Principles of gearing content of foreign language teaching to professional needs of non-linguistic unversity learners

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of gearing foreign language teaching content to professional needs of specialists-to be. New version of the content based approach to foreign language teaching at non-linguistic universities is being proclaimed. The quintessence consists in structuring language content with consideration to students’ professional orientation, occupational environment and social needs which presupposes modeling content as the direct analogue of specialist’s prospective activity. The article also deals with the problems of content area selection, curriculum design, the use of proper techniques, the role of a subject expert. The model of thematic content based on a discipline specific language and subject matter (legal profession) is presented. Thematic content is considered as the main organizing principle in all professional settings.