Online Foreign Language Interactive Tasks for University Engineering Students

Abstract

The article focuses on characteristics of interactive tasks in foreign language education in general and their application in online teaching English to university engineering majors. The key concept that underlies a variety of communicative and collaborative tasks widely described by researchers is interaction. Educators regard interaction as one of the basic prerequisites for learning and development. People acquire knowledge, enhance their cognitive, metacognitive, and social skills and thus grow as agents and personalities through interacting with the world and others. In foreign language education interactive tasks have always been used as an essential tool for developing learners` communicative competence, being the main goal and simultaneously one of the 21st century soft skills. Nowadays, interaction in teaching and learning also occurs through computers. The authors explore the potential and peculiarities of online interactive tasks analyzing related literature and one English language online course intended for engineering majors. The target tasks in the course under analysis are classified in accordance with the instructional design strategies of interaction. The practical study also includes an analysis of the engineering students` answers to questionnaires conducted by the authors. The survey revealed a limited range of interactive tasks in the course aimed at engineering majors. The conclusion is that university foreign language teachers need to create and incorporate into related online courses more tasks based on human-to-human interaction which could promote the realization of the task teaching and learning potentials in this context.KeywordsForeign language educationEngineering studentsOnline interactive tasks