LEADING DIRECTIONS OF INTENSIFICATION OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING BY STUDENTS OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNICAL SPECIALTIES

Abstract

The article emphasises that the engineer’s foreign language competence is the key to opening opportunities for cooperation, establishing and developing highly effective professional contacts with international partners, exchange of professional information among specialists, qualified and prompt solution of professional tasks through international experience.
Following O. Tarnopolsky, the leading directions of optimization of foreign language learning have been singled out: content-based second language instruction, content and language integrated learning (CLIL), foreign language immersion.
It has been stated that the step-by-step implementation of presented directions help to immerse and adapt the student to the future profession and increase his/her motivation, because the whole educational process is aimed at optimising the study of language and specialty.
The necessity of involving such types of educational activities which are as close as possible to the situations of real professional communication has been substantiated.
The advantages of leading directions of intensification of foreign language learning by students of engineering and technical specialties have been characterised. These advantages include increasing motivation for both learning a foreign language and profession; setting up subject-to-subject interaction among all participants of the educational process; building an atmosphere of mutual trust between student and teacher; expanding lifelong learning opportunities, continuous self-improvement and self-development; involvement of professionally oriented types of educational activities that model the situation of the future profession in a foreign language; study of natural contextualized language, etc.