UDC 372.881.1

DOI: http://doi.org/10.15350/2409-7616.2023.3.31

Berisha A.S.¹ (Moscow, Russian Federation) – berisha-a@rudn.ru, Novikova I.A.¹ (Moscow, Russian Federation) – novikova-ia@rudn.ru, Novikov A.L.¹ (Moscow, Russian Federation) – novikov-a@rudn.ru, Barkhudarov A.A.¹ (Moscow, Russian Federation) – barkhudarov-aa@rudn.ru, Klimenko A.S.¹ (Moscow, Russian Federation) – klimenko-as@rudn.ru

¹Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia

Abstract. Students’ academic mobility is the most important trend of modern university education, despite the problems and restrictions associated with the recent pandemic and the growing international tension in the world. When choosing to study abroad, young people strive to use opportunities for self-realization and building a future career, but at the same time they face numerous problems, including the choice of the language of education (mostly between English and the language of the country of study). Russian universities have started to offer educational programs in English for international students relatively recently, so there is a lack of research on the features of intercultural adaptation in Russia for this category of students. The article presents the results of two stages of the study, which was attended by 348 international 1-6 years students of the RUDN Medical Institute, studying in the specialties “General Medicine” and “Dentistry” in English and learning Russian as a foreign language. At the first stage of the study, using an online survey, the main reasons for choosing to study at a Russian university in English were identified and the attitude to the Russian language and culture was characterized in the context of intercultural adaptation problems. It is confirmed that studying abroad in English is most often associated with the dominance of intentions to build an international career in the future. It is shown that good knowledge of English and the perception of the Russian language as difficult and unfamiliar also play an important role in choosing the language of instruction. At the second stage, using a survey with elements of an associative experiment, the dominant associations were determined in the representations on English, Russian and native languages among the studied international students: 1) associations from the thematic category “easy” prevail in the representations on the English language; 2) the representations on the Russian language are dominated by associations from the thematic category “difficult”; 3) associations from the thematic category “easy” and “beautiful” have the same frequency in the representations on the native language. Thus, the findings of this study allow us to better understand the motives for choosing the language of study abroad, as well as to develop recommendations for optimizing intercultural adaptation in Russia for international students studying in English.

Keywords: international students, study abroad, English language, Russian language, native language, language of education, social representation, medical students.

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For citation: Berisha A.S., Novikova I.A., Novikov A.L., Barkhudarov A.A., Klimenko A.S. Features of representations on English, Russian and native languages among international students studying in Russia in English. CITISE, 2023, no. 3, pp. 366-382. DOI: http://doi.org/10.15350/2409-7616.2023.3.31