Teaching Spanish as a second foreign language in a non-linguistic university: challenges and solutions

• Tatiana Yu. Samuilik

  Tatiana Yu. Samuilik. National Research Nuclear University “MEPhI”. Moscow. Russia

The article is devoted to the current language pedagogy problem of preparing future international relations specialists in the field of scientific and technological cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean, as one of the leading areas of international cooperation of
the Russian Federation in the nuclear field. The task of the research is to provide a sound language pedagogy reasoning for selecting a coursebook appropriate to the target learners educational conditions, namely: non-linguistics students mastering Spanish as a second foreign language (with English as the first) for scientific and technological cooperation with Latin Americaand the Caribbean. The basic research methods embrace analysis of scientific and language pedagogy literature within the scope of the article, generalization, systematization, and interpretation of the obtained results. The coursebook analysis criteria include: the presence of linguistic, sociolinguistic, sociocultural, and linguocultural information about the Latin-American variant of Spanish; the implementation of the communicative approach in the book; teaching a second foreign language (Spanish) based on the first foreign language (English). The research materials selected for the discussion in the article reflect a situation typical of present day  coursebooks as far as the format of their exercises is concerned. The results of the research prove that the currently available coursebooks do not adequately meet the criteria, and under the circumstances, have no potential to efficiently prepare language learners for foreign language professional communication. In this respect, recommendations are provided on how to overcome the discovered problems, including adaptation of the existing materials within new coursebooks and manuals.
Keywords: professional communication, non-linguistics university, Spanish, second foreign language, communicative approach, Latin-American variant of Spanish.