Principles of teaching Russian as a foreign language in MARSTU (MADI) textbooks

The article describes the history and the modern period of Russian as a foreign language teaching scientific and methodical school at the preparatory faculty for foreign students in Moscow Automobile and Roads State Technical University (MADI), which was founded in 1960s. The main principles of the school are adherence to activity-communicative and nationally-oriented approaches, teaching scientific speech style and the language of future profession, necessity of inter-subject coordination in creating study-books of the scientific speech style, using self-written manuals in teaching process, ensuring the conditions for integrating foreign students to sociocultural, linguistic and educational environment of the Russian university. The article presents a short historical review containing information about the main representatives of the scientific school and description of their most important methodical and scientific papers. The study pack “Russian for future engineers” is particularly analyzed. Its effectiveness is confirmed by such criteria as self-sufficiency and irredundancy of teaching material, developing communicative skills, successful students’ motivation, effective functional scheme of learning actions. One of the most important perspectives of MADI scientific school is developing electronic teaching means.