The Department of Theory and Practice of Teaching Foreign Languages

Today the Department of Theory and Practice of Teaching Foreign Languages is a unified group of the specialists who have profound knowledge and a long-term experience of pedagogical and scientific activity, young professionals and native speakers from European and American universities.

The department represents a well-known pedagogical and linguistic center for training of highly professional teachers of two and more foreign languages, the center of the advanced innovation techniques and technologies of foreign languages training, a scientific linguistic and linguo-didactic research cluster of Russian system of higher education.

Nowadays specialists of the department implement new educational technologies focused on the use of different platforms for online learning. Innovative methods of teaching and use of modern technologies provide a great spectrum of ways to face the main challenge of education –to train a new type of specialist capable of working in different learning environment both online and offline. High level of adaptivity distinguishes favourably the academic staff as well as the graduates of the of the department.

The main educational objective of the department is the formation of language and methodological competence of future experts in foreign languages training within all steps and levels of the higher education system of professional training and retraining.

Mission of the department

Implementation of educational, scientific, socio-cultural and international activity within professional training and retraining of pedagogical staff within the system of continuous foreign language education.

Priority directions of the scientific research

1. Language identity

The relevance of this direction of activity is defined by the absence of common ground in studies of the influence of social processes (contacts of the people of different language cultures, globalization and westernization) on the identity of an individual. The aim of this direction is to save and popularize peculiarities of native culture and to integrate significant elements of native language and culture in the international agenda.

2. Bilingual lexicography

The relevance of the conducted research lies in the need to bring together the basic principles of the existing teaching materials on lexicography and the experience of foreign lexicographers and so to bring dictionaries to a new qualitative level. Current speed of the development of modern languages within the framework of informational revolution makes it up-to-date the tracing of rapid changes in between the languages as well as the use of them by the representatives of different social and cultural layers.

3. Technologies of processing and analysis of the text

The automated text complexity program that allows to check the text for compliance with the level of proficiency in a foreign language. Thus, further development of these technologies provide to reach the main goal of any test to provide equal and universal assessment of every test-taker.

4. The theory and techniques of training foreign language teachers (including the priority direction "Teacher of the 21st Century")

One of tasks of this direction is to promote the scientists of institute in the leading associations by training (American Educational Research Association and BERA - British Educational Research Association), EUROCALL. Providing the access to the newest methods of teaching with the use of different educational platforms and communities academic staff of the department helps foreign language teachers achieve higher results in teaching as well as stimulating teachers' creativity by the use of modern technologies.