The linguodidactic potential of the general scientific substyle in developing the foundations of academic discourse competence among international pre-master’s students at technical universities

The purpose of the study is to substantiate the linguodidactic potential of the general scientific substyle of academic language as a system-forming basis for developing the foundations of academic discourse competence among international pre-master’s students at technical universities. The article demonstrates this potential through the substyle’s universality, accessibility, and foundational nature. The scientific novelty lies in substantiating a change in the logic of curriculum design. The study shows that realizing this potential requires not replacing exercises, but shifting from organizing materials by language levels to organizing them around communicative situations, as well as reconsidering the roles of texts and task types and the respective positions of students and teachers. A comparison of two approaches to selecting and organizing learning materials – one based on academic language and the other on academic discourse – reveals that a shift to a discourse-based paradigm can bridge the gap between language knowledge and its use in an educational setting: students acquire speech patterns not as an end in themselves, but as tools for accomplishing communicative tasks. The aim at the pre-master’s stage is not to develop full academic discourse competence, but to lay its foundations. These consist primarily of general scientific speech patterns and skills sufficient to enable students to participate in the academic and research activities of the first year of a master’s program. The study shows that working with the general scientific substyle at the pre-master’s stage helps establish this core, which can later be supplemented naturally with specialized terminology without structural changes.