EDUCATIONAL POTENTIAL OF THE UDMURT STATE UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS CLUB IN STUDYING PROCESS OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

Abstract

The article focuses on the quality assurance issue of international students training in Russian universities at all levels (degree and non-degree). Lots of higher education institutions of the country admit international students, and they face similar hardships there, affecting their studies: lack of information regarding the country, different climate, lifestyle, living conditions, and the new language to acquire. The paper reviews the research on widely accepted organizational and administrative steps, along with pedagogical decisions, developed by the pedagogical community to support international students in social adaptation. We herewith reveal that the pedagogical support in this respect focuses on the educational potential of socio-cultural environment and is aimed to involve international students in a varied range of extra-curricular cognitive, research and leisure activities. Their life and cognitive foreign cultural experience being applied in the course of teaching Russian as a foreign language clears out the possibility of a broader educational context - social organizations activity. The article considers the International Students Club (UdSU social organization) activities through participation of international students. The grounding technologies to involve international students in team work with Russian students are project and play based learning. The article describes a number of projects and interactive games. The educational environment of this kind has the advantage of Russian and international students interacting and is characterized by multilingualism, equality of participants, informal communication, freedom to implement creative ideas, openness to the newcomers, as well as increased productivity. It contributes to the development of new and diverse speech practices in verbal and written communication, whereas their cognitive activity in discovering new socio-cultural environment helps develop professional skills.