In 2015 the Integrated Power System of Russia (IPS) had seven United Power Systems . Nowadays, the IPS performs the parallel work with the energy systems of Kazakhstan, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia and Azerbaijan as well as with NORDEL (connection with Finland with a DC link in Vyborg) .
At the beginning of 2002 the Electric Power Council of the Commonwealth of Independent States (EPC CIS) expressed its interest in a synchronous interconnection with the power systems of the CIS countries and the Baltic States (IPS/UPS) to the power systems of the members of the Union for the Coordination of Electricity Transmission (UCTE) .
As the sources indicate, the synchronous integration of power systems is possible with providing and creating a number of technical, operational, organizational and legal scopes. For Russia, the interconnection has a long-term strategic importance in terms of cooperation with European countries, integration into the European electricity market.
If the IPS/UPS and UCTE unite, 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 37 countries . Maintaining an adequate level of reliability and sustainability of energy systems was and is the main prerequisite and the most important task to be solved by the joint efforts of engineers who need to have not only the general professional skills, but also the ability to conduct multilingual cross-cultural communication to achieve effective cooperation with the partners from the foreign countries.
However, there is a question what language or languages will become the working one (-s) of the United East and West energy system, and, consequently, what language or languages should be learnt by the participants (engineers) of the above-mentioned power project.
On the one hand, the globalization of the English language leaves almost no chance for other languages to become the universal languages of the international cooperation. Thus, Russian specialists, fluent in the English as a foreign language, can use it as a language of daily professional communication. In addition, they can master other languages (related to the Indo-European group) based on the first foreign language (English) .
On the other hand, bringing up the new personnel for the international power system, language education can’t be limited to teaching only the English language owing to its persistent position as the international language of communication. Innovative personnel should be aimed at the study of those languages which are seen as promising and necessary for successful communication and understanding in the specified professional field.
It is noteworthy that in most Russian non-linguistic universities language training of students is carried out mainly in the framework of three related IndoEuropean languages: English, German and French . However, the graduates usually learn only one of the offered languages.Such a linguistic approach to the language study is definitely ‘a lapse’ of general professional training that deprives engineers-to-be of the opportunities to get a comprehensive multicultural development, and, therefore, reduces the degree of their relevance at labour market.
There is no doubt that foreign language communicative competence is one of the basic, core competencies for power engineering students, conceived as an independent unit in the structure of general professional competence of a future specialist. It allows the graduate to use a foreign language (bilingualism) or several foreign languages (multilingualism) as a means of information activities, regular replenishment of their professional knowledge, professional communication and professional culture. This is the way for understanding the partner countries, participated in the process of synchronous integration of power systems.
