| Issue |
E3S Web Conf.
Volume 175, 2020
XIII International Scientific and Practical Conference “State and Prospects for the Development of Agribusiness – INTERAGROMASH 2020”
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 15034 | |
| Number of page(s) | 11 | |
| Section | Training Personnel for The Agricultural Sector | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202017515034 | |
| Published online | 29 June 2020 | |
Targeted English course for agricultural and environmental engineering students: a tool to increase motivation and competitiveness
Saint-Petersburg Mining University, 2, 21 liniya, 199106, St Petersburg, Russia
* Corresponding author: OYu@pers.spmi.ru
Being a lingua franca in science and technology, English is still second-rate among agricultural and environmental engineering students in Russia as they do not consider English to be a profession-related subject. The article addresses an issue of revealing the needs of agricultural and environmental engineering students in language learning and designing a tailored course that integrates English into a range of professional subjects. Themainpurposeistomakethecoursebetteradjustedtothelearners’needs. A survey involving 85 agricultural and environmental engineering students and65researchers,engineersandlecturerswascarriedout.Thepurposewas to identify students’ expectations from the course, as well as gather information on professional communication areas where English is used. Professional engineers turned out to struggle with speaking necessary for oral communication and delivery of presentations, as well as writing. The students had low motivation due to lack of practice and unawareness of benefits that English may bring for professional career. The revealed needs wereincorporatedintothetailoredmoduleofEnglish forSpecificPurposes. ItcontainedTask-basedlearning,carefullyselectedprofessionalandcultural materials. The module proved its effectiveness that resulted in increased motivation of students to learn and use English as they got aware of new prospects that English had tooffer.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2020
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.