MINI-COURSES ON ECONOMIC DISCIPLINES IN AN ADVANCED ESP COURSE FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS OF ECONOMICS

Abstract

The paper discusses a specific approach used in an ESP course taught to Ukrainian university students majoring in Economics. The approach was introduced at an advanced stage of students’ ESP studies (after learners have already reached their B2 level in developing English skills for professional communication). The specificity of the approach is in designing an advanced ESP course as a sequence of English-medium mini-courses on economic disciplines from the list of students’ majoring subjects. The mini-courses developed by the authors included such economic disciplines as “Microeconomics,” “Finance,” “Marketing” and “Management”. Each of the mini-courses was planned for 18 academic hours of in-class work and the equal number of academic hours of students’ autonomous out-of-class activities. All the four mini-courses were developed to be taught in one semester (four months), and the entire ESP course consisting of four English-medium mini-courses on economic subjects was taught by an ESP teacher with a degree in ELT and in Economics. The data from a practical case study are given demonstrating students’ high learning outcomes which prove the efficiency of the suggested approach.