Case-study based development of professional communicative competence of agricultural and environmental engineering students

Abstract

Thisarticledemonstratestheeffectivenessofemployingthecase study method to teach English as a foreign language to the agricultural and environmental engineering students. It should be useful to those who are trying to contribute to the development of the technology relevant to the contemporary educational challenges based on the unity of applied and theoretical aspects of teaching English within a perspective of developing students’ environmental responsibility. This research includes three-year study conducted both in the institution of higher professional education and in one of the largest concentrating enterprise sharing strong environmental ethics in Russia from 2017 to 2019. The research methodology includes: analysis of literature on the main purposes of the engineering training as well as environmental concerns; the analysis of the waysofteachingcasestudy;anassessmentofpurposes,needs andfunctions for which English is required. The findings of this research are as follows: firstly, engineering student’s professional communicative competence is effectively developed within a case study analysis based on real cases from current companies. Secondly, students are more satisfied with their English course and more willing to put their English to practical use when foreign language skills and their professional engineering issues are brought together.