Innovation in Language Learning

Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics started the first international ICT bachelor’s program in 2009. The title of the in the program was Telecommunications Networks. The first international ICT master program was started in 2010. The title of the program was Information Security.

Due to the fact that majority of the students applied for these programs are not non-native English speakers (NNES) we had to implement some Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) techniques.

At first we provide some English-Native glossaries of terms and definitions. The lecturers are asked to send theirs outlines or even presentations in advance. It is strongly recommended for our professors not to overload presentation by text information. Many students want to make notes but it is very difficult for them to listen professor’s explanations and to make notes simultaneously. The topics of the lecture have to be summarized at the end of the presentation. It is a common place to ask students and to explain to them specific terms or abbreviations which can be found on the presentation slides.

We give some reading materials or selected chapters from books to extend their knowledge obtained from the related lecture. We assign homework with writing assignment to help memorise the key concepts. During the homework our students are welcomed to provide examples from their countries or cultures. We use review questions to recall previously studied material and to make an introduction to the new one. And finally our student are encouraged to state major idea first and then to explain it.

At the beginning of the study we evaluate fluency of our students in English and at the end of the course we ask our students to pass a special web-based to estimate their overall progress in the subject and English both. The overall web-based test contains three groups of questions and every next group is more complex than previous. The major point of the test is that some questions in the next group are very close to the ones in the previous group but they use more complex terminology. The results of the test during the past five years show a steady improvement in English by above mentioned techniques.