Scientific and Methodological Seminar “Linguo-didactic Issues of Linguistics”

September 29, 3pm

At the Department of Theory and Practice of Foreign Languages of the Institute of Foreign Languages, RUDN University a regular meeting of the scientific and methodological seminar "Linguo-didactic Issues of Linguistics" will be held.

Title: «The Role of Ideology in the Development of FLT Technologies in the Soviet Union».

The paper explores the influence of the communist ideology on teaching foreign languages in the Soviet Union until the beginning of the “perestroika” reforms in 1985-1991.

The 1917 October Revolution destroyed the pre-revolutionary system of teaching foreign languages, turning them into an optional secondary school subject.  One of the reasons for that was ideological, since learning foreign languages was considered a privilege of the bourgeoisie – the class enemy of the proletariat, on the one hand. On the other hand, Esperanto as an artificial international language was promoted in every possible way, but labeling Trotsky “an ideological enemy” decreased the popularity of Esperanto and communicative educational technologies in general.

With the ideological shift in 1961, the problem of teaching foreign languages was considered a top priority of the Soviet government, which involved creating language schools, developing and implementing revolutionary educational technologies, intensive methods and language labs among them.

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