Integration of professional content into foreign language teaching: pedagogical foundations and limitations

Abstract

The article examines the pedagogical foundations and limitations of integrating professional content into foreign language teaching at a non-linguistic university against the background of the discipline s status transformation from a general humanities component to a tool for professional activity and intercultural communication. It is emphasized that simply adding specialized texts to grammar exercises does not ensure an interdisciplinary effect, since the assimilation of professional concepts and foreign language units requires synchronous cognitive processing; at the same time, the double load can reduce the quality of assimilation and motivation if a supportive didactic environment is not established. Professional discourse is interpreted as a totality of norms for argumentation and data presentation that extends beyond terminology, revealing a gap between classroom practice and real communicative requirements of the industry. The didactic gap is analyzed separately, arising from differences in students input language levels and the limited subject competence of linguist teachers amid the lack of foreign language competencies among profile department instructors; in response, models of interdepartmental interaction, binary courses, case methods, design, and simulation of professional situations are proposed. The effectiveness of the integrative model is confirmed by comparing control and experimental groups in engineering fields during long-term monitoring: the average score in lexical grammatical competence in a professional context increased from 53.89 to 78.43 points versus growth from 54.32 to 61.74 in traditional teaching, with simultaneous reduction in result variability and statistically significant differences recorded. It is shown that higher perceived cognitive load in the integrative format combines with increased satisfaction and perception of the course s professional value, interpreted as a shift in motivational structure. Final interdisciplinary projects demonstrate redistribution of performance levels: the share of high-level works rises to 41.59% with a sharp reduction in low-level works to 11.68%, indicating enhanced communicative success and professional adequacy of utterances while preserving requirements for fundamental training.