What do we Teach These Days?
What do we Teach These Days?

Summary/Abstract: As professors of foreign languages, namely English, French and Romanian for SpecialPurposes, we have always faced the challenge of finding the right balance betweenteaching language-related skills, such as reading, listening, writing or speaking, grammaror specialized vocabulary and teaching students more than just language. A big part ofnowadays students’ lack of motivation in studying languages formally, i.e. in school,seems to derive from their perception of content inadequacy. In changing times, in achanging world, in which we start learning languages, especially English, virtually fromour birth, informally, from various media, especially from the Internet and a variety ofsmart phone applications, it is quite difficult for a teacher/professor to demonstrate thenecessity of learning a foreign language in school, moreover at an academic level. In thispreliminary research project, we tried to find out what our students think they need tostudy in a class of foreign languages, in order to feel more motivated. Our aim is to findenough data to justify further research of this issue, which will eventually trigger acurriculum change at least at the level of our institution, i.e. department.

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