Blended Learning in Teaching Foreign Languages

Traditional educational system is slowly adapted to fast technological changes in the contemporary information-oriented society. So, constant refreshment and improvement the content and methods of teaching are needed to prepare “new generation engineers” who will be capable to take responsibilities in decision making, capable to apply critical thinking and creative approaches to their work. These all imply to be strongly committed to self-development and lifelong learning. Apart these skills, the crucial competence of engineers is the ability to use at least one foreign language, very often it is English, as a tool for professional communication in the national and international labour markets. In spite of understanding the language importance, Russia has problems with language competence that is expressed in low ability of young specialists to be involved into international projects and research. This problem can be explained by some inconsistencies of existing language education system in Russia. First, it is the lack of continuity in language teaching of schools and universities; second, it is the lower mobility of Russia in comparison with Europe; and third, it is decreasing number of learning hours for language tuition. To minimize these inconsistencies that back up the development, the language education system needs to be intensified by means of strengthening self-learning of students. Self-learning, in its turn, can not exist independently; it should be organized and methodically supported by tutors and teaching tools. In this term information technologies that provide online interactive teaching in combination with traditional class-learning methods can play a significant role. This combination is called blended learning The article addresses the practices of Russian language teachers in applying the method of blended learning in teaching English to nonlinguistic students. The experiment implies using the MOODLE platform that allows to download different-purposed materials including animation and authentic texts for listening and reading and to organize an individual learning trajectory of students monitored constantly by tutors.