Today team of STEM teachers from EKTU had orientation meeting in the frame of EKTU-UD Partnership project in English as a Medium for Scientific Instruction and Communication.

The partnership will initiate a longer-term collaboration between the University of Delaware (UD) and East Kazakhstan Technical University (EKTU) focusing on three areas: professional development for EKTU faculty and doctoral students teaching STEM courses in English; support for English as a language of scientific communication and publication; and connections among faculty with shared research and pedagogical interests. The project will be carried out at the Center for Educational Technology (CET) EKTU led by Anthony Hetrick and English language institute of UD.

Dr. Scott Stevens, ELI Director of UD, welcomed participants and introduced UD team, the university and ELI. Baerbel Schumacher, Assistant Director for International Programs, presented the University of Delaware and the partnership program. Nigel Caplan - the coordinator for the program at the University of Delaware English Language Institute (ELI) talked on program and schedule. By the beginning of the classes student accounts and email addresses from University of Delaware will be set up for EKTU team. EKTU team had opportunity to introduce themselves and greet UD representatives.

In the frame of the partnership project Language Training (January-April 2021) for 15 EKTU faculty and doctoral students will be conducted in two consecutive ELI listening/speaking courses to build their oral language skills, including oral intelligibility (pronunciation and intonation), grammar, vocabulary, presentation skills, discussion techniques, and active listening; Science Writing Boot Camp (May-June 2021) will be led by ELI instructors for EKTU reserachers and faculty; EMI & Online Pedagogy course will be provided in the fall 2021 for EKTU instructors. English as a Medium of Instruction, a pedagogy class builds and expands on faculty’s pedagogical content knowledge of their field by incorporating Content Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) training and theories of instructed Second Language Acquisition for higher education.