Abstract:

Global educational environment offers an opportunity for students to get higher professional education abroad. Russia as well as the other countries accept many international students who have special language needs, reflecting the peculiarities of the academic process and the major the students chose. The communicative needs of the foreigners who learn Russian for social communication and for the academic and professional purposes are different.

The multi-level test system of Russian as a foreign language (RFL) was developed in the 20th century. In its present state, it assesses the communicative competence level, but it does not serve the goals of the Russian language for specific purposes proficiency assessment. The system does not differentiate between the language for professional communication and the language as a tool of education, and includes only one specialized component (a professional module), which is used to assess the professional language proficiency making no difference between students and qualified specialists in their language needs. The contemporary RFL test structure impedes language assessment, test development, and needs modernization.

The purpose of the research is to analyze the existing RFL test system and to determine what is necessary to make it more target audience-oriented, i.e. correlating with the language needs of students and qualified specialists. The authors propose new test models aimed at the language assessment for the academic and professional purposes, as well as the possible ways of the implementation of professional modules for every major and professional specialization, and describe how they can be integrated into the unified RFL test system.

Keywords:

Language assessment for academic and professional purposes, language for specific purposes, Russian as foreign language, RFL test system, professional modules.