Teaching methods and scientific activity of foreign languages and general linguistics department: history and perspectives

The aim of the article is to analyze the main stages of the teaching methods and scientific activity of the staff of the Foreign Languages and General Linguistics Department of ESSIC, one of the oldest at the institute, which united linguistic departments in 2006. The authors show that starting from the 1960s to the present time the department’s educational work has been developed in accordance with the processes taking place in linguistics in general and methods of teaching in particular, on the basis of scientific paradigms as system-structural, communicative-pragmatic and anthropocentric. The article emphasizes the importance of scientific research of the teaching staff in the following areas - «Onomasticon of the Baikal region and the modern Mongolian language», «Dynamics of linguocultural processes in the national regions of modern Russia», «Theory and practice of foreign languages teaching».