“Academic skills”: to the problem of concept assimilation in Russian pedagogical science

The concept “academic skills” is gaining popularity in Russia. However, there are some issues from the point of view of its interpretation into Russian, its similarity to the terms in Russian methodological and pedagogical sciences and its assimilation and acquisition. Hence, it is difficult to determine the place of the concept “academic skills” in the process of training in the system of Russian tertiary education. Methods of theoretical analysis of English-language sources, including academic dictionaries (Collins, Oxford, Webster) have been used, as well as Russian sources in the fields of psychology, didactics and linguistics. Also, methods of comparative analysis, schemas to demonstrate the contents of different meanings of the term “academic skills” have been presented. The article deals with the definitions of the term “academic skills” given in English-Russian and Russian-English dictionaries, as well as with the usage of its. The use of Russian-language analogues of this term is being studied in methodological and pedagogical sciences. The conclusion has been done that in Russian pedagogical and methodological sciences this term can be used as “academic abilities”, “academic skills”, and “academic competencies”. It has also been suggested that it is important to determine a border between these concepts from the point of view of the level of the linguistic competence of students at non-linguistic majors.

academic skills, academic skills, academic abilities, academic competencies, speech