Abstract:

Internationalization of higher education brought about new challenges that of the necessity of students’ and teachers’ mobility, international exchanges, development of joint educational programs with international universities, research organizations, and partnerships. That is why integrating language and professional content in higher education (ILPCHE) is considered a perspective way to new educational scenario (Emma Dafouz), that changes learners’ and teachers’ cognition, their attitude towards educational processes. It is also likely to lead to new discourse practices and educational outcomes.

However, despite its importance, the approach is still considered to be innovative in Russia and therefore needs detailed study in terms of theory and practice. The article describes primary results of the joint project at Foreign Languages Department and the Department of Information Technologies in Economics at South Ural State University. The aim of the project is to integrate English language and professional content by means of information technologies (CMS Wordpress), i.e. on-line electronic journal “IT Daily” in the course of E-Commerce with the students who major in Business Informatics. Basically, “IT Daily” is a collaborative resource where students publish their translations of news, articles, reviews for further discussions and usage both by students and teachers in the educational process. From the technological point of view, the system represents a set of the blog server – actually, “IT Daily” journal and personal electronic diaries of students – the blog clients equipped with a specialized plug-in to transmit the results of owners’ work. The system will automatically display the results of students’ translations in the journal after their review made by the tutors from both departments which includes revision, editing, and proofreading.

Keywords:

Internationalization of higher education, integrative approach, foreign language teaching.