“Chinese from the Ground Up”: MIPT Releases the Second Volume of a Chinese Textbook for Engineering Majors

The faculty of the Department of Foreign Languages at MIPT has published a sequel to Russia’s first Chinese language textbook designed for technical students. The key distinguishing feature of the MIPT textbook is the “language through specialization” approach. The second part of the textbook (advanced course) corresponds grammatically to HSK levels III–IV. The second part of the textbook was presented at a Russian-Chinese scientific and practical conference in April 2026.

As Elena Bazanova, head of the Department of Foreign Languages at MIPT, explained, the need for a custom textbook arose due to the lack of materials on the market that prepare students to read and translate texts in physics, mathematics, computer science, or biology.

The main problem with the textbooks currently available is their general humanities focus. “They are excellent for teaching students to talk about family, food, travel, and hobbies, but they do not prepare students for professional work at all. We do not have the same number of language class hours as humanities universities, and we needed material that would allow students to master specialized vocabulary at the beginner level,” - noted Elena Bazanova.

The textbook was authored by Maria Rubets, Ph.D. in Philosophy and head of the Chinese Language Section in the Department of Foreign Languages at MIPT, as well as Shen Ningfei, Ph.D. in Biology and assistant in the department, and Chinese language instructor Yang Fei. According to the authors, the key distinction of the