Abstract:

The paper aims at sharing best practices in teaching Languages for Special Purposes (LSPs) at two leading universities of Kazakhstan, namely, at the Kazakh University of International Relations and World Languages (KazUIR&WL) that is No.1 in foreign language education in this country, training specialists in 17 languages at present, and at the Kazakh-British Technical University (KBTU) that has been ranked as the best technical university in Kazakhstan by the Independent Kazakh Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (IQAA) for six years running. The paper presents the findings of the three-year research project sponsored by the RK Ministry of Education and Science that was called “Implementing the European Standards of Teaching Foreign Languages at Technical Universities of Kazakhstan” that resulted in implementing at KBTU and some other non-linguistic universities of the country a system of four main interrelated courses of English, namely, General English (for A1 and A2 level learners), Academic English (for B1 level learners), Business English and Professional English (for B2 level learners). Instead of learning General English for a year or two (like it was, in fact, earlier), many freshmen may start learning one of the LSPs from the very first days of their study at the university depending on the level of English identified at their entrance exam (Oxford Placement Test), while others may select one of the LSPs after achieving the appropriate level demonstrated at their final examinations. Professional English is an umbrella term that covers English for Petroleum Engineers, English for Information Technologies, English for Chemical Engineers, etc. The system is very flexible allowing not only introducing some elective courses like Conversational English or Research Reading and Writing, but providing students with the courses that correspond to their level of English. This academic year KBTU introduced two new courses for the entrants whose level of English was higher than B2, namely, Advanced English and English for IT at C1 level. As for linguistic universities like KazUIR&WL, they are also proceeding along the path of teaching LSPs within their curricula. The survey conducted by the authors of the paper among 52 respondents who are studying LSPs at all three levels of higher education shows that the absolute majority of them (94.2%) believe learning LSPs must be part and parcel of the curricula of both linguistic and technical universities, 98.1% state theoretical and practical value of the newly introduced course “Languages for Special Purposes”. However, a considerable number of the respondents (40.4%) think the methodology of teaching LSPs requires more didactic diversity and 96.2% are of the opinion that foreign languages specialists need to learn basic concepts and terms of various specialised fields of knowledge. The conclusions drawn from the research are as follows: teaching LSPs needs to be student-oriented, but while in technical (non-linguistic) universities environment language teachers should take into consideration above all the majors of their students, the linguistic universities staff should keep in mind that most graduates from their universities (including those who will become language teachers in technical universities) will deal with various LSPs and thus need to learn not only General Foreign Language(s), but the methodology of teaching LSPs and LSPs proper.

Keywords:

Teaching LSPs; Technical and Linguistic Universities; Kazakhstan.