ENGLISH AS THE LANGUAGE OF SCIENCE

Abstract

The development of teaching is as much a living and dynamic process as the development of science and technology. Distance teaching brought new possibilities, new challenges, and the search for new approaches to create an authentic, meaningful, and active learning environment. This paper presents several months of cross-curricular integration of science with English and the use of various online tools to support learning and knowledge acquisition. Cross-curricular integration is not only used as a meeting point of different subjects in one or two lessons but is a multi-month cooperation process in multifaceted learning that complements, upgrades, and enriches knowledge in different subject areas. At the same time, it seeks an appropriate balance between language acquisition and science content. In addition to connecting different subjects and their learning materials, this way of teaching encourages students to learn collaboratively, interact with each other and think critically. It requires students to work at higher taxonomic levels, as they have to understand, evaluate, and analyse the acquired knowledge. Students move from memorizing data to drawing conclusions and creating their own activities. The foreign language is not the goal of learning but a tool with which students discover new content and acquire new knowledge while expanding their vocabulary, enriching and developing language skills, and acquiring professional terminology in a foreign language. This approach encourages students to use resources in different languages and thus develop multilingualism. Additionally, the use of online tools reflects real-life situations and is appropriate preparation for the future. Keywords: English, science, cross-curricular integration, active learning environment, use of ICT.