ABSTRACT
The paper describes the current socio-cultural context of the EFL education in Russia caused by quickening globalization, computerization and the increasing importance of language education for effective intercultural communication. This new learning environment focused on worldwide communication in different spheres, easier access to knowledge, and a greater role for a learner in the educational process brought about changes in Russian ELT theory and classroom practice. The main approaches that are being implemented now in teaching EFL in Russia are characterized, on the one hand, by learner-centeredness; communicative and socio-cultural orientation; integration of content and language learning; but, on the other hand, by standards and competency-based orientation that very often undermine the atmosphere of creativity and spontaneity and lead to the students’ fear of failure. There is no ideal solution to this contradiction but one thing seems to be clear: a modern teacher designing a classroom should be able to address all the components of the current educational situation, namely: teaching goals, learners’ needs and differences, recent pedagogical technologies and forms of classroom work, resource availability, appropriate assessment tools, and many more. Taking into account the complexity and size of the problem this chapter mainly discusses the challenges and opportunities of innovative pedagogical technologies that are currently used by Russian school and university EFL teachers.
