Designing a course “Written communication in a foreign language for academic and professional purposes”

The article discusses the designing of an elective course for Master students of non-linguistic faculties “Written communication in a foreign language for academic and professional purposes”. The course is intended for second-year Masters both in humanities and sciences. The relevance of the topic is based on the fact that nowadays more and more Russian speaking researchers make attempts to publish their papers in international journals. To cope with this challenge, Russian universities should include a course of written communication in a foreign (English) language into their curricula. The author describes the structure of the course, gives links to the sources of materials used in the learning process, shares her own experience in conducting the elective. While preparing the publication, the following methods were used: 1) a survey of research teachers from all faculties of Perm State National Research University, which revealed the written genres they use in their academic and professional activities. 2) Analysis of the available literature on business correspondence and writing research articles in English. 3) Identification and systematization of recommendations for familiarization with the peculiarities of the English-speaking communicative culture. As a result of the work done, the genres of written communication most in demand for academic and professional activities were selected, which served as the basis for creating the structure of the described course.