Abstract:

The present paper is dedicated to one of the most pressing issues concerning higher technical education – the issue of implementing innovative approaches into teaching foreign languages at technical universities with the purpose of enhancing students’ motivation for acquiring foreign languages, English in particular. A high level of English proficiency plays a crucial role in the future career prospects of young engineers as contemporary society demands well-educated specialists who possess not only professional knowledge, abilities and skills but also the ability to communicate in a professional manner by means of the English language in all aspects of their lives.

Nevertheless, a great number of modern graduates of technical universities do not have a good command of a foreign language in spite of all the efforts made by ESL teachers. Consequently, it is essential for university staff to continue the search for new educational methods, which could optimize the learning process and raise students’ motivation for learning English.

In that context the authors of the present paper share their experience of applying a relatively new approach to teaching foreign languages, a conference week, which has recently been implemented at Tomsk Polytechnic University. Special attention is devoted to learning activities designed and held within the conference weeks, with careful consideration of the gained results, the benefits and merits of the method under discussion, as well as challenges resulting from using such activities. The method of conducting conference weeks as an integral part of the “Foreign language” discipline has been practiced at TPU since 2011 showing rather positive dynamics in the teaching-learning process, which makes it possible for the authors to share their experience and necessitates the discussion of possible application of the method in further practice and the impact it creates on the motivation of students for mastering foreign languages. The paper also focuses on the differences of teaching English to linguistic and technical students whose motivation in acquiring a foreign language is different and thus requires different methods of organizing the teaching-learning process.

Keywords:

Learning process organization, communicative approach, active methods of training, foreign communication, professional competences, conference week.