Abstract:

The paper and the report discusses our on-going research project that focuses on the problems of professional linguistic education, applied linguistics, and cognitive studies.

The Unitech-project realized by our group since 2014 deals with research and testing of effective teaching techniques of blended learning in the domain of Technical Translation studies, and also considers acquisition and transfer of “narrow” professional domain-oriented competencies from experts, teachers and language service providers. The problem of learning and teaching foreign languages for special purposes, or industry-oriented translation, is acute not only for academic institutions, but often arises in industrial or technical translation practices and international communication. So the processes of simulating and model training of such practical activities must meet the learning objectives.

One of the versions to solve the stated tasks we see in our initiative to develop an open e-learning platform (hereinafter a Unitech-project), which includes the blended learning system with the domain-oriented MOOC-courses in technical/or industrial translation, specialized linguistic resources, such as domain knowledge bases of visual objects and tools, ontologies and multilingual glossaries.

In our works we also try to follow the philosophy of Problem-Based Learning, or PBL, as a learning strategy that allows us to engage students in interactive learning, shifting the emphasis to more deep understanding of the domain-specific objects and processes through specialized complex blended learning environment.

The Unitech-project aims at development of the professional foreign language and industry translation competencies of two categories of students:
1) industry specialists such as graduates and students of engineering domains
2) graduates and students of linguistic departments.

We try to adjust the teaching methodologies for these two categories of users according to the differences in the cognitive bases of learning, assuming that both of these categories have/or should have/ a basic level of a foreign language. For industry specialists the main aspect in learning of professional foreign language is the problem at "the level of language application" (the third cognitive level in the taxonomy of pedagogical goals of B.Bloom), which we try to support with the help of the controlled language, e.g. with the help of ASD-STE-100 specification. For the second category (students of linguistic or translation departments), the main problem is "understanding" of industry objects and technologies (the second cognitive level on the taxonomy of pedagogical goals of B. Bloom), which we try to support with the help of special knowledge bases of objects’ interactive descriptions and additional resources. The Unitech-system also aims to support mutual interactive PBL-learning activities and interaction of project groups of the mixed categories of students.

Just now Unitech-project includes several MOOC-courses, which have been tested in several linguistic academic programs with more than 600 students, and more than 20 universities in Russia are the partners and users of our platform at www.unitechbase.com. The project could be interesting not only for national academic society, but also for global e-learning developments as its methodology is rather wide and applicable for any target-source language pair.

Keywords:

Blended learning, translation studies, applied linguistics, controlled language.