Abstract:

The driving force of the process of education is its connection with the solution of various social and existential problems. The changes in the society influencing the change of the personality, his/ her demands, interests and values bring to life different innovative processes in the sphere of education which set forth new goals as well as ways and methods to achieve them. Preparation of future specialists with flexible thinking, able to comprehensively solve problems demands implementation of integrated approaches in higher education.

The article considers the methodological concept and describes the experience of using one innovative approach - the CLIL method - with first-year students of Russian University of Transport. The term CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) coined by David March in 1994 later became a general term for different two-way methods which focused on content and language. It presupposes the use of language to learn content and language simultaneously.

The object of analysis is the advantages and difficulties of the Soft-CLIL method. We describe the lesson structure and propose tasks including various kinds of speech activities (reading, writing, listening and speaking) which the teacher is free to select according to the needs of the target audience.

Besides, in the article we reveal the following advantages of this method in higher education: increased motivation, application and enlarging of professional knowledge and skills, developing learning and cognitive skills as well as communication skills, flexibility of this method. As for the difficulties we should stress the lack of the trained staff, time-consuming preparation for the classes, greater co-operation among teachers. But we think this method requires more rigid framework and assessment indicators to provide a more efficient development of students’ cognitive and professional skills.

Keywords:

CLIL method, Soft-CLIL, motivation, cognitive skills.