Interdepartmental interaction in an agrarian university as a basis for the development of a professional foreign language course based on the model of content and language integrated learning

Abstract

One of the new approaches to foreign language teaching for professional communication in non-linguistic universities, including agrarian ones, is content and language integrated learning. In contrast to a foreign language for special purposes, an integrated approach aims to develop a foreign language communicative competence and professional competence of students within one course. In this case, the discipline “Foreign Language for Professional Communication” is aimed at intra-profile specialization. However, the main difficulty in developing an integrated course arises in determining the subject-thematic content of training, reflecting the future professional activities of students. A foreign language teacher, for objective reasons, is not compe-tent to highlight this subject-thematic content of education. In this regard, interdepartmental inte-raction is presented as an effective and efficient solution to the current problem. In this work we: a) determine the relevance of interdepartmental interaction for the development of integrated courses; b) highlight the key differences between teaching a foreign language for special purposes and content and language integrated learning; c) illustrate interdepartmental interaction at all stages of the development of an integrated course and teaching materials. There are seven such stages in the work: 1) assessment of students’ needs; 2) defining the goals and objectives of the course; 3) definition of course topics or subject-thematic modules; 4) definition of subtopics of each sub-ject-thematic module; 5) selection of foreign language texts of a professional orientation; 6) development of problematic tasks of foreign language speech and professional orientation; 7) course assessment.