Teaching academic writing to post-graduate students of humanities: bilingual approach

Importance. Russian higher education pays much attention to preparing future specialists for the publication of their research results in foreign journals. Therefore, development of foreign-language competencies in academic writing field still need, and the search for appropriate effective methods remains relevant at different levels of education. The purpose of the study is to assess the feasibility of using the mother tongue-based bilingual approach when teaching academic writing to postgraduate students of humanities (using an introduction to an English-language scientific article as an example).Research methods. Based on the analysis of scientific literature, the main disadvantages of the monolingual approach, widely used for teaching academic writing, as well as the advantages of the mother tongue-based bilingual approach are revealed. A model for teaching postgraduate students of humanities how to write an introduction to an English-language scientific article is constructed, the stages of its implementation are described, and appropriate evaluation criteria are substantiated.Results and Discussion. After the experiential learning, all postgraduate students successfully completed their academic writing task. The evaluation of the students’ works revealed some problems that require further improvement of teaching methods: violation of the paragraph structure of the text, insufficient usage of lexical markers needed for tracing the text logic, and the transfer of typical Russian words and expressions into an English-language scientific text.Conclusion. Mother tongue-based bilingual education helps students to effectively overcome academic and linguistic barriers and improve their academic writing competence.