Report on controller's trip to the college "M.L.S. International"

1995 can be considered as a break in the English language study by controllers of our centre abroad. And in my view, it was a considerable merit of Sotnikov Viacheslav, who was the head of Air Traffic Control service of our centre. Altogether, there were more than thirty persons who managed to go abroad that year. ''ROSAERONAVIGACIA'', at that time, appointed two college for a practical study - ''Anglo-Continental'', and ''MLS college''. Both colleges are in Bournemouth, situated in the south of England, on the coast of English canal. I was lucky to take part in that programme, and I`d like to tell you my view of that.
There can be no doubt now, that a good knowledge of the English language and ICAO documents is a predominant factor of training of Russian controllers. The last version of ''Professional training regulations of controllers of Russian Federation'', accepted in September 1998, just assigns and emphasizes improvement of such training. And even life itself dictates us these changes. Nowadays, while being on duty, you may usually hear English speech in ATC-room of the North Caucasus Centre ''Strela''. You have to appeal to data list on this or that foreign company, because a number of foreign users of the Russian airspace grows every day. This leaves a mark upon the work of controllers staff.
But let`s come back in 1995. So, June 16, 1995 an ordinary flight by AEROFLOT ''Moscow- London delivered a regular group of controllers from Russia. We were taken to Bournemouth by bus and assigned to English familys so that ''there were no two Russians under the same roof''. The day after the group passed a language test, and according to results of that test, we were sent to classes with different levels of study. There were from two to seven controllers in each class, not counting foreign students, who were certanly in every class. I`d like not to point the level of the class where I studied. The teaching body of M.L.S. college serveces the highest opinion. In my view, Barry Henwood, Managing Director, succeeded in selection of a highly qualited staff in his college, that affected our study. The textbook ''Oxford`s manual on the English language'' had become my handbook for two month. But we studied English not only at the college. While everyday dealings with hosts, in the shops, in the streets, in the bus, and even in English pubs, everywhere we learnt something new about the language, that we hadn`t known before. And in the sense of it, these trips are of a great use. Over the lately we see that now our controllers are sent to England quite rarely. The U.S.A., Ireland, German - these are the countries, where Russian controllers take a practical study. And you may even hear that it`s quite enough to invite a teacher from England, and he`ll teach us here, at home. But I believe, that it won`t be successful without full immersion into the atmosphere of ''total'' English. I don`t imagine how we can study even our ''official'' English, if everybody behind the walls of a college speaks, for exemple, German. Or what results can be required from those, who were tought in England, but without consideration of individual level of knowledge of English, when the class consists of controllers and it is supposed that every person has a high level of conversational English, which is used for all classes. And in the sens of it Mr. Henwood`s suggestion was very attractive. The gist of it is the following: four best students from our group were awarded with a week of practical study in Bailbrook College, the real aeronautical college where controllers are tought as well as specialists of air defence, security service of air transport, air communication, and general English language training is held. Norvegian government trains controllers for its country in this college. Controllers from Bulgaria also take there an annual practical training. Our school-day included two parts: we took the practical air traffic controller`s training before dinner, using usual English ATC area and English flight rules, and after dinner we went on studing general English. The training included viewing films about aviation, ground equipment and so on.
Having returned from Bailbrook, Barry Henwood told us that he would like all controllers from Russia, who would study in M.L.S. college, to take a fortnightly practical ATC training in Bailbrook college, after a six-week course of general English in his college. Up to my mind, it was a good idea, because we can acquaint ourselves with a real work of Europian controllers and learn the rules of ATC and phraseology which they use in their work. I suppose it to be importent for safety promotion of foreign airplanes in the Russian airspace. What a pity this suggestion will not stay just a good intention.

Roman Bondarenko