Sections
HISTORY OF THE DEPARTMENT
The history of the Department of Language and General Education Training for Foreigners dates back to 1985. The Department's teaching and research activities involve five Doctors of Science and ten Candidates of Science specializing in teaching Kazakh and Russian as foreign languages.
The Department's academic staff regularly undertake professional development and internships at universities in Kazakhstan and Russia and participate in international scientific conferences abroad. Members of the Department have worked at universities in China, South Korea, India, Laos, Afghanistan, and several other countries.
The Department's primary mission is to provide language and general education training for international students in accordance with their educational objectives. Language training is structured into the following levels:
In 1985, the Department of Russian as a Foreign Language (RFL) was established at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. Its first faculty members included graduates of the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University (RUDN University): S.K. Gaivoron, A.V. Druz, V.V. Krivenko, and E.K. Nurmukhambetov; graduates of Lomonosov Moscow State University: A.S. Aitpayeva, I.G. Zhulamanova, and I.V. Kildyushova; T.A. Shukhovtsova, a graduate of Leningrad State University; U.K. Valeeva, Candidate of Philological Sciences and graduate of the postgraduate program at the N.K. Krupskaya Moscow Pedagogical Institute; graduates of Abakan University and Kyrgyz University, L.V. Ekshembeeva and I.I. Sapronova; as well as promising young lecturers from Al-Farabi Kazakh National University and other higher education institutions in Almaty, including L.A. Kataeva, Zh.A. Nurshaikhova, E.M. Stepanova, L.S. Torokhtiy, and others. From the very beginning, the Department had a truly international academic team.
The graduates of the Peoples' Friendship University, whose specialization was Russian as a Foreign Language, introduced other faculty members to the fundamentals of the new teaching methodology. Teaching the first international students, mainly from African and Southeast Asian countries, marked the beginning of the Department's long-standing tradition of teaching Russian as a foreign language.
While Russian as a Foreign Language had already been established as an academic discipline in Russia, it was a new field in Kazakhstan. Its development required adaptation to the country's multilingual environment and consideration of the political, economic, cultural, and social transformations that characterized Kazakhstan at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century.
In 2007, the Department completely revised the curricula for Russian as a Foreign Language (RFL) and Kazakh as a Foreign Language (KFL) and published a collection of academic programs covering not only these disciplines but also other subjects taught at the Preparatory Faculty.
The Russian and Kazakh language curricula were developed in accordance with national educational standards and aligned with the fundamental principles of the European Language Portfolio. The algorithmic organization of the teaching materials implemented in these curricula provides broad opportunities for effective classroom instruction. These curricula represent a new generation of educational programs designed in accordance with the requirements of modern applied linguistics and language pedagogy.
Today, the Department has established a recognized scientific and methodological school dedicated to the study of second-language acquisition. Three doctoral dissertations and nine Candidate of Science dissertations constitute a solid scientific and methodological foundation for research in this field.
The results of the Department's research are widely incorporated into textbooks and teaching materials for international students and are actively applied in courses on Russian and Kazakh as foreign languages.
The Department's collective monographs, collections of scientific and methodological papers, and publications devoted to innovative language-teaching technologies clearly demonstrate its strong research tradition and creative approach to teaching both Kazakh and Russian as foreign languages.
The Department actively incorporates teaching methodologies developed by its faculty members into the educational process. These include:
Alongside traditional forms of professional development, the Department actively adopts innovative approaches to faculty training. To enhance the pedagogical skills of young lecturers, the Department regularly organizes the Scientific and Methodological Seminar "Traditions and Innovations in Modern Methods of Teaching Disciplines to International Students."
The seminar addresses a wide range of contemporary educational topics, including the project-based learning method, analysis and evaluation of Russian language lessons for international students, portfolio technology, the application of computer technologies in teaching Russian and Kazakh as foreign languages and other academic disciplines, lesson planning and structure, as well as the development and implementation of electronic language-learning resources.
The topics discussed reflect current trends in higher education and correspond to innovative educational projects being introduced into the teaching process. They play an important role in the Department's continuous efforts to improve the quality of education and promote excellence in teaching international students.
