RUSSIAN RESEARCHERS NEED TO BE FLUENT IN ENGLISH

Abstract

The paper addresses one of the issues of Russian higher education: the English language course efficiency at postgraduate level. The small scale research explored to what extent the postgraduate English language syllabus is currently capable of meeting the demands of the Russian government and the expectations of postgraduate students. The paper presents some evidence (government acts and syllabus statement analysis together with the postgraduate students’ survey) which proved that the current English language syllabi are failing to assist universities in fully meeting the expectations of the government and the demands of future researchers and scientists. Suggestions are made regarding the improvement of syllabus statement in the light of the most recent ELT methodology and syllabus design, which is necessary for the overall improvement but not sufficient. To make it all sufficient there has to be an educational change managed - planned and implemented - at each university level in order to bring about the desirable educational change, to be later evaluated through the success indicators suggested. The overall conclusion of the paper is that an effective English language training at postgraduate level can make an important contribution into facilitating the depth and the speed of postgraduates integration into the world’s academic and research community by enabling them to publish high citation research papers in English and to lecture and teach in English both inside and outside Russia.