Analysis on content and language integrated learning perspectives in Russian universities

The reforms of Russian higher education of the last decade are largely aimed to expand the communicative educational space, which ensures the integration of scientific knowledge. Consequently, new technological and social research areas come to the fore. Knowledge integration implies close cooperation with world universities and research centers, which requires universities being the main executors in the training of a modern specialist to be ready to interact in a multilingual academic space. Multilingual environment creation is indicated in many roadmaps of Russian universities as a strategic direction for effective development. However, the process of its creation is still not complete and requires the fulfillment of certain conditions. The educational environment does not imply only educational materials and stands, the presence of centers of academic mobility and international cooperation but also communication and technologies, approaches and tools. The multilingual university environment is an indicator of the level of its internationalization, whose key indicators are as follows: 1) internal and external academic mobility, 2) publication activity, 3) research collaboration. The search for methods and tools contributing to the fulfillment of the assigned tasks determines the relevance of our research, which consists in the choice of educational approaches contributing to internationalization of Russian higher education. The article analyses the university's preparedness to interact in a multilingual educational environment on the example of Tomsk Polytechnic University. We propose following the principle of subject and linguistic knowledge integration as a tool for addressing the above problems. Therefore, an approach known as CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) was chosen as the object of research. The approach has a dual purpose, which stipulates that a foreign language serves as a tool for studying specialized disciplines. The present article aims to analyze the potential of this approach to develop language competence of students and university teachers. By analysis we mean studying and evaluating the didactic potential of the approach based on existing concepts and world practices, as well as the prerequisites for its appearance in Russia. Despite a rather wide spread of the approach and its high popularity rating in the world, at the moment there is no universal model able to “integrate” into any education system not regarding the specifics of cultural, mental and other peculiarities of the country, as well as the features of university management. One of the conditions for the successful approach implementation is the willingness of the teaching staff to work with its didactic tools. However, readiness implies not only the desire and realization of the approach potential but also a certain methodological knowledge enabling to rationally and maximally use the approach to fulfill educational, pedagogical and managerial tasks. Thus, there arises the issue of creating specialized programs or courses designed to prepare higher school teachers to conduct classes based on CLIL and to organize CLIL education in general. The current research outcomes are the results on the teachers' survey used to identify the degree of their satisfaction with CLIL implementation and the prospects for further professional development. The survey revealed the main issues of the current situation, which, in turn, provided the basis for developing some measures that would allow to partially and consistently eliminate the difficulties encountered.

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