The main characteristic of the integrative approach in foreign language learning at a technical university

The relevant and urgent question to arise today is the training of specialists in technical fields, due to the fact that this field of modern education is of the highest priority. The constant work to improve the quality of the educational process is underway. Moreover, the subjects of the humanitarian cycle play a special role in this issue. It is worth saying that a key place is occupied by a foreign language, which is necessary for the fruitful implementation of engineering activities, accompanied by a huge amount of documentation in English. The question of how to build the learning process at a technical university in order to ensure the comprehensive assimilation and application of academic and professional material in the practical activities of students has been increasingly frequent. According to the research conducted on the problem how to combine professional knowledge and foreign language in practice, an integrative approach to learning could be a viable option to provide such training at a technical university. The main idea of this approach is the development of student skills to work autonomously, find, evaluate, analyze and classify the information received in their native and foreign languages, using knowledge from different professional areas to solve complicated engineering tasks. The purpose of this work is to study and analyze the main characteristics of an integrative approach in teaching technical university students to ensure a qualitative combination of the content of professionally oriented subjects and a foreign language into a single whole. The articles of Russian scientists are used as the materials of the research to investigate the variety of views on the issue of implementing an integrative approach in education. The main methods to collect and process data are theoretical, empirical and statistical. The results received in the process of the research highlighted positive effects from students’ participating in the academic events organized by TPU. In conclusion the importance of an integrative approach in foreign language teaching in collaboration with professional subjects is substantiated.

integrative approach, technical university, professional discipline, foreign language, interdisciplinary links, higher professional education