USING NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN TEACHING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES
USING NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN TEACHING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES

Summary/Abstract: Nowadays, our graduates have to cope with the pressure of the ever higher demands of formal education, a globalised job market or lifelong education. That learning a foreign language opens up new and coveted study or work opportunities has become a cliché. However, the teaching/learning of languages for occupational purposes have not lost their popularity, as the language tests in this area are becoming more and more relevant for recruitment across Europe. In this paper, the authors intend to dwell upon the (sometimes sore) subject of teaching/ learning specialized terms (or vocabulary/ language for specific purposes) in the language class, with an emphasis on the methods and strategies teachers may use in their task to guide students on the path to the optimal usage of such terms in their future career or education. In doing so the authors have analysed the practical language needs in industry and the implications of these needs for the language teaching syllabus and strategies. Thus, our main focus is the specialised language for real use either at university (postgraduate studies) or in the workplace, in other words, topics, situations and discourse features which make up scenarios of competent communication. In a technical university such as the “Politehnica” University of Bucharest, it is only natural for both teachers and students to use new technologies such as e-learning tools (tablets, laptops, or smartphones) in and out of the classroom, for a wide range of purposes. The very fact that technology encourages on-line communication to the detriment of face-to-face interaction triggers the necessity for a counterbalance, represented in the language class by collaborative tasks that require an accurate usage of the specialised language. The authors intend to present a few learning strategies that, in their experience, are proven to work when students need tips on how to properly use new technologies in studying a foreign language for specific purposes.

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