Abstract:

The present study considers the English version of an environmental organization website as an element of teaching / learning environment necessary for the development of university students' professional foreign language (L2) competence at the intermediate or upper-intermediate proficiency level while studying English for specific purposes (ESP) at ecological faculties of higher education institutions.

When teaching ESP, many teachers face the lack of up-to-date authentic educational materials relevant for students’ future profession (Tomlinson, 2014). However, authentic materials “should be taken from the real world and not primarily created for pedagogical reasons. Such materials are particularly important for communicative purposes since they reproduce an immersion environment and provide a realistic context for tasks that relate to learner’s needs” (Torregrosa Benavent & Peñamaría Sánchez-Reyes, 2011: 89).

The Internet can become the source for the selection of texts that really reflect professional communication. Experts point out that “authentic materials can be obtained from many different sources but there is a growing tendency to take them from the internet as teachers need to renew their materials constantly and to adapt them to the changing needs of students” (Torregrosa Benavent & Peñamaría Sánchez-Reyes, 2011: 92‒93).

The paper describes the advantages of the environmental organization websites for didactic purposes consisting in its accessibility, authenticity, diversity of texts on various environmental topics, and a wide range of language means. The websites allow selecting authentic texts related to different subject areas, for example, Climate change, Ecosystems, Energy, Forests, Green economy, Oceans and Seas, Resource efficiency, Technology, Transport, Chemicals and waste, Water, Food, Wildlife. Moreover, texts of different registers and genres can be used for didactic purposes. The websites also allow using audio and video materials at different levels of complexity to enhance learning resources.

The paper propose a set of exemplary pre-reading practice activities including anticipation guides that solve a number of didactic tasks, namely: promoting motivation to read specialized texts; learning to predict text content; activating prior knowledge of students, building curiosity about a new topic; overcoming language barriers.

Keywords:

Esp, authentic materials, websites, practice activities, specialized texts.