Russian higher educational establishments are at the final stage of transition from the 5-year programs developed in the Soviet Union to the multi-level structure based on Bologna standards. The shift caused debate and misunderstanding which have not completely disappeared yet. This research aims to comprehensively analyze and describe the system of foreign language teaching at the second level of higher education. The selected representative sample constitutes universities for the humanities. Examining the problem the authors were guided by a set of methods, including the study of standard-setting and methodological documents, analysis of scientific works on foreign language teaching methodology at the theoretical level, and a comparative analysis of syllabi, textbooks and other teaching materials on English for Master`s programs, students` activities at the empirical level. The study reveals the parameters that need to be analyzed to characterize the system of foreign language teaching in the 2-nd cycle of higher education. It discloses the objectives of the Master`s Graduate Programs, the forms of teaching and learning (including autonomous, extracurricular work), content, methods of teaching, control and assessment, requirements for the admission, teacher training and the students' foreign language competences. In conclusion the authors prove that Russia drives the motivation for continuous improvement of foreign language teaching in Master`s programs, seeking of an optimal balance between its developed traditions and the principles of Bologna reforms.

This article addresses the issue of activation of the process of foreign-language acquisition by means of fostering students’ autonomy. The author characterises and analyses the nature and components of foreign-language communicative competence and autonomy. It proceeds with justifying the appropriateness of using particular diagnostic tests and specifies the components of autonomy that are manifested during foreign-language teaching and learning at university. The methods employed include statistical relevance check based on the criteria of Mann–Whitney, Wilcoxon rank correlation, analysis by Spearman and factor analysis. The findings confirm the interconnection between intensity and quality of students’ foreign-language communicative competence development and their autonomy. The research identifies three levels of foreign-language communicative competence and the levels of autonomy corresponding to them. The article concludes with an outline of the stages following the exploratory experiment and further recommendations.   Keywords: Learners’ autonomy, foreign-language communicative competence, monitoring learners’ autonomy, foreign-language acquisition, English as a second language.

Teaching legal translation at university causes a number of challenges which are caused by linguistic and sociocultural characteristics of the corresponding original and translation texts and psycholinguistic peculiarities of the second language acquisition process. There are some aspects in teaching legal translation that are rarely under investigation, among them there are issues that arise when shifting from general English to legal translation teaching. The article aims to comprehensively analyse and classify errors that students make during the introductory course of legal translation as well as to reveal the causes thereof. The author is guided by a set of methods including inter alia analysis of research on errors made by foreign language learners, observation and representative method. It concludes with recommendations related to teaching legal translation at the introductory level, summarises sources, types of errors and the ways to minimise and avoid them.

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