Integrated approach to teaching ESP at engineering university

Abstract

Agriculture is almost the only industry in Ukraine that shows its stable growth despite the complicated social and economic conditions. It provides plenty of job positions that require a good command of English. The results of EfU baseline study in Ukrainian universities showed that ESP courses do not prepare the students to communicate at the workplace and do not provide mastering specific vocabulary related to their future job. The research deals with teaching profession-based topics from the "Agricultural machinery" course in a foreign language in line with engineering students' notion about the necessity of English discipline-specific knowledge.The article informs about the results of the students' presentations at the conference as progress in their professional knowledge, based on the integrated curriculum. Several studies have reported on ESP teaching with the technical university students according to CLIL and EMI methodology, however, an integrated approach to ESP teaching remains to be accomplished. The paper aims to examine the integrated approach at the content level through the integration of the discipline "Agricultural machines" into ESP course and at the methodological level through well-built and effective profession-based learning strategies. The study used pre-and post-questionnaire design that resulted in students' engineering conference presentations. The recommendations on discipline-specific content and activities in the integrated ESP course are given. The study reveals the benefits of using engineering profession-based tasks for successful student performance.

Enhancing efl profession-based vocabulary acquisition through 3d engineering animation for engineering students

“…The present research is conducted in the framework of the confirmed theme of the foreign languages department at the higher educational institution Podillia State University in Ukraine. Previous studies have shown the efficiency of using digital tools in teaching ESP to engineering students [16,17]. Thus, in this research, we apply the 3D engineering animation app to agricultural machinery context classes with students majoring in agricultural engineering to enhance the students' professional vocabulary learning.…”