Multimodal Resources and Students’ Motivation in English for Specific Purposes

Abstract

The aim of the research was to analyze and generalize the educational potential of multimodal resources in enhancing students’ motivation in learning English for Specific Purposes. The study was conducted following the theories of digital humanities pedagogy and multimodal pedagogy. It had a descriptive cross-sectional quantitative-based (pedagogical experiment; survey; questionnaire) and qualitative-based (observation of the participants in the educational process; comparison and generalization of pedagogical experience on the problem under research; analysis of the data collected in a statistically accurate manner; monographic method – to interpret the results obtained in a coherent, logical approach) design. The significance of the findings can redound, on the one hand, to modernizing the educational processes of English for Specific Purposes based on the adequate integration of multimodal resources and, on the other, contributing to efficiently developing university students’ multimodal communicative competence. The data collected can be exploited in further research into the issue of increasing the motivation of non-philological students to learn English for professional use. In the course of the pedagogical experiment, effective ways of perceiving and processing the information by students were identified, as well as the advantage of integrating multimodal resources into teaching English for Special Purposes. The scope for further study lies in the in-depth research into forming multimodal communicative competence of technical students in learning English for Specific Purposes.