Abstract:

For two years now Kazakhstan has been modernising its higher education. This modernisation aims at increasing the academic and organisational autonomy of universities and their internationalisation. Through these activities, Kazakhstan intends to bring the quality of education at universities closer to the world level. More and more attention in the country is being paid to teaching English as the third language next to Kazakh and Russian. This is also facilitated by the move from using the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet. These changes should positively influence the willingness to study in English, especially in those areas where the language is widely spoken. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is one such area.

The paper presents the results of research on the readiness and willingness of students from Kazakhstan to study ICT in English. The research was conducted in 2016, i.e. before the reforms of education in Kazakhstan, and was repeated in 2019, after the changes. It was carried out with the use of a survey method developed by the Lublin University of Technology, Lublin, Poland. Comparison of research results allowed to indicate significant changes in the attitude of ICT students towards studies in English. Although in 2019 more than twice as many students declared good and very good knowledge of English as compared to 2016, the percentage of students who would not decide to study in English increased almost as much. There have also been significant reassessments of the reasons for the willingness to study in English and the expected benefits.

The methodology and detailed results of the research are presented. The conclusions resulting from the study are also introduced in this article.

Keywords:

Study in English, students' readiness.