Department of English

Head of the department: Saratovskaya Larissa, Associate Professor, PhD.

Contact information

E-mail:

engl@cs.msu.su

Phone number:

+7 (495) 939-52-14

Other contact information

Address:

119991, Moscow, GSP-1, Leninskiye Gory, MSU, 2nd Educational Building, CMC Faculty, rooms 734, 784 (Head of the department)

Other phone numbers:

+7 (495) 939-52-14

The remarkable technological achievements and their strong impact on the international communication environment in the 21st century have made the English language proficiency especially essential for the graduates of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics faculty.

Traditionally at this faculty there is the number of regulations in the English language standards:

Tuition includes extension of education from secondary school to higher school.
Foreign language teaching is a compulsory component of a modern professional training.
The course of a foreign language is not only professionally but also generally-culturally oriented.

The English Language curricula consist of two stages. The first stage is compulsory tuition for the first and second year students (280 academic classes and students’ intensive out of class self-study preparation). At the end of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd semesters, the students must pass the tests. At the conclusion of the 4th semester, they are acquired to pass examination.

As the English language teaching is professionally oriented, it is based on the number of the text-books created by the members of the teaching staff. Three successive issues of “English Readers in Computer Science” (2008), (2008), (2009), “Profession through Reading and Discussion”(2001 ),”Translate and Summarize”(2006), “Business English for Computer Science Students”(2008), “The Speed of Thought”(2009), “English Grammar for Computer Science Students” (2010) include a great number of original computer science materials from American and British sources. The main goal of these textbooks is to prepare the students for reading and comprehension of their professional literature in English. The curricula and teaching materials are related with the professional lectures read by the professors of the faculty.

Besides the professional textbooks, English teachers also use many British and American innovative books “Global”, “Streamline”, “Headway”, “English Vocabulary in Use” and many others (published by Macmillan, Pearson, Longman, Oxford, and Cambridge publishing houses) provide students with language practice and foster their cognitive - cultural interest.

To increase the students’ cultural and social outlook the following teaching methods are used:

Reading and discussion of British-American media articles.
Reading and discussion of fiction books by British-American classic and modern writers.

During the 4th semester the students of the “Applied Information” department listen to the English lectures on history, political structure, education, science and culture of two leading English-speaking countries - the UK and the USA. Based on these lectures the textbook “The United Kingdom and the United States of America in Past and Present” (written by E. Belikova and L. Saratovskaya) was published in 2009. The book was intended to help the students not only polish their English language proficiency but also get immersed in the main tendencies and developments of the two leading English-speaking countries of the world.

The final requirement at the first examination stage is demonstration of the English language communicative competences sufficient for the subsequent education. At the end of this stage, the students must be able:

To understand computer, socio-political and everyday English texts.
To show the English speech comprehension.
To answer the examiner’s questions and express their arguments both in writing and speaking.

During the second stage the English Department offers the students the following courses:

The course of the English language for the Master students (140 academic hours with the examinations at the end of the course).
The preparation for the international TOEFL examination (50 academic hours).
2-year optional course for the future translators of professional English language with the examination and certificate at the end of the second year.
Optional courses of other foreign languages (German, French, and Spanish).

The final goals and demands of the second stage include the international educational standards:

Mastering of writing abstracts, synopses and reviewing skills.
Working-out speaking and discussion, allowing the students to interact with English language students and scientists.
Mastering business correspondence (reports, synopses, articles, applications for the participation at international conferences).
Translating from English into Russian and Russian into English professional texts, containing difficult syntactical and grammar constructions.
Translating from Russian into English phrases of everyday usage containing complicated grammar structures.

Important attention at the second stage is paid to the individual and independent preparation of the students out of the classrooms. A great emphasis on out of class and self-study students’ preparation demands to organize distant tuition with the wide introduction of multimedia and information technologies. The new textbooks developed by the department are also directed towards possible distant students’ teaching. At the same time the students are given opportunities to have progress tests, watch video films and listen to lectures of well-known American and British specialists.

A big department’s working load falls on the training of the CMC postgraduates for the English PhD examination, which contains:

Reading, analyzing and discussing long and complicated original scientific articles and book chapters.
Showing high competence in writing articles and reviews.
Systematic development of interactive skills from report writing to stating views authoritatively in a meeting or at a conference.