Integration of ESP and CLIL in training mining engineers: a terminology-centered matrix for designing an English language syllabus

<jats:p>The study addresses the linguodidactic organization of foreign language training for students of mining and geological professions under the Federal State Educational Standard 3++ and expansion of Russian mining companies’ cooperation with the BRICS+ countries. Its relevance is determined by the growing share of the mining engineers in foreign projects from 8.4% (2018) to 17.6% (2024) and the gap between the documented UC-4 competence and the actual level of foreign language professional communicative competence of the graduates. Hypothesis: formation of the professional language communication competence is determined not by the number of the classroom hours, but by the integration density of the core mining terminology, professionally-oriented texts, and industry communicative tasks within the ESP and CLIL. Objective: to justify a terminologycentered model through a comparative analysis of ESP the programs of six leading Russian mining universities (2022–2025) and a pilot experiment (n = 142). Methods: corpus linguistics (1,850 term occurrences), expert matrix assessment, and a pedagogical experiment with the Student's t-test in the SPSS 27.0. The following correlations were established: the average classroom volume is 223 hours (188–244 h), the share of professional-thematic component is 26.3–33.1%; the terminological component gain in the ESP+CLIL group reached +42.7 points (from 28.7 to 71.4 out of 100) versus +8.3 in the reference group (p &lt; 0.01); the Pearson correlation r = 0.82. A 13×10 matrix model with the density coefficient of 56.9% is formulated, and three critical gaps are identified, i.e. academic writing, digital foreign language competence, intercultural communication in polyethnic production teams.</jats:p>