The Misunderstood Role of Foreign Language Departments as Integrators of Knowledge Across Disciplines

Abstract

Special purpose language courses have always pushed the boundaries that set them apart from, for instance, courses offered in a business department. When we as foreign language teachers enter the special purpose language classroom and begin to explore such areas as ecology, agriculture, biology, mathematics or even law, we inevitably have had to immerse ourselves in those disciplines, in order to be effective. Foreign language departments, like those from any other field of academia, are continually developing courses with cross-disciplinary topics which challenge the competence of our staffs. However, my experience tells me that our ability as language teachers to integrate knowledge from across the disciplinary spectrum is misunderstood, mistrusted and under-exploited. This article explores this unused, and sometimes undiscovered, potential.

Supporting oral production for professional purposes in synchronous communication with heterogenous learners

“…Bloom's revised Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Anderson & al., 2001) brings out six levels of educational objectives (regardless of the subject) corresponding to intellectual operations from the simplest level (remembering) to the more complex (creating). It is common practice for ESP literature to refer to Bloom's taxonomy in order to clarify learning objectives (Wiwczaroski 2002) and also to highlight the usefulness of learning thinking skills (Almabekova 2002). Our purpose is not dealing with cognition nor design activities so the way we use the taxonomy is different.…”