TEACHING ORAL COMMUNICATION AT A RUSSIAN UNIVERSITY: HELPING ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS PRESENT THEIR ENGINEERING DESIGNS

摘要

A writing-across-the-curriculum approach was used to teach and refine oral communication skills of English language learners (ELL) at Skoltech, a Russian university. The objective was to develop disciplinary communication skills in English so that students could present their engineering designs during a rapid prototyping project. A pre/post survey assessed changes in self-efficacy as a measure of success in the instruction about, practice and performance of oral presentations. The post-test survey showed a statistically significant increase in self-efficacy for a majority of the students. Survey data combined with faculty observation indicates that the communication pedagogy combined with practice was effective in increasing self-efficacy and in facilitating and refining oral communication skills for the majority of the Skoltech students. However, the presence of a less active population within this group illustrates some of the challenges in teaching and strengthening disciplinary oral communication skills in a group of ELL with varying levels of English proficiency. Suggestions are made for teaching communication skills to low proficiency ELL in disciplinary settings.