ИСТИНА

Nowadays Russian universities seek to increase their participation in international academic mobility. One of the conditions for this increase is sufficiency of foreign language skills. Yet, most university students and, to a probably greater extent, their teachers in Russia lack fluency in other languages but Russian, and the much desired instant change of this situation can be considered a sort of magic. In this situation, Kuban State Technological University (KubSTU), located in the Russian city of Krasnodar, presented its development strategy including the International Mobility project with foreign language courses for teachers in its agenda. So, in the academic year 2018-2019, the two-year-long training course English for High School Teachers was introduced at KubSTU so as to prepare non-EFL teachers for working in English language environments. The course participants (trainees), all KubSTU employees, vary not only in their respective language levels but also in their professional fields, their motivation, and the opportunity to attend classes. As both the trainees and their EFL teachers are fully employed, the time available for in-class activities is limited (64 hours per semester). The time for out-of-class activities, supported by the university Moodle-based online learning environment, is formally at least two times longer, but its real usage cannot be fully controlled. So the trainees are to demonstrate the required results (up to delivering conference reports and interactive lectures in English) after studying in conditions that are anything but ideal. Besides, as the university cannot wait for these results for too long, only the complete beginners have the opportunity to attend the course for two years, while the first trainees of the “top-level” group only have one semester to prepare their lectures (with conference reports and university / department presentations as preceding tasks) and successfully coped with this challenge, largely due to their relatively strong education background and motivation. Taking into account the existing conditions, the course results achieved can be considered satisfactory but requiring further development and discussion.