The Department of Foreign Languages, “The best educational department of 2016”, is one of the oldest departments in the Faculty of International Relations. Established on September 1, 2001 at the Institute of International Relations, it has been successfully operating at L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University for 19 years. Head of the Foreign Languages Department – Associate Prof., Candidate of Pedagogical Science Assel B. Kaliyeva.
The Department of Foreign Languages is a service-providing department and it specifies in teaching compulsory and major modules of the academic programmes offered by the Faculty of International Relations, the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Faculty of Journalism and Political Science, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of History.
In the education process, students have a great opportunity to study five foreign languages: English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, and they get acquainted with the legislative, political, socio-economic structure, cultural traditions and customs of the countries studied.
Currently, 16 lecturers work at the department, including two foreign lecturers from Spain and Italy – Julio Novillo Sanchez de Pedro and Giulio Scerbo.
Among the key priority areas of the department are professional development and scientific training of the teaching staff. The lecturers of the department are scholarship holders of international academic mobility programs and “Bolashak” international scholarship program. They regularly undergo training and language internships both in Kazakhstan and abroad (the UK, the USA, Hungary, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, India, Turkey, Malaysia, and Russia).
In 2019-2020 academic year the entire teaching staff of the department passed advanced professional development courses at the international level, including 7 lecturers who took international advanced training courses "Innovative Educational Technologies and Didactic Models" from April 6 to 19, 2020. In the current academic year lecturers of the department published 2 monographs (Meirambekova L.K., Kadyskyzy A.), 1 teaching-methodological textbook (Smolina L.I.), 1 digital education resource MOOC (Smolina L.I.), 3 publications in the journals with impact factor, indexed in Scopus database (Meirambekova L.K., Kussainova R.E.), and there are works published in the journals recommended by the Committee for control in the sphere of education and science MES RK, the journals included in the Russian Science Citation Index and in the digests of the international scientific and practical conferences.
Thanks to foreign experience and professionalism, our lecturers are highly demanded and they contribute to the development of education in Kazakhstan. The Associate professors of the Department of Foreign Languages FIR, candidates of pedagogical science Beissembayeva S.T. and Mutali A.K. are experts of the "Textbook" Scientific and Practical Center of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and of the Independent Quality Assurance Agency in Education (IQAA), they conduct expert assessment of educational publications for vocational and technical education. As a member of the Republican Commission in the capacity of the representatives of the RK Ministry of Education and Science, lecturers of our department annually participate in the organization and conduct of the Unified National Testing and entrance examinations on foreign languages upon admission to the postgraduate programmes.
As a member of the commissions at the university level, we participate in various activities, namely, in organizing international accreditation of the university’s academic programmes as translators, and we monitor the English-language modules taught in multilingual groups. Annually we are happy to conduct interviews and examinations to determine the level of foreign language proficiency of undergraduate and postgraduate students to apply for an academic mobility programme, since thereby we contribute to professional development, expansion of competencies and foreign experience of our students.
The Department of Foreign Languages regularly carries out an upgrade of academic modules taking into account modern international trends in the field of teaching foreign languages. Our lecturers apply innovative educational technologies of blended learning, content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and digital visualization.
Our lecturers’ technical skills and professional flexibility have helped smoothly adapt to new realities and distance learning during the global Coronavirus pandemic. In addition to communication messengers, our lecturers used distance learning systems of various platforms and vendors to ensure a stable, continuous educational process, including the Platonus Automated Information System, ZOOM, Microsoft Teams, Quizlet and Google classroom services.
Over the years, the department has established relations with the Embassies of the USA, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and of several other countries, and with the French Alliance, the British Council, the University of Cadiz (Spain), University for foreigners of Siena (Italy), Complutense University of Madrid, the University of Munich, the Bavarian National Library (Munich), the Andorra National Library (Luxembourg), the Ambrosian library in Milan (Italy), and with the Dutch language society (the Netherlands), University of Greifswald (Germany).
Our partners assist organizing events of culture, cinema and poetry for students of all faculties. A week of foreign languages is organized annually, within the framework of which we host seminars, competitions, brain rings and student conferences. A unique brand of our department is the annual International Foreign Languages Olympiad for students of non-linguistic specialties, where students from all regions of Kazakhstan and neighboring countries submit their applications.
Over the last 5 years, the Center for Spanish Language named after Ruy González de Clavijo - a famous Spanish diplomat and traveler has successfully been operating at the Department of Foreign Languages. The center was opened with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Spain on March 12, 2015. Since its opening, the center has become a hub of international events: it hosts annual guest lectures by senior representatives of the Embassy of Spain, scientific and methodological seminars of academicians from Spain, I and II Congress of Spanish language lecturers in Central Asia, international scientific and methodological video conference with the University of Cadiz under the G-Global platform, and the international Spanish language and culture competition. The official DELE international Spanish language exam is annually held under the auspices of the center with the participation of foreign accredited examiners.
By the initiative of the Italian Embassy, the Italian Language and Culture Center opened in June 2019. The department held the international conference “Leonardo Da Vinci and the Atlantic Code: Influence in Central Asia” in collaboration with the Italian Embassy in Kazakhstan and the Ambrosian Library in Milan on May 22, 2019. Among the participants were Yerlan Sydykov, rector of L.N. Gumilyov ENU and the delegation of the Italian Embassy represented by Pasquale D’Avino, the Ambassador of Italy to Kazakhstan and Italian professors Edoardo Canetta and Alberto Rocca. An exhibition of Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings was open to public as a part of the conference. Under the Italian language and culture center, the foreign lecturer Giulio Scerbo conducts free Italian language courses for ENU students.
The Department of Foreign Languages, the Faculty of International Relations also expands and strengthens the international cooperation with the Germany’s leading volunteering organization SES – Senior Experten Service (Senior Experts Service), which sends independent experts and executives to share expertise and provide consultations in the developing and emerging industrial countries. Under the SES project in Kazakhstan Dr. Michael Näder visited our university in April 2019 to support organization and conducting practical lessons in English language, and also to assist the professional development of the teaching staff of our department.
Within the framework of the International Scientific and Practical Conference "Science and Education", the department annually organizes and conducts the subsection "Foreign languages in the polylingual society", since 2010 it organized summer schools on the methodology of teaching foreign languages and topical issues of international relations with the participation of foreign lecturers.
The Department of Foreign Languages contributes to the formation of a young advanced generation with foreign languages skills and it enhances the professional training of highly qualified specialists open to global competition in the field of knowledge and science.
Contacts: Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of International Relations (403, ENU main building), tel. +77172709500 (ext. 31430).
e-mail: inyazfmo2020@yandex.ru
D.O. Saliyeva
