Ekaterina Kolesnikova

At the end of December, the HSE School of Foreign Languages held its first-ever defence of student projects with the participation of industry partners representing large companies and organisations. Third and fourth-year students of the Bachelor's Programme in Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication presented their works to the members of the expert committee.

Decemberfest is an annual festival for first-year students, teachers, and applicants of the HSE School of Foreign Languages. The school currently offers courses in nine foreign languages: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Turkish, and Hebrew.

On November 29–30, HSE University hosted the Third International Online Conference 'Languages, Education, Development' (HSE LED Conference). The conference was attended by more than a thousand participants, including researchers and teachers, methodologists, language education experts, administrators, and business representatives. They discussed the challenges of teaching and learning languages in today's world and presented their research findings.

What differences can we find in communication in different countries, where do these come from and how can we overcome any potential difficulties? HSE students and staff discussed these and other questions with Ekaterina Kolesnikova, Associate Professor, Head of the HSE School of Foreign Languages, and Roman Levkovich, Director for Public Relations during a meeting of the HSE discussion club ‘Samovar’.

Linguatest, Russia’s first foreign-language certification system, has been launched in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The system was developed by specialists from HSE University in cooperation with the National Accreditation Agency and the Prosveshchenie group of companies, who are providing certification and publishing support for the project. Nizhny Novgorod is the first city after Moscow to offer testing under the system.

The HSE University School of Foreign Languages has held the second HSE LED Conference devoted to exchanging research and professional experience. Attendees included academics and teachers, experts and practitioners, language-education administrators and managers from various regions in Russia and abroad. The conference was held in person and online on December 8–9.

Russian society demonstrates a growing interest in Asia and North Africa, with economic, social, political and cultural expectations associated with the macro-region. What is more, demand for educational programmes and competencies related to Asian and African studies is projected to grow in Russian universities. HSE Vice Rector Sergey Roshchin and the heads of relevant HSE departments explain the university’s past and current efforts to respond to these challenges.

The exam has been developed by the HSE School of Foreign Languages in compliance with all relevant international standards. On May 13, the Independent English Language Examination Centre opened in the HSE University building on Staraya Basmannaya Ulitsa, and the first students took the exam on May 16. In the future, the opportunity to take an independent assessment at the Centre is expected to be available not only to HSE students, but also to students from other universities, schoolteachers, and corporate clients.

In summer of 2020, students and teachers of the FLAIC programme took part in the International Summer University for the second time. The project gives students an opportunity to enrich their educational experience outside of the classroom by solving real intercultural problems through English.

Improve your German, learn Chinese from scratch, or dive into business English – these are just some of the options offered by the HSE School of Foreign Languages’ Centre for Language and Methodology Training. HSE News Service talked to Tatyana Baranovskaya, Head of the Centre, and Ekaterina Kolesnikova, Head of the School of Foreign Languages, about their new programmes and the centre’s goals.

During this summer’s exams, HSE School of Foreign Languages and the Centre for Computational Educational Sciences launched a pilot project for the automated checking of student exams. Ekaterina Kolesnikova, Head of the School of Foreign Languages, Dmitry Abbakumov, Head of the Centre for Computational Educational Sciences, and Daria Kravchenko, Deputy Head of the centre, spoke about the project and its future prospects.

How English-Language Teaching Will Change this Fall

On June 24, HSE University held an opening ceremony for its International Summer University. Newly arrived students from 32 countries around the globe including Germany, the US, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and others were welcomed by First Vice Rector Vadim Radaev and Vice Rector Ivan Prostakov.