INTERNET LINGUODIDACTICS AND BLENDED TEACHING: ASSIGNMENTS ON WIKI LMS FOR ESP AND TRANSLATION STUDIES

The article covers blended and online linguodidactics of the project realized in 2010 with National Research University - Higher School of Economics students from Business Informatics Faculty. It follows some previous author's articles on the wiki LMS courses pedagogical design and other eLearning research issues[14,15,16,17,18,19] and projects. Besides, it has some practical advice and findings on the effictivness and main principles of online Blended ESP and Translation Studies teaching; describing in detail several examples supported by numerous screenshots from http://evabasilvk.pbworks.com/[20]. The course was held in English, so it could be strongly recommended to read or study the content on the screenshots. In particular, the course involved and implemented the viability of both individual and collaborative educational approach to big number of learners at a time as its pedagogical goal and method. Overall, from 2008 to 2015, the author has realized 7 different online or Blended English language and Translation Studies teaching projects[20,21,22,23,24,25,26] with Russian higher education students both linguists and not, at 4 national universities in Moscow (RUDN, MESI, RSSU and HSE Universities), and is sharing her methodical experience and thoughts on the project’s pitfalls and cornerstones. For example, the article shows how to use multimedia content in a blended and multifunctional way; how to design different assignments for analytical essays writing based on comprehention listening of the two relevant video clips without scripts, with further comparative speaking skills development based on the same video content ( e.g. speeches of Bill Gates at Harvard Uni and Steve Jobs at Stanford Uni embedded on the assignmens table). It also provides practical advice on online wiki LM students’ activities and learning management, on posting and editing of learning content, communication, such as using collaboratively ‘’in-site facebook”, or create short instructions and teaching-by-example and color coding in Roster table to facilitate and coordinate multiple learners’ assessments and grading dealing with only 1 teacher. The main focus was to individualise, personalize, socialize and motivate all students under one wiki roof, combining academic - formal and fun - informal communication and teaching styles; to use integrated, collaborative, mobile, flipped, multipurpose and versatile (shifted) internet linguodidactics as it is now the main trend in contemporary higher education. The screenshots of the project are completely in English, and are posted for detailed consideration by any interested researchers and educators. The present article could be useful for any teachers of English or Translation Studies involved in e-Learning, Distance Learning and Blended Courses through wikis and internet linguodicatics.

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