ABSTRACT
Russian students are increasingly pursuing higher education in English-speaking countries. Such a situation poses a unique challenge to non–English-speaking educational environments such as Russia. These institutions are beginning to adopt English-medium instruction (EMI) to benefit globally mobile students. EMI alone is unable to prepare students for future studies internationally, as the latter also have specific expectations for students’ academic skills. This is especially challenging for contexts that do not offer explicit academic skills instruction in L1. Thus, the question to be addressed is how to accommodate English as an academic lingua franca within the context of a diverging academic skills paradigm. This task inspired EFL instructors to act as primary agents of change in one Russian university's curriculum, playing an active role in the implementation of the policy through designing and testing various strategies to comply with the new requirements.
