INCORPORATING INTERVIEWING INSTRUCTION INTO JOURNALISM CURRICULA IN RUSSIA: THE EXPERIENCE OF HOLDING AN INTERVIEWING CONTEST FOR FUTURE JOURNALISTS K. Tkachenok, S. Tumskiy MGIMO University (RUSSIAN FEDERATION) Abstract Interviewing is considered a crucial competence for a journalist. Despite the increasing desire of contemporary employers to recruit graduates from journalism schools who possess basic relevant competencies and significant professional experience, incorporating sufficient interviewing instruction into existing journalism curricula is far from straightforward. This paper describes the factors specific to the Russian higher education environment that make the effective teaching of interviewing skills particularly problematic. It then relates the experience of teachers and students at a state university in Moscow as they attempted to build such competence via the pedagogical mechanism of an interviewing contest for teams of future journalists. Some aspects of the enhancement of student linguistic skill are also addressed as the specifications of holding the contest in a foreign language are given. In addition to a description of the procedure for holding such a contest, the paper also reports the impact of this training on student interviewing competence. It concludes with a discussion of the resultant implications for teaching interviewing within Russian university settings. Keywords: Competence, journalism, interview, curriculum, linguistic skills, contest. 1 INTRODUCTION The importance of acquiring and furthering the application of interviewing skills by journalism students has been widely discussed in the literature. Nonetheless, the problem of how to provide full-time students with sufficient interviewing practice remains unresolved. Attending classes in the framework of numerous journalism programs, students gain valuable theoretical knowledge of the procedures of compiling lists of interview questions and of techniques for interviewing various personality types. However, it is often the case that this knowledge fails to be put into practice so as to become valuable experience for future careers. The modern pace of life in big cities and recent advances in information technology have changed the way in which the public consume current affairs. There has been a resultant shift from the reading of printed sources to the watching of television programs or browsing of the web in search of the latest news, reviews, and commentaries. In this new paradigm, interviewing competence has acquired a greater importance for future journalists as viewers tend to scrutinize not only the interviewees, but also the interviewers. Much attention is now paid to a journalist’s manner of speaking, the questions they ask and their ability to establish rapport with their interviewees. Furthermore, the public increasingly expect an interview to be an amiable conversation which does not compromise criticality or impartiality. Thus, with the interview considered to be such a major element of news, entertainment and documentary TV and radio programming, many current and former journalists, with considerable experience in TV or radio interviewing, have commented on the typical problems a journalist faces in planning and conducting a quality interview. Their books, articles, tutorials and workshops highlight a number of areas of particular concern for the student of journalism. The most significant of these are now discussed. Jeremy Phillips, the executive producer of Piers Morgan’s Life Stories (a series of interviews with former prime ministers, record producers and musicians of international renown), states that a thoroughly planned interview appears to the viewer to be a sound friendly chat, when in fact the most relaxed of them are a product of the interviewer undertaking the most scrupulous prior research into both the topic and the personality of the interviewee. Journalists point out the necessity of realizing the Proceedings of ICERI2018 Conference 12th-14th November 2018, Seville, Spain ISBN: 978-84-09-05948-5 4102