Foreign Languages, Pedagogical Institutes of

institutes that train teachers of foreign languages (English, German, French, Spanish, and others) for secondary and higher educational institutions, as well as translators and abstractors.

In 1972 there were 11 pedagogical institutes of foreign languages in the USSR: the M. Thorez Moscow Institute (founded in 1930); the Gorky Institute (1937); the Piatigorsk Institute (1939); the Alma-Ata Institute (1940); the Irkutsk, Kiev, Minsk, Tashkent, and Tbilisi institutes (all 1948); the V. Briusov Yerevan Institute of Russian and Foreign Languages (1949); and the Gorlovka Institute (1949).

The pedagogical institutes of foreign languages train teachers of two foreign languages. The Gorky and Minsk Institutes also have a program for translators and abstractors, and the Moscow Institute has a program for linguists specializing in applied linguistics and machine translation, in addition to the program for translators and abstractors (including simultaneous interpreters). Most of the institutes have preparatory and correspondence departments; in the Minsk, Moscow, Tashkent, and Tbilisi institutes there are also evening classes. All the institutes except the Gorlovka Institute have graduate schools, and the Moscow Institute has been accredited to accept candidates’ and doctoral dissertations for defense. The term of study at the institutes is four to five years.

According to the 1972 statistics, teachers of foreign languages also graduate from the departments and divisions of more than 100 pedagogical institutes (the Mirza Fatali Akhundov Azerbaijan Pedagogical Institute prepares teachers of Russian as well as foreign languages) and 40 universities (Romance, Germanic, Oriental, and Slavic languages). Some pedagogical institutes and universities combine the training of teachers in history, geography, and other subjects with training in a foreign language.