Abstract:

The question of self-learning control is an urgent one for a foreign language (FL) training of engineering students. The outcomes of the self-instructed students’ works, done without a teacher, are checked up during in-class contact lessons. A FL teacher not only intends to understand how well a student knows language phenomena, lexis, grammar rules, etc., but also corrects the mistakes and explains difficult components of the subject. The assessment and evaluation process usually takes half of a practical lesson within the «traditional» FL training in engineering universities.

One of the effective instruments for continuous monitoring of FL competences dynamics is a language portfolio. It requests the information from the learners to prove their learning outcomes. What is more important, in our opinion, it is able to estimate the skills to use the acquired knowledge not only at their recognition, representing or application in the habitual or learnt situations, but at the self-reliant unassisted creative level, for example, a research project. The usage of an electronic language portfolio has the advantages which can be overestimated for FL training in engineering universities with lack of contact hours. The learners should represent not only the required documents and papers, but academic data in any format (symbols, graphics, audio, video, etc.).

So, the main purpose of our study is to determine the approaches to an electronic language portfolio development and usage in engineering university, including its structure, content and linguadidactic capabilities of information and communications technologies.

The paper deals with the following research objectives:
1. To make analyses of innovative pedagogical experience in e-portfolios’ development and usage.
2. To outline the models of e-portfolios.
3. To reveal the functionalities of e-portfolio in education.
4. To determine the characteristics of e-portfolio compared with the other instruments of assessment and evaluation of learning and social outcomes.
5. To develop the structure and content of the electronic language portfolio for FL training in engineering universities.
6. To make the necessary methodical recommendations to use the electronic language portfolio for FL training in engineering universities according to the pedagogical laws and principles.

The research builds on existing knowledge of foreign and Russian scientists in the fields of student learning assessment, language training and e-content management and development. Theoretical methods included accumulating, summarizing and systemizing of existing knowledge, etc. The empirical methods, such as observing, conversation, in-depth individual interviews with the FL teachers and engineering students were used.

Keywords:

E-portfolio, foreign language training, engineering university, self-instructed work, assessment, evaluation, continuous support, linguodidactic capabilities.