Scholarly record

INTERNATIONAL MODERN TRENDS IN PROFESSIONALLY-ORIENTED AND INTEGRATED FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING IN RUSSIAN AND EUROPEAN SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION

N. Almazova, L. Khalyapina

Abstract

Today society feels urgent need for the experts knowing one or several foreign languages both within daily communication and in the professional sphere in view of rapid process of globalization and informatization of society. Actively developing in the European countries the theory of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and only starting its movement the process of integration of professional disciplines and foreign languages in Russian higher education is considered as a necessary condition for training of future professionals capable to become members of the international scientific and business community. At the same time in the modern Russian linguodidactic theory and practice this question is considered to be debatable: is it really necessary to change an educational paradigm from just professionally-oriented to integrated or not? Nowadays in the Russian pedagogical science there are both: supporters and opponents of unconditional copying of foreign experience. To understand this situation and to answer the question, we consider that it would be useful to analyze the basic conceptual ideas and the principles of the professionally oriented and integrated approaches to teaching foreign languages in higher education institution. It was important for us to analyze similarities and distinctions of these directions and draw a conclusion about expediency of the independent choice in each concrete higher education institution. One more aspect is significant for us here: to answer the question why the ideas of content and language integrated learning (CLIL), which in European scientific and educational spheres are well-known and are actively used, do not find wide application in the system of Russian education. In order to do this our suggestion is to have a look at the scientific background of professionally-oriented approach in teaching foreign languages in Russian Psychology, Linguistics and Methodology. The purpose of this study was to analyze the main directions of modern researches on a problem of teaching foreign languages at the higher school – professionally-oriented, developed in domestic science and education, and integrated, popular in the European system; to create and characterize new models of interdisciplinary integration and cooperation for Russian universities. The most important parts of our research were: 1) the main theoretical ideas and their backgrounds in Russian professional oriented approach; 2) the main theoretical ideas of European CLIL approach; 3) similarities and distinctions of these two approaches helping us to answer the question whether it is really necessary to use CLIL in our Russian system of higher education; 4) the characterization of new models of interdisciplinary integration and coordination. The main results include the development of theoretical basis for innovative methodology based on the authors personal approach, created by the academic teaching staff of four different technical universities in Russia following the ideas of content and language integrated learning. The results proved the effectiveness of interdisciplinary coordination in the process of solving the tasks of content and language integrated teaching and learning.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2018H/31/S10.027

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