The problem of choosing a methodological approach to developing a promising foreign language teaching technology in an agrarian university

The changes in the regulatory framework governing the higher education system of the Russian Federation have a dual effect on the quality of professional schooling of agrarian university students in terms of developing their foreign language communication skills: on the one hand, the requirements for graduates’ foreign language proficiency are increasing, while, on the other hand, the resources needed to achieve the stated result are depleting. The analysis of the sources that influence, indirectly and directly, the organisation and didactic support of the process of teaching foreign languages to students of agricultural and related specialities revealed a number of contradictions and constraints at various levels, from disciplinary and institutional to sectoral and governmental. In turn, this brought to the fore the task of choosing a proper methodological approach to developing a promising technology for teaching professionally-oriented foreign languages to students of Kuban State Agrarian University. The purpose of the work was to comprehensively explore the problem areas in the Russian foreign language education system and to address the following tasks: analysis of the existing and emerging methodological approaches to teaching foreign languages in non-linguistic universities of Russia (ESP, CLIL, EMI, multilingual and plurilingual approaches), identifying the needs of the agro-industrial complex in terms of foreign language communication skills to be mastered by graduates of specialised universities, as well as analysing the preferences of students themselves in choosing foreign languages and their number, and understanding the reasons influencing this choice. Tо handle the outlined tasks, the following scientific methods were applied: 1) comparative study of regulatory sources of the Russian Federation and the European Union, 2) expert analysis of thematic-profile scientific and methodological literature, 3) experimental study of quantitative and qualitative data, including the use of artificial intelligence technologies (express survey of students, content analysis of data, prompting of generative pre-trained transformers). The survey revealed that the key imbalances comprise a lack of real continuity between the levels of foreign language education (school-university, Bachelor’s degree-Master’s degree), a lack of specialised teaching and assessment materials, no standardised language certification mechanisms for graduates of non-linguistic universities, a shortage of qualified teaching staff, and institutional inertia. At the same time, it was noted that to increase the competitiveness of modern specialists in the field of agriculture and agrobiotechnologies, as well as to achieve technological leadership for the country on the international stage, graduates of agrarian universities need to have strong language proficiency or show fluency in two or more foreign languages. At the same time, students demonstrate re-evaluation of foreign language perception - these languages are no longer perceived by them simply as academic subjects but are treated as essential professional skills and instruments of integration into the global academic and business space. The conclusions drawn on the basis of the analysed data once again demonstrate the problems of the existing language training system at Russian agrarian universities. Numerous attempts to introduce just selective pedagogical and methodological innovations do not lead to the desired result of improving the language training quality of modern students and do not meet the demands of the industry and the state. Solving this problem requires the implementation of a set of measures towards harmonising the regulatory framework, strengthening due resourcing, and reorienting the educational process to meet the professional and communicative goals of training future specialists of the agro-industrial complex.

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