15 апреля 2017г.
This study focuses on the phenomenon of multilingualism, which underlies international cooperation in all modern fields, including the field of electric power. Fluency in several foreign languages (multilingualism) is a necessary personal and professional quality of the power engineer-to-be. Russia's rapid entry into the world community is accompanied by political, social and economic modernization, as well as the globalization of energy, which, of course, provides a powerful motivational base for studying foreign languages and cultures. The new projects of the Russian Unified Power System (UPS), which is the world's largest centrally-managed power association and includes 69 power systems in 79 Russian regions, grow into the international megaprojects.
By 2015, seven Integrated Power Systems (IPS) became part of the Russian Unified Power System. The IPS of the Center, the Middle Volga, the Urals, the Northwest, the South and Siberia operate at the same time. In addition, the UPS of Russia works in parallel with the IPS of Kazakhstan, the IPS of Belarus, the power systems of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia and Azerbaijan, as well as with NORDEL (connection with Finland via the direct current link in Vyborg). The power systems of Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania form the so- called "BRELL Electric Ring", which work is coordinated within the framework of the Agreement on Parallel Operation of BRELL Energy Systems signed in 2001 [1].
In the beginning of 2002, the Electric Power Council of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS EPS) expressed its interest in the synchronous integration of the energy systems of the CIS and Baltic countries (UPS / IPS) with the energy systems of the Union for the Electricity Transmission Coordination (UCTE). The synchronous zone is a combination of several parallel operating electric power systems, connected by a common mode, unified principles of management and supporting a single frequency of alternating current. UCTE decided to conduct a preliminary study to analyze flow distribution in the set regimes [4]. After the completion of the study in 2003, UCTE and the CIS EPS Commission for Operational and Technological Coordination (COTC) agreed to carry out a detailed Feasibility Study (FS) for the synchronous integration of these power systems. This project was carried out by the UCTE Consortium together with the Group of EPS / IPS Companies.
As the sources indicate, the synchronous integration of UCTE and UPS / IPS is possible only if a number of technical, operational and organizational measures are taken and the necessary legal framework is created. Since the fulfillment of these conditions is likely to take a long time, the synchronous consolidation should be considered as a long-term perspective. The development of the UPS / IPS with UCTE is a combination of research on synchronously integrated power systems and numerical modeling of their operating modes, provided that the parties basically maintain their own rules and performance standards. At the same time, maintaining the proper level of reliability and sustainability of the energy systems functioning was and is the main prerequisite and the most important task to be solved by the joint efforts of the EPS / IPS and UCTE specialists.
With the unification of UPS / IPS and UCTE it will be possible to talk about the emergence of the world's largest energy space with an installed capacity of over 860 GW, including 12 time zones, 37 countries, and providing nearly 900 million people with energy. The creation of a unified Eurasian space will increase the reliability of energy supply throughout the territory, expand the boundaries and opportunities of the energy market [4] and, consequently, there will be an urgent need for the new specialists who will have the ability to conduct multilingual communication in order to achieve effective cooperation with foreign partners in their professional field.
The main objective of this study is to consider the presented situation in the field of East and West energy systems globalization in terms of teaching foreign languages, that is, from a linguistic and pedagogical position. Such an approach is inextricably linked with the training and education of new engineering personnel in Russia and the provision of this project by qualified specialists capable of adequate international professional communication in a multilingual, multicultural context.
The Western Synchronous Zone (UCTE) includes the energy systems of 23 countries of continental Europe: France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Western Denmark, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. The Eastern Synchronous Zone (UPS / IPS) includes the energy systems of the CIS, Baltic states and Mongolia (14 countries). The exceptions are the energy systems of Armenia and Turkmenistan, which operate synchronously with the energy system of Iran and are not part of the UPS / IPS. Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia are also participating in the project on synchronous integration [1].
Thus, there is a question: which language or languages will become the working language(-s) of the unified East and West power system, and, therefore, what language or languages should be mastered by the power engineer participating in such a megaproject?
In this vein, there are several variants of the development of cross-communication relations between Russia and foreign countries taking part in the project. The globalization of the English language, which leaves no chance for other languages to become universal languages of the international cooperation at the beginning of the 21st century, is directly related to the functioning of the English language, not only as lingua franca, but also in its new role of language-mediator in the intercultural professional communication. So, the Russian specialists who are fluent in English as a foreign language can use it as the language of daily professional communication in the process of implementing the above-mentioned synchronous association. In addition, they can learn other languages of a related Indo-European group based on the first foreign language (language-mediator), which will certainly facilitate further study of the second and third languages of partner countries in the field of professional activity [2].
The situation with Asian colleagues is more complicated, since knowledge of the English language, for example among the Tianxia inhabitants, is rather superficial. Only a small percentage of the internationalized Chinese are able to conduct a meaningful dialogue in English. That is why very often it is impossible to come to an agreement with them. This conversation will be like an endless dialogue, in which no final solution will be found. This state of affairs suggests that when communicating with the representatives of a country such as China, the knowledge of the English language may not be sufficient, since the most effective dialogue with the Chinese power specialists is based on their native language. Thus, the innovative personnel capable of implementing international synchronous integration in the field of electric power engineering should be aimed at studying those languages that are seen as promising and necessary for successful communication and mutual understanding in this professional field.
It is worth mentioning that in most power engineering universities of Russia, linguistic education of students is conducted mainly within the framework of three Indo-European languages: English, German and French, and the graduates usually master only one of the proposed foreign languages. Such linguistic approach to the language study is definitely a gap in general professional training, depriving the future specialist of the opportunity of comprehensive multilingual development, and, therefore, reducing the level of his relevance in the labor market.
In support of the above thesis, one can quote the words from the interview of the chief engineer of the Russian-Chinese Huadyan-Teninskaya CHP (Yaroslavl) A.V. Drozhnikov (2016), who said that "communication inside the CHP is carried out mainly in Russian and Chinese languages. Employees have to master the basic Chinese language, which is very difficult in conditions of full employment. Young specialists of the thermal power station, many of which are graduates of the nearby located Ivanovo State Power Engineering University (ISPU), sincerely regret that they did not study Chinese at the university and now have to attend additional courses or study with tutors in their free time" [3]. This is a significant argument in favor of including Chinese into the list of studied languages in that university.
It becomes obvious that the growing need for power engineering specialists with multilingual communicative competence makes "foreign language" one of the main subjects in the formation of professional mobility, therefore the modern technical universities face the task of training power engineers capable of carrying out professional and business foreign language communication in several foreign languages in the context of further globalization of energetics. However, for the effective education of the innovative multilingual personnel it is necessary to harmonize a number of existing contradictions, which include:
- the contradiction between the social order of the society for qualified engineering personnel with a high level of multilingual communicative competence and insufficient development of the methodology of multilingual training capable of fulfilling the specified social order;
- the contradiction between the future power engineers' understanding of the need to develop their multilingual communication skills and lack of understanding of their essence, as well as the undeveloped methodology of simultaneous learning of several foreign languages;
- the contradiction between the renewal of the educational process content in a technical university and the lack of multilingual communicative competence formation among non-linguistic students in the methodology.
In addition, for the formation of a multilingual competence in the situation of the educational bi- and multilingualism of a power engineering university, it is necessary to create a teaching methodology that: would meet the principles of communicative, cognitive and activity-based approaches; would be an organic part of the integrative program for teaching foreign languages; would be based on non-traditional approaches to teaching in the course of new pedagogical technologies; would correspond to the requirements of the XXI century and the linguistic needs of university youth; would take into account the specifics of the technical mindset and the peculiarity of the non-linguistic students’ world perception.
Since the global integration of energy systems has long-term strategic importance for Russia, it is necessary to carry out a systematic work on the modernization of future engineering personnel in the energy sector. It's not just about professional skills, but first of all about the skills of intercultural multilingual communication that will inevitably arise between representatives of different countries working in an international team in the context of a synchronized association. The development of the methodology for teaching foreign language as a means of forming a multilingual communicative competence is seen as a priority area of modern pedagogy and linguistics of the higher school, the introduction of which will certainly favor the implementation of any power projects of a global scale.
List of references
1. Отчет о функционировании ЕЭС России в 2015 году. – М., 2015.
2. Прохорова А.А. The Substantiation of the International Mission of English Language in the Development of the Polyculturality and Multilingualism (Обоснование международной миссии английского языка в развитии поликультурности и мультилингвизма) / А.А. Прохорова // European Social Science Journal (Европейский журнал социальных наук). – М.: МИИ, 2015, – №4. – С.164-169.
3. Прохорова А.А. К вопросу изучения китайского языка в Российском техническом вузе / А.А. Прохорова, Т.А. Гурьева // Актуальные проблемы современной педагогики и психологии в России и за рубежом / Сборник научных трудов по итогам международной научно-практической конференции. – Новосибирск: Изд-во Ицрон, 2016. – №3. – С. 90-92.
4. Union for the Co-ordination of Transmission of Electricity: Pre-Feasibility Study – Load Flow Analysis with Respect to a Possible Synchronous Interconnection of Networks of UCTE and IPS/UPS. Brussels, April, 2003.
