Teaching a foreign language for professional communication to agroengineering major students based of content and language integrated learning approach

The study is devoted to the development and testing of a method for teaching a foreign language for professional communication to agroengineering major students based on the content and language integrated learning approach (CLIL). CLIL a new, but gradually becoming widespread approach to teaching a professional foreign language. Its main difference from traditional foreign language teaching for special purposes is the dual purpose of learning. Firstly, on the basis of an integrated course, students master a professional foreign language and develop professional foreign language communicative competence. Secondly, they continue to develop a number of professional competencies, represented in the Federal State Educational Standard of Higher Education for non-linguistic majors. At the same time, the entire complexity of the development and implementation of CLIL lies in the selection of subject-thematic content and the development of professionally oriented foreign language communication tasks that reflect the characteristic features of students' future professional activity. The sphere of agroengineering is one of the most in-demand areas of education for an agricultural university. However, the selection of the subject content and the development of a system of professionally oriented foreign language tasks have not been studied separately. In the paper, the authors a) determine the importance of the study, b) indicate the methodological basis, c) offer the subject-specific content of teaching, d) develop a typology of problemsolving professionally-oriented foreign language assignoments, e) describe the preparation, procedures and results of experimental teaching aimed at testing the effectiveness of the proposed method of teaching. The authors propose to consider the following topics as the subject-matter content of teaching students majoring in Agroengineering (for example, the profile “Technological equipment for storage and processing of agricultural products”): types of milking machines and features of their operation, equipment for processing, processing, transportation, reception and storage of milk (milk separators, coolers and heat exchangers); technological equipment for grain cleaning from impurities, grain surface treatment and disinfection (aeroseparation and photoseparation); moisture levels of various types of cereals and sunflowers, types of moisture meters; technologies and equipment for drying and storing grain (grain drying complexes and elevators); agrotechnical requirements for drying seed and food grains; classification of convective dryers; technological equipment for transporting grain, especially the use of chain-slatted, scraper, auger and belt conveyors; the use of ventilation, refrigeration and cryogenic equipment in agriculture; refrigeration, air conditioning and ventilation systems; classification of compressors for refrigeration machines; technological equipment for processing livestock products, especially carcass cutting and meat deboning. The methodological dominant in teaching is the typology of problematic foreign language professionally oriented assignments, including a) tasks and assignments for mastering factual material; b) teaching tasks and assignments; c) product-oriented assignments; d) professional projects and e) professional cases. The article describes in detail and illustrates each of the types of assignments. The effectiveness of the proposed method of teaching agroengineering major students for foreign language professional communication based on CLIL was demonstrated in the course of experimental teaching. In the paper, the authors provide a description of the preparation, procedures of the experiment, as well as a discussion of qualitative and quantitative results of the study.

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