INTERPRETING AND ELABORATING SCIENTIFIC TEXTS IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN THE DIGITAL ERA

This paper is framed under second or foreign language learning experiences in higher education, and specifically with Strategic Language Learning. In graduate school, students in Colombia are required to demonstrate a high proficiency in a foreign language (FL). The universities face the challenge of supporting the development of the FL competence not only to help them meet the requirement, but for preparing students to consult the literature of their field. This paper illustrates the principles, the classroom dynamics and the practices of a graduate course for students with low proficiency Common European Framework A2-B1 Level. The objective is to help them develop reading and writing fluency using Information and communication technologies (ICTs). The session will briefly discuss the syllabus, the tasks, and samples of the learners' productions. Then the presenter will describe how some ICT tools can be used to edit, help interpret, write, and work on academic texts. As a corollary the procedures, resources, and tools described hope to demonstrate that a working knowledge of, say a Romance language may open the doors to a future researcher for consulting literature in Spanish, Galego, Portuguese, Italian, French, Romani Piedmontes and Catalan. The author wants to share his experience in preparing doctoral students in the use of ICT to communicate in an FL.