to tell something important to the people who are close to him. Then there begins training of prosodic and articulation patterns of the foreign language in the mode of acoustic imitation. After that the prosodic patterns are filled with the linguistic content presented by wide range of vocabulary variants. At this step the dialogs are implemented, they are reproduced by the students according to the norms of speech fluency and intonation patterns rules. Communication process becomes close to natural one because it comprises relevant content for each person providing discussion of his typical locations, activities, traits, goals and values. Some grammar rules and structure patterns are being learnt, they are associated with some cognitive models, characteristic of different levels of personality linguistic development. Later there appear other tasks: precise meaning expression, grammatical, stylistic and pragmatic correctness of speech, denoting different notions by the variety of different linguistic means, capability to use terminology and idioms, fluency and spontaneous character of speech. Much attention is paid to the development of conversational skills and error correction. Nadezhda Prudnikova 393 According to the opinion of J. A. Komarova a certain stereotype about structure of general and specific abilities to foreign language learning is already set. Individual differences in abilities and talents are described by such parameters as: 1) synchronism – lack of simultaneity; 2) analytical way of thinking – synthetic way of thinking; 3) self-regulation – active position; 4) consistency – impulsiveness; 5) abstract way of thinking – precise way of thinking; 6) logicality – integrated perception; 7) grasp of the whole phenomena – spatial thinking etc. Forms of activity of the people having different strategies of ESP learning are determined by a certain set of innate abilities, this makes individual characteristics very stable. For example, such innate factors can be as following: nervous system specifics, cerebral hemispheres interconnection, the leading type of analyzer and so on. Researchers studying adult audience, singled out several types of language mastering: 1) communicative speech-oriented, cognitive linguistic and the mixed one (communicative linguistic); 2) extroverted and introverted; 3) impulsive and reflexive etc. The above mentioned types make it possible to classify educat