Abstract:

The university curriculum in Russia normally includes at least one compulsory foreign language course. At technological universities, it is usually a course of English for specific purposes combining language studies with discussing various fields of technology.

The fact that most of the information on latest technology is originally published in English suggests that EFL/ESP teachers at Russian universities can provide their students with this information before it is done by their colleagues who teach “more professionally relevant” subjects but lack competence in English. However, EFL/ESP teachers of technological universities commonly have insufficient expertise in their students’ majors, so it can be a real challenge for them to find the class material sufficiently valid not only for teaching/learning English but also for the students’ (future) professions. One of the sources EFL/ESP teachers can use in this case are non-EFL professionally-oriented massive open online courses (MOOCs) where up-to-date valid information is presented according to high academic standards by qualified professionals in their respective fields. MOOCs in various subjects presented in English provide a sort of diverse natural (though virtual) English-language academic environment, which may be too hard to enter otherwise at many Russian universities. From a more global perspective, the use of online courses by international community gives opportunities for transnational dialogue and virtual exchange.

This presentation aims to analyze the use of MOOCs for teaching EFL/ESP to Russian technological university students. Particular attention will be paid to the author’s own recent experience of integrating the material of two MOOCs – Information Security: Context and Introduction (by the University of London) and Designing and Executing Information Security Strategies (by the University of Washington), both delivered on Coursera – into the course of professional English for undergraduate students of information security major at Kuban State Technological University (Krasnodar, Russia), when this ESP course itself suddenly came to be taught entirely online due to the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring term of the academic year 2019-2020. The challenges and outcomes of such ESP teaching and learning will be presented for discussion.

Keywords:

MOOCs, distance teaching, language teaching, EFL, ESP, technological university, COVID-19 pandemic.