The role of Russian language learning in the socio-professional development of overseas students in a technical university

The article reveals the significance of studying profession oriented Russian language for socio-professional development of international students in a Russian technical university. The grounding is given from the perspective of the historical formation of theoretical foundations for teaching Russian as a foreign language in the context of changing methodological approaches including functional-communicative, action-communicative, competence-based, personality-oriented, individual-differentiated. The prospect of future changes relates to the achievements of engineering and technology - from computerisation to digitalisation of the education process in technical universities.