Raising a New Generation of Professionals: Revising the Principles of Teaching Foreign Languages to Non-Linguistic University Students

Abstract

Current global economic processes bring into focus strengthening international cooperation, developing transparent partnerships, and establishing professional exchange. This leads to the necessity to narrow the gap between higher professional education and the requirements of business and economic environment. National educational models need to intensify the shift from knowledge-based teaching to developing truly competitive competences, with special focus on foreign language communicative competence. This paper presents the results of teaching quasi-professional group communication in English to the students of non-linguistic university majors. The aim of the research was to analyze the experience of forming soft skills and educational competence through English language communication between the students of economy and international relations from two Russian state universities. The authors used the method of comparative analysis of formal structured survey results, and the methods of statistical data processing. The preliminary survey revealed that the respondents suffered from foreign language anxiety, were not ready to communicate with many people at once, and preferred free discussions to regulated professionally valuable polylogue. In order to overcome the communication barriers the authors designed and tested an experimental alternative teaching methodology. The preliminary research results lead to the conclusion that raising a new generation of professionals with soft skills and educational competence required by the new Russian economy is hardly possible without extending the range of teaching tools and changing approaches to teaching nonlinguistic university students how to use a foreign language for professional communication.