Problems in professional English writing skills development for students of engineering sciences
2011
Orlova, I., Latvia Univ. of Agriculture, Jelgava (Latvia) | Zeidmane, A., Latvia Univ. of Agriculture, Jelgava (Latvia)
Modern engineering education involves the acquisition of competences that build up a basis for competitiveness of young professionals. These competences are normally divided into two major categories: professional and social. The latter group includes self-competence, co-operation and communication activities that serve as a means for interaction of professional knowledge and the target situation that this knowledge is meant to function in. The most fundamental form of social activities nowadays is a foreign language. The vast opportunity for communication in the ICT environment nowadays requires well-developed oral as well as written communication skills; therefore one of the major goals for the foreign language course for engineering students is to develop professional writing skills in order to comply with the target situation requirements. The problems of the current research are: a) to investigate the learning situation in the foreign language classroom within the population of engineering students of the Latvia University of Agriculture; b) find the proof of the necessity of their writing skills development; and c) discover the possibilities to improve these essential skills to the required level. Taking into account the insufficient number of classroom lessons devoted to the acquisition of the foreign language at the university, one of the ways would be to design a specific e-study course titled “English Language Writing for Engineering”, which would cause a certain shift in accents in the existing foreign language programmes. Another way is to design an additional course that would be available as an optional one in the undergraduate study programmes or, otherwise, offered by the lifelong learning centre of the Latvia University of Agriculture.
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