Integrating YouTube Videos into an Introductory Professional Language Course for Engineering Students

Abstract

Technical university graduates have to be equipped with well-developed skills in comprehending both written and oral professional discourse, and since now English is an indispensable tool for gaining and communicating information about the latest advances in engineering sphere, examples of such discourse must make an essential part of the programme. In this respect, YouTube videos may serve as a rich source of material, meeting both the requirements of professional content and scientific discourse features. However, while these videos are abundant, they are not designed for EFL learners, who need extensive scaffolding to facilitate listening comprehension. What makes the challenge even greater is that students who choose tertiary engineering courses often demonstrate rather poor level of language acquisition, having devoted more attention to their major subjects. In our case, the course in English is unfortunately quite short: we have only two terms of 72 classroom hours each, the first for more general topics, the second for introducing professional ones. Consequently, the work on developing the students’ listening skills has to start at the very beginning and include authentic video materials accompanied by a thoroughly constructed series of exercises so that the students could get accustomed to this type of learning resource. The paper describes an attempt to devise such specialized language course at St.Petersburg State Marine Technical University.KeywordsYouTube videosScientific discourseListening comprehensionEngineering studentsProfessional language course