Multimedia as an ESP teaching aid at technical universities

• Main Author: Mariana Shevchenko
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: PC Technology Center 2017-04-01
• Series: ScienceRise: Pedagogical Education
• Subjects: мультимедіа; англійська мова професійного спрямування; аудіовізуальні засоби; технічний університет; навчання
• Online Access: http://journals.uran.ua/sr_edu/article/view/100042

The article deals with the use of multimedia in English for Specific Purposes teaching at technical universities. The constituents of multimedia are presented at the beginning, along with the explanation of why the aforementioned means is considered as one of the best educational techniques. The advantages of the use of authentic multimedia in the ESP lesson are listed further in the paper. The reasons of possible negative outcomes of multimedia use in the foreign language lessons are briefly mentioned as well. The work contains the description of the process of educational material learning with the help of multimedia, and the explanation of the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (CTML), more specifically, its principles. When teaching students of technical specialties, it is vital to know that transfer learning is possible and even necessary; thus, this type of study can also be found in the proposed paper. The elements that influence the transfer learning success–mental model construction, working memory capacity, and comprehension–are provided. The experimental verification of the importance of multimedia in ESP lessons can be found at the end of the article