Bilingual Textbook as Driver of Knowledge Transfer in Modern Educational Environment

Abstract

Realities of modern education actualize the need to change the approach to developing textbooks for higher education. Bilingual textbooks are becoming more highly-demanded as they provide for achieving a dual purpose – teaching both a foreign language and a professional discipline. Despite the spread of CLIL approach in elementary and secondary levels, it has not been introduced in higher education as widely as traditional teaching methods. It is mostly employed in Master’s programmes, whereas bachelor-level programmes are completely uninvolved in this regard. Scarcity of appropriate teaching materials alongside with the lack of reliable materials in the Russian language accounts for the limited scope of CLIL implementation in our country. The textbook developed by the authors is an attempt to introduce CLIL techniques into the curriculum of the second year of study in the Legal Department of Pyatigorsk State University in teaching a professional discipline – Financial Law by means of a foreign language, namely English. The textbook is innovative in its nature as it promotes meta-knowledge, problem solving and critical thinking, collaboration and communication thus serving as the driver of knowledge transfer in modern Russian educational environment.

Keywords

• bilingual textbook; CLIL; knowledge transfer
• prof