Erialakeele kogumik

Collection of Language for Specific Purposes

The purpose of the project EKAV (“Development needs of academic Estonian teaching”) was to contribute to the development of teaching Estonian for academic or specific purposes. The project was carried out by the Institute of Estonian Language and Culture of Tallinn University. It was funded by the programme Primus of European Social Fund that is coordinated by the Archimedes Foundation. The goal was to link universities’ second language courses’ content with students’ exact language needs and in such a way better support non-native speaker students’ coping in the Estonian higher education context.

Within the project, needs analysis was carried out (Helena Metslang and Anastassia Šmõreitšik “Non-native speaker students’ needs and management in higher education”, 2012, 53 pp) to strengthen the planning of Estonian as a second language courses and other language support measures. Linguistic material was identified that would better support the students in learning the language of academic situations. A collection of texts and lecture recordings was created (Erialakeele kogumik or Collection of Language for Specific Purposes). An informative booklet for instructors of specialty field subjects was created about methodological possibilities for dealing with non-native speaker students. For language instructors, an academic word list, a description of higher education situations and text types and a collection of grammar examples from academic texts were created. All materials published within the project can be found on the website of the Collection of Language for Specific Purposes (www.cs.tlu.ee/erialakeel).

Materials created within the project “Development needs of academic Estonian teaching”


For teaching Estonian as a second language:

  • Collection of Language for Specific Purposes: a collection of lecture recordings with texts (7) and a collection of written academic texts from 5 fields (80, incl. educational sciences, humanities, sciences and health, law, social sciences)
  • General academic vocabulary list.  Supportive material for teaching Estonian as a second language at universities (400 words)
  • Some higher education language use situations. Supportive material for teachers of Estonian for academic purposes
  • Some grammatical features of texts used in higher education. Supportive material for teachers of Estonian for academic purposes
  • Some genres used in higher education. Supportive material for teachers of Estonian as a second language
  • A list of subject-specific references. Supportive material for teachers of Estonian for academic purposes

For subject-field instructors:

  • Brochure “Non-native speaker students of Estonian at Tallinn University.” Ideas and suggestions of Tallinn University instructors and students of how non-native speaker students cope at the university and how they can be supported.

Contact:

Helena Metslang (project manager, helena . metslang (at) tlu . ee)