Methodological conditions for implementing CLIL in non-language profile disciplines to enhance academic literacy and terminological accuracy in a foreign language

Abstract

The article examines the methodological conditions for implementing content and language integrated learning (CLIL) in non-language profile disciplines as a tool to enhance students' academic literacy and terminological accuracy when mastering engineering content in English in the context of the globalization of scientific knowledge. It emphasizes the problem of balancing cognitive load due to the complexity of profile courses with additional costs for processing information in a non-native language; it demonstrates that isolated ESP instruction does not bridge the gap between professional tasks and the linguistic means to address them. Conceptually significant is the distinction between academic and everyday language proficiency (CALP/BICS) and the justification of the need for systematic scaffolding: didactic adaptation of authentic materials, glossaries, methodological maps, training in academic collocations, and genre-oriented practices in reading, writing, and oral presentation. A comprehensive assessment model is presented, combining lexical-semantic tests, analysis of written engineering texts using rubrics for cohesion, coherence, argumentation, and metadiscourse, as well as parameters of oral speech (tempo, hesitation pauses, syntactic complexity, quality of responses to questions) with statistical verification of differences. The pronounced dynamics of the advantages of integrated learning are shown: terminological accuracy reaches 82.56 versus 58.73 in the comparable group, lexical density – 68.94 versus 44.12, reduction of interference – 85.33 versus 59.21; in academic writing, an increase in structural coherence to 8.43 and metadiscursive competence to 7.82 is recorded, with significantly lower values in the alternative trajectory. In oral communication, an increase in tempo to 126.7 words/min and a reduction in the proportion of pauses to 8,4% are noted, as well as higher indicators of spontaneous professional interaction. The transformation of the teacher's role into a facilitator and the need for interdisciplinary teams to develop content are discussed, making the publication relevant for modernizing engineering curricula and assessment systems in the context of foreign language professionalization.