FROM EXPERIENCE OF TEACHING

A SUBJECT-SPECIFIC COURSE IN ENGLISH

FOR RUSSIAN TECHNICAL STUDENTS

Mikhaylov E., “Networks security”

Tsyguleva M., “Foreign languages department”

the Siberian State Automobile and Highway Academy

Omsk, Russia

The article represents some ideas of teaching a subject-specific course in English for Russian technical students. Some tips of how to do a tandem work (a foreign language teacher and a subject-specific lecturer) more efficient are given in the paper. Special emphasis is made on the recommendations formulated at the end of the course.

Good higher education is the key not only to the future successful professional activity but also present brighter and more interesting life. But what is good education? How to measure its quality? Every action can be evaluated by results. According to the new educational paradigm modern specialists should be intelligent, broadminded, active, creative, communicative, cooperative, independent, self-motivated… There are different methods and techniques of training such successful and competitive experts but educational projects could become one of the effective means of contributing to this process. And speaking about international projects, we should admit, they have greater potential providing excellent conditions for true communication and cooperation, as well as for acquiring academic and specialist knowledge and developing various abilities and skills. That’s why we found Tempus project rather useful both for our students and teachers and became its participants. In this paper we decided to share some experience of teaching a subject-specific course in English by a Russian lecturer for Russian technical students in the course of realization TEMPUS-TACIS project.

First of all some words about the reasons which made us choose “Network Security” course and offer it to our students. Since 2005 the IT department of the Siberian State Automobile and Highway Academy (Omsk, Russia) has been a member of Microsoft IT Academy program. Within this program some lecturers of the department have been providing training for Microsoft official certification exams. 93 persons have been prepared and 23 listeners have got Microsoft certificates (this fact is worth to be proud of since the official Microsoft certification examinations are taken only in the official Microsoft testing centers). In spite of the fact that all the lectures are delivered in Russian and classroom labs are conducted in Russian, all the presentations are made in English and these exams are set in English. That is why it was decided to teach “Networks security” course as it corresponds to the official Microsoft certification exam 70-299 “Implementing and Administering Security in a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Network”. So, after completing the course students could take the exam mentioned above and acquire officially recognized status of a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP). It goes without saying that 32 academic hours (according to the project agreement) are not enough for students to be prepared for the certification examination, so we selected the most important topics.

Thus, it was decided to prepare 10 lectures and 5 labs. After completing the course students were supposed not only to improve their English but also to get some professional knowledge and skills such as an ability to install, configure, and manage certification services; to plan, configure, deploy and troubleshoot IPSec; to deploy, configure, and manage SSL certificates, to secure remote access. The material chosen for the lectures had not been given to our students in Russian and we find it to be very important. So, we wanted lectures in English to be a logical continuation of the previous course but not the repetition of the same material.

Several months were devoted to the preparation of the lectures. Each partner of our tandem had his/her own tasks: the lecturer tried to find relevant material and write lectures, the language teacher attended some lectures given in Russian to get acquainted with the teaching style of her tandem partner, checked the English version of the lectures and gave advice concerning the lecture structure. Then every lecture was rehearsed as it was necessary not only to be sure in the pronunciation of some difficult English words but also see what was good and what we had to change to make it easier and more understandable for the students. Besides, such rehearsals helped the lecturer to speak English, not to read English. To make lectures more interesting it was supposed to use slides and virtual machines and different forms of work (pair work, group work, independent work). At the end of each lecture students had to answer (in written form) several questions (open-ended, close-ended and multiple choice), some of them concerning the lecture and others relating to the style of teaching. The idea was to check students’ knowledge and to get feedback from the students in order to make corrections. Here are some examples:

After each topic there was a classroom lab. Of course, tasks and their comments were given in English.

But the work of our tandem was not halted when the preparatory work was over. It was very important for the English teacher to attend lectures and discuss with the subject teacher all the pluses and minuses afterwards. For example, one of the problems we had to deal with was the quiet voice of the lecturer. So, we had to rearrange the furniture and try a microphone. We analyzed students’ comments and tried to take them into account. We must say that from lecture to lecture some students showed an active interest in studying and sometimes even helped the lecturer to find appropriate English words if there was a pause in his speech.

In conclusion we would like to make some observation. Firstly, an idea of introducing subject-specific courses conducted in English into the curriculum of Russian technical universities seems to be very attractive for foreign students but the majority of our students believe that it is almost impossible to gain a full understanding of the subject offered in the second language. As they said in an interview such classes could be valuable for studying English, not a technical subject. Secondly, subject teachers should always have an opportunity and time to master their second language (training courses abroad or classes with a language teacher could be very useful). And the most important thing is that students should understand the necessity of their studying. If some information from the course the students completed had been tested by external experts and if there was a real chance to go on an exchange, students’ motivation would have been stronger.

Thus, we must say any experience is precious. The more new activities we have, the more skills we master. Practice makes perfect.