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DEVELOPING THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE COMPETENCY OF THE ENGINEERING UNIVERSITY ACADEMICS WITH REGARD TO THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES IN THE ADVANCED MATERIALS // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2017. Issue 10 (187). P. 160-165

The paper deals with the issue of the professional communicative competence that is essential for the engineering specialists and academics to participate in the international scientific conferences. This is important, as the inadequate level of the English language, specifically, with regard to the academic writing and academic communication skills is considered one of the factors hindering the transition of Russian universities into the global research and education community. The focus of attention is the rapidly developing field of composite materials and technologies. The author proposes using a multi-level approach to forming the professional English communicative skills in the engineering university, which includes an ESP (English for Specific Purposes) course for academics. The specifics of the approach are illustrated by a case of Russia-UK conferences in the field of advanced materials. The paper presents the analysis of the international scientific collaboration and the excerpts from the survey of the prospective learners at the “Spacerocket composite structures” department at Bauman Moscow State Technological University. The data served as the basis for the needs assessment procedure, which, in turn, was used to formulate the goals and objectives and select the linguistic and functional content for the course. The ESP course had a positive impact on the international research activity of the department, in particular, the increase in the number of post-graduate students participating in the international conferences.

Keywords: professional communicative competence in English, English for Specific Purposes, multi-level training system, composite materials, scientific conferences