Conference workflow as long-term activity within english for special purposes (ESP) course

Abstract

Publication record is one of the key indicators of scientific research performance, which affects individual career perspectives. Experience in academic writing gives the authors a great advantage, as it promotes their personal growth through communication in modern scientific community. Research output presentation in accordance with academic writing standards is a specific skill that needs to be nurtured by a narrow focused education. The best age for academic writing training is studentship. An early introduction to academic writing does a benefit for future scientists and specialists, as it alleviates their insertion in scientific world. Although, a great attention is now being paid to academic English skills development, it seems to be useful to put into practice some active forms of learning to stimulate and encourage students in using English for their academic work. This paper presents the experience of conference workflow format applied for English for Special Purposes (ESP) course classes. 50 master students were involved. During a semester students were preparing an article based on their bachelor thesis. By the end of the semester these articles were peer-reviewed by student program committee and by the supervisor. Except a minor part of rejected articles (near 15 %), all the others were presented by students in a conference 5-7 minute speech, followed by a short discussion. Conference workflow was thus simulated. Conference workflow assumes mastering all the language competencies, namely, reading, writing, listening and speaking. Preparing to the conference implies students' break out of their comfort zone allowing at the same time to get in on a friendly learning environment, which brings up collaboration, invokes knowledge transfer, and increases the engagement and motivation.