Modeling a Foreign-Language Environment When Teaching Non-Linguistic Students: Preliminary Results

Abstract

A multi-year empirical study (2008–2017) tests a new model of teaching English to non-linguistic students in bilingual classrooms, typical of local colleges in Russia. This model comes in response to the academic community’s dissatisfaction with the outcomes of such education. The article consists of two parts. The first provides a brief analysis of cooperating extra-linguistic factors that exert a multidirectional influence on the English learning process of adults in small study groups in the classroom, provided that they are taught by a non-native speaker using standard teaching techniques. The second part of the article describes a foreign-language environment within the unified learning environment of a non-linguistic college. The model developers sought not only to reduce the negative effects of external environment and increase the positive ones but also to encourage non-linguistic students to learn English through academic and professional discourse socialization in the foreign-language environment. Principles of constructing a unified foreign-language  environment model and providing an integrated English proficiency assessment system are suggested. Preliminary model testing results are analyzed, and the key advantages of this teaching model, which allow for enhancing not only the motivation of non-linguistic students for learning English but also their levels of proficiency, are identified.