The awarding of certificates to Baikal State University employees who completed the advanced training course "English for Higher Education Professors" took place at BSU. In total, from March to November, the teachers took 100 hours of courses. Nine teachers and heads of departments took the course. The lecturers of the course - Anastasia Melgunova, head of the BSU Department of Foreign Languages for Professional Purposes, and Ekaterina Bobrova, lecturer of the BSU Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, taught the students professional English for academic work. The course included various aspects: working with vocabulary on various economic topics, grammar, phonetics, listening, reading, writing, preparing and presenting a presentation, conducting a conversation and participating in a discussion. The ultimate goal of the course is to develop the skills necessary to communicate with foreign colleagues and students, to prepare and conduct classes in English.

"The courses were initialized by Mikhail Petrovich Kuz’min, Vice-Rector for International Relations, to develop the human resources potential of our university and to provide staff for international educational programs. This course was the second stage of training for those employees who took the basic course two years ago, and the first - for those who joined the main group on the vacated places and already had the necessary initial level of training. Unfortunately, it was not possible to enroll everyone on the course. It is necessary to keep the group compact, as it is necessary to give everyone time and an opportunity to speak or perform," says course organizer Anastasia Melgunova.

"I am sure that speaking English is essential. Teachers managed to get new skills, and someone renewed their forgotten skills, but the most important thing is to gain confidence in the fact that you already know English at the level to communicate with foreign students. And these skills need to be developed further. It is very important for the university that its teachers not only have a good command of a foreign language, but also officially confirm this knowledge with certificates", - noted Vyacheslav Bubnov, the first vice-rector of BSU.

The university managed to keep the educational program "International Management" and continue training colleagues. The course participants expressed hope that they would be able to improve their skills further.

"With such a heavy workload, finding time to attend classes, do homework, study the language independently and successfully complete the course is very honorable. I am sure that the teachers involved in this course will already be able to communicate with foreign students and foreign colleagues, read professional and scientific literature. I hope that next year the course participants will be able to teach in English," said Mikhail Kuz’min, Vice-Rector for BSU International Relations.

"I have the warmest impressions from attending the course "English for Higher Education Professors". I learned a lot of new things, including in the field of "economic" English, which is very important to me, the tenses and phonetics. I liked very much how the educational process was structured, which included not only learning rules, words and performing academic tasks, but also preparing presentations and creative work. I would like to emphasize the professionalism of our teachers, who managed to combine for us in their classes an interesting pastime with a lot of educational material and a proper level of " strictness ". I can't say about any lesson that it was boring or uninformative. It is very difficult to teach such a student audience, but, in my opinion, Anastasia Gennadyevna and Ekaterina Alexandrovna coped with this task well and showed us a real "master class", - said Bato Tagarov, Head of the Department of Public Administration and Human Resources Management of BSU, about the course.