Abstract:

Global changes in society and industry lead to the challenges faced by engineering education. Professionals involved in engineering feel that the personal responsibility increases, the sphere of action extends at the expense of adjacent engineering spheres and such spheres as economic, administrative, marketing and others. Therefore, nowadays a successful engineer should be a good analyst, have practical gumption and be a creative person, feel free in a teamwork and interdisciplinary interaction, have excellent communicative skills both in native and foreign languages, be guided by ethical standards, and be ready for life long professional learning.
The drastic rise in demand for mastering foreign language communication has been observed in Russian real economy sector and education for the last twenty years. The Bologna process made this demand more critical. Some institutions for educating translators specialized in engineering appear in many universities. But teaching a foreign language for basic body of undergraduate students changes very little if any at all.
There are good examples of implementing a foreign language in teaching basic specialized courses in some countries (Sweden, China, etc.). Bilingual engineering teaching shows good prospects and yet encounters with difficulties and challenges. Russian universities also contribute to this process. Izhevsk State Technical University (ISTU) started the program of reforming foreign language teaching for engineers in 1993. Since that different ways of teaching have been probed and the most promising ones have been selected.
The paper discusses the aspects of integrative teaching of foreign language and mechanical engineering. This integrative teaching is related to bilingual teaching. The experimental results show that there is no contradiction between getting mastering a foreign language and proficiency in specialized engineering courses.

Keywords:

integrative teaching, interdisciplinary approach, communicative skills, bilingual teaching.