Abstract:

One of the principal challenges facing University teachers of English today is to enhance students’ professional language competences and train skillful specialists able to collaborate with their foreign colleagues.
The paper discusses the experience of creating special educational software in order to make the course of English for specific purposes more efficient. The computer application was developed in collaboration with the Bachelor students of Kazan Federal University specializing in Information Technology. It is designed to be a supplement to the textbook used to learn English language for professional purposes. The application is meant to help students of the course consolidate and practice the textbook material in an appealing interactive format. It has been tested within the framework of the English language course in four academic groups and proved to be a useful educational tool. Student survey revealed an immense interest in suchlike educational software implementation, since learning English for professional use is their first priority. Furthermore, it helps the IT students apply their professional knowledge in practice by creating language learning software.
The result of this collaboration with students has shown that joint development and use of educational computer applications is an effective means of learning English for their future profession, as it increases students’ motivation and involvement in the educational process and, therefore, contributes to their academic performance. As this language learning application is a pilot project conducted by students, it obviously has some technical pitfalls. However, it has a great potential for further development and successful implementation.

Keywords:

Student, learning, teacher, education, teaching, collaboration, English, language, software, application, computer, training, professional