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Russian Language Journal

Keywords

public speaking, academic presentation, professional discourse, presentation skills, Russian as a foreign language

Abstract

The present study, Features of the Course ‘The Language of an Academic Presentation,’ reports on the results of an advanced two-semester course on public speaking and professional presentation skills for American undergraduates participating in the capstone Flagship Program at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. The article describes the impact of this course on the development of student skills in the design, preparation and presentation of both academic and professional public presentations in Russian, including a focus on the use of culturally appropriate public speaking strategies and behaviors. The study is based on the experience of three years of practice in teaching this course within the overseas Flagship Program in Almaty. The author notes the primary Flagship goal of training highly qualified Russian speaking specialists from a range of academic disciplines, advanced students of the language as well who direct-enroll in academic courses in the fall semester and undertake professional internships in the spring, after which they prepare written research papers, which also serve as a basis or the public presentations. The author of the article concludes that the overall project experience contributes to the participants’ understanding of the subject area as well as strengthening their command of the linguistic and cultural norms of professional discourse in Russian of their chosen fields of specialization.

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