Organisation of Business English for Speciﬁc Purposes Course on Moodle

Hanna M. Shalatska

1 a

, Olena Yu. Zotova-Sadylo

2 b

, Oksana V. Balanaieva

2 c

and

Hennadiy M. Kravtsov

3 d

Kryvyi Rih National University, 11 Vitalii Matusevych Str., Kryvyi Rih, 50027, Ukraine

Donetsk Law Institute, 21 Stepana Tilhy Str., Kryvyi Rih, 50065, Ukraine

Kherson State University, 27 Universytetska Str., Kherson, 73003, Ukraine

Keywords:

Online Learning, Business English, Moodle Platform, ESP Course, IT Engineering, Law Students.

Abstract:

This paper investigates the factors that determine organizing of business English for speciﬁc purposes courses

on Moodle platform. We have analyzed the Moodle tools that contribute to student’s language skills develop-

ment which are in line with prospective professional activities of the learners. In addition, we have considered

the means Moodle provides in terms of their capability to replenish lack of classic instructor-led in-class teach-

ing and switching of the educational process to online mode as a result of COVID-19 pandemic. The objective

of the study is to examine English for speciﬁc purposes (ESP) Moodle-based courses as a means to advance

the level of English language proﬁciency in distant learning environment; and to analyze the content peculiar-

ities of ESP courses “Business Communication Technology for Law Students” and “Business English” (for

Computer Engineering) focusing on nourishing four fundamental language skills (speaking, reading, listening,

writing). Some principles of ESP Moodle course tailoring have been highlighted; they are outcome-oriented

approach (providing the learning results are applicable in the professional activity, the materials have been

added to the course by right), functional language application (the language structures should be presented

in career relevant context), layout (focus on speaking and listening activities), learner’s centered approach

(a student is a key stakeholder) and facilitating role of the educator. One aim of this study is to assess the

extent to which the services providing by Moodle, like Interactive Content (H5P), Wiki, Database Activities,

Forums, BigBlueButton and others contribute to enhancing four language skills of the learners. The compre-

hensive analysis has revealed some predicaments the course designer has to cope with, for example lack of

background knowledge in the speciﬁc domains or signiﬁcant difference in the level of English language proﬁ-

ciency within one class. Experimental courses are being testing currently in Donetsk Law Institute of Ministry

of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and Kryvyi Rih National University. More than 300 students of different legal

and IT specialisms are engaged in the approbation. It should be taken into account that the article represents

the interim results and the experimental study has development outlook.

1 INTRODUCTION

Educational system faced the challenges of COVID-

19 pandemic and a lot of scholars cope with those

problems. Scientists around the world have stud-

ied the resources which teachers and students have at

their disposal and use effectively on a day-to-day ba-

sis. Thus, Lytovchenko and Voronina (Lytovchenko

and Voronina, 2020) are working to enhance the pro-

cess of online education and the kinds of solutions

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1231-8847

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9474-016X

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0102-0911

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3680-2286

they envisage to use remote learning tool MOOC

(Massive Open Online Courses) at university in quar-

antine. The learning-teaching activities are based on

the courses on edX or Prometheus platforms. The stu-

dents are allowed to choose the course, complete the

tasks and send screenshot conﬁrmation of their in-

termediary progress to the teacher. The researchers

conclude that MOOC courses “. . . compensates for

their limitations and addresses students’ needs more

fully” (Lytovchenko and Voronina, 2020). Mishra

et al. (Mishra et al., 2020) study has revealed that

most commonly used are platforms and resources

ampliﬁed by the particular university for their stu-

dents. As they allege, in India it is SWAYAM plat-

346

Shalatska, H., Zotova-Sadylo, O., Balanaieva, O. and Kravtsov, H.

Organisation of Business English for Speciﬁc Purposes Course on Moodle.

DOI: 10.5220/0010931600003364

In Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology (AET 2020) - Volume 2, pages 346-359

ISBN: 978-989-758-558-6

form which is a group of 32 DTH channels telecast-

ing educational programs e-PG Pathshala run by Uni-

versity Grants Commission, and Mizaram University-

Learning Management system (100% of teachers and

60% of students use online teaching and learning

models on this platform) (Mishra et al., 2020). Oye-

dotun (Oyedotun, 2020) emphasizes the role of Moo-

dle and other platforms in the context of COVID-

19 lockdown. The scholar notices that Moodle

was under-utilized before COVID-19 but became in-

tensely utilized and widely used nowadays (Oyedo-

tun, 2020). There is no underplaying the signiﬁcance

of Google Classroom, Zoom, Skype, YouTube, Face-

book streaming, WhatsApp, and Telegram so on.

This project is based on previous experimental

work which sought to design the special course “En-

glish for Mining Mechanical Engineers” and iden-

tify the most appropriate tasks and assignments for

e-learning, and to assess the efﬁciency of this course

through its contribution to enhance ESP proﬁciency

of mining mechanical engineering students; and to

represent the curriculum of ESP course “English

for Mining Mechanical Engineers” based on Moo-

dle platform for students of mining mechanical en-

gineering and reveal the results of its approbation

(Shalatska et al., 2020). At this stage our research

turns to essential pedagogic issues. The objective of

a current research is to integrate general theoretical

problematic aspects and practical application. Taking

into account all this the purpose of the article is to

explore ESP e-based courses as an effective method

of improving the level of English language proﬁ-

ciency within the framework of Concept of English

Language Development at Universities established by

the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine

in the context of distant learning (MES, 2019); and

to analyze the content peculiarities of ESP courses

“Business Communication Technology for Law Stu-

dents”(DLI) and “Business English” (for Computer

Engineering) (KNU) with an emphasis on their effec-

tiveness to enhance four fundamental language skills

(speaking, reading, listening, writing) under distant

teaching-learning conditions.

1.1 Analysis of Recent Research and

Publications

We have analyzed and consolidated existing experi-

ence and practices at the initial stage of the study.

Latest studies describe the use of Moodle as a suitable

platform to support distance learning courses, assess

its functionality and potential (Abdula et al., 2020;

Mintii, 2020; Nechypurenko and Semerikov, 2017).

Al Nadabi’s study focuses on the use of technology

in assessment, and contributes some guidelines that

can be useful for creating, developing, implementing,

and researching large-scale high-stakes tests on Moo-

dle. According to his research, “Moodle activities are

used in a blended learning approach either as practice

materials or as informal assessment tools for some

course components” (Al Nadabi, 2017). Liu (Liu,

2013) investigates the factors inﬂuencing ESL college

students’ acceptance and use of Moodle in their En-

glish classes. Al-An (Al-An, 2013) identiﬁes factors

behind the usage of a blended learning approach that

could have an effect on students’ achievement, moti-

vation, collaboration and communication as perceived

by students, analyzes obstacles faced by students in

using Moodle in blended learning. Rudnitska and

Drozdova (Rudnitska and Drozdova, 2018) analyze

the problem of ﬁrst-year students’ of economic spe-

cialties self-study organization by means of Moodle

system in the process of foreign language learning.

Yurzhenko (Yurzhenko, 2019) describes and analyses

the work of the future maritime specialists in the e-

course. Ziyad (Ziyad, 2016) examines tertiary edu-

cation students’ acceptance of and engagement in a

Moodle-hosted writing course, measures time spent

in activities, number of downloads from the platform

and number of online feedback comments. Zainud-

din et al. (Zainuddin et al., 2016) analyses the main

tools available on the online platform, and concludes

that Moodle is mainly used as a repository for mate-

rials. Doctoral thesis by del Mar Camacho Mart

ı (del

Mar Camacho Mart

ı, 2006) provides an on-line in-

structional model to train English Language Teachers

in the use of ICT, a general vision on the new instruc-

tional modalities from blended learning to distance

learning, and deals with the difﬁculties of including

ICT into educational management, such as need to

catch-up and update their equipment and training pro-

grams for their teachers and students.

Hutchinson and Waters (Hutchinson and Waters,

1987) suggest that the teaching of English for Speciﬁc

Purposes was born as an evolution that responded to

the needs and focused on the learners. Instead of

learning English for prestige, they learned it for work

reasons. Hutchinson and Waters (Hutchinson and Wa-

ters, 1987) determine the guiding principle of ESP:

“Tell me what you need English for and I will tell

you the English that you need”. Anwar (Anwar, 2020)

notices that “. . . the success of the ESP learning pro-

cess does not only depend on the teaching method

of the teacher-designed but also the acceptance of

student learning methods as well”. With regard to

ESP teacher’s tasks they are similar to any language

teacher’s the main one is to encourage the student to

attend the classes, be active, to make students inter-

Organisation of Business English for Speciﬁc Purposes Course on Moodle

347

ested in writing by involving them in real-world and

interesting activities, provide them with the opportu-

nity to interact in groups, to share their ideas, and to

help each other deal with speciﬁc problems (Sojda,

2015).

Business English or English for Business Pur-

poses is a part of teaching English for a Speciﬁc Pur-

pose. According to Fitria (Fitria, 2019), “the goal of

any Business English Course is to allow its users to

effectively communicate with others in a business en-

vironment, whether that communication is in corre-

spondence, face to face meetings, or other methods”.

In this course, students have particular purpose and

focus for learning the language as they study English

not only to understand everyday speech, but also use

the language in a special context for future career op-

portunities and needs (Fitria, 2019).

Akyel and Yalcin (Akyel and Yalcin, 1991) are en-

gaged in tailoring ESP textbooks for policemen based

on learning needs analyses. They have identiﬁed the

following components of the target needs analyses: 1)

speciﬁcation of the situations in which target learners

will need English; 2) division of the situations into

communicative activities (understanding complaints,

instructing, asking for clariﬁcation etc.); 3) division

of the communicative activities into communicative

functions and micro-skill for ESP situations; 4) deter-

mining what language structures and lexical items the

learner needs for target situation.

In 2010 Day (Day, 2011) introduced two ap-

proaches to ESP course design: English-through and

English-for. With English-for approach, we are teach-

ing learners the speciﬁc language and skills they need

in order to function effectively at work in English.

The starting point is the needs analysis. Therefore

it focuses on very special functional language. For

example, a policeman is not expected to take part in

scientiﬁc conferences and write research reports dur-

ing his/her professional activity so it does not need

to be in his/her course. English-for provides the lan-

guage that a learner needs to be efﬁcient at his work-

ing place. There’s a strong emphasis on functional

language presented in context and skills work, espe-

cially role-plays, to practise it. English-for courses

are challenging enough and time-consuming, teachers

have to be not only language-experts but clearly un-

derstand the learners’ career needs and nuances. With

English-through approach, on the other hand, the fo-

cus is on developing learners’ level of English, and

the ESP ﬁeld simply provides the context. There’s a

strong emphasis on learning vocabulary and reading

articles about the ESP ﬁeld. English-through courses

are easier to create as an educator can follow the ap-

proved syllabus and ﬁll it with professional relevant

materials. But experience conﬁrms that in teaching

practice these two approaches are closely interrelated.

However, notwithstanding the emphasis on spe-

ciﬁc language use in ESP, it should be noted that some

students have a low overall level of English in non-

English speaking countries. In these cases, some of

the course content must be General English and a

course syllabus might include a combination of lan-

guage points such as a review of the basic grammar

alongside such job-speciﬁc situations, participating in

meetings, discussing different products and etc. Also

the different students in one group may have differ-

ent levels of language proﬁciency, but they will have

similar jobs in future. These two factors should be

taken into account by the educator when designing

ESP courses and activities.

In most cases, ESP educators are not experts and

do not have some background knowledge of the tech-

nical, commercial and scientiﬁc areas. Nevertheless,

in recent years the Internet has become an authentic

materials’ source for almost any specialism in ESP;

textbooks often provide additional materials for both

teachers and students such as workbooks, photocopi-

able activities, grammar booklets, the extra materials

include texts, audios, videos, etc. all combine can

be easily adapted for student’s needs. Understanding

their expectations helps teacher to determine the ap-

propriateness of the materials under consideration and

chose the best solution and activities. The vital role in

efﬁcient learning ESP plays correspondence between

what learners wish to get out of the studying and what

the textbook has to offer. Despite there being previ-

ous research about the subject of teaching English for

Speciﬁc Purposes, there is a lack of actual change that

has been made to the approaches of teaching English

for business and career promoting purposes.

In view of all that has been mentioned so far, based

on the previous study’s results and on the teaching ex-

perience of Kryvyi Rih National University (KNU)

and Donetsk Law Institute of Ministry of Internal Af-

fairs of Ukraine (DLI) we may suppose that narrowly

targeted English for speciﬁc purposes (ESP) courses

on Moodle platform could be an effective approach

to organize distant educating process in the context of

the prolonged lockdown.

2 METHODS

During the preparatory phase of the study in the non-

quarantine period of 2019–2020 years we cooperated

with the teachers of DLI and KNU to observe stu-

dents’ activity at classes of Foreign Language, Phi-

losophy of Law, Professional Psychological Training

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

348

of Policemen, Conﬂictology etc. It sought to examine

learners’ needs and the relevant situations in which

English becomes necessary, to assess the level of

communicative competencies and English language

proﬁciency of the students of law and IT engineers.

We have resorted to technological cards to make it

possible to be accurate. Let us not dwell on the inter-

mediate methods, instead, focus on the objectives of

the article.

The experimental experience in our previous re-

search helped to identify the beneﬁts of e-learning

approach to teaching and self-tuition based on ESP

Moodle course. These are (Shalatska et al., 2020):

• technological ﬂexibility: the e-platform pro-

vides easy-to-use, affordable and diverse teach-

ing toolkit; it allows learners to reach the course

content as many times as they need so they get a

deeper understanding of the educational material;

the special course assignments have contributed to

improve English language proﬁciency in reading,

listening, writing and speaking stemming from

complex approach: glossary, texts depositary and

databases provide access to a vast range of in-

formation and allow students to develop skim-

ming and scanning techniques in reading; authen-

tic materials and communication via discussion

forums facilitate foreign language ﬂuency; word-

processing applications allow students to prepare

and edit the writing assignments and then upload

them on the e-platform; multimedia and ﬂash-

based presentations enables to practice technolog-

ical skills along with foreign language skills; on

the other hand, Moodle supports the lectures to

design author’s courses to be fully online, to fo-

cus on learning outcomes but not on seeking for

appropriate textbooks, printing out and replication

materials; in addition, content of courses can be

updated easily;

• adaptability to student’s individual aptitude and

abilities: each learner has his own pace of under-

standing and remembering of the language mate-

rials and Moodle based course makes available to

follow it; students are not limited in number of at-

tempts, there is no time restrictions if only it is not

a reading or listening comprehension test; video

clips can be slowed and replayed repeatedly ac-

cording to student’s individual needs and enhance

their listening skills;

• preventing from premonition of failure: individ-

ual work combined with ongoing online support

to assist the students in his education and to avoid

mishaps and criticism from other group mates

makes it possible to succeed in achieving the an-

ticipated outcome;

• impartial assessment: Moodle grounded course

makes available quick feedback on learner’s ac-

tivity and clear-eyed evaluation; offered tools en-

sure quality of assessment and prevent from cheat-

ing; there are self-check, machine check and tu-

tor’s assessment at participants’ disposal; besides,

the course can provide groupmates’ feedback ex-

change; as we have seen from experience, the last

way of control motivates students to advance their

language skills as they have not only produce own

outcome but be an expert;

• differentiation: Moodle offers some ability to

differentiate tasks and assignments according to

learners’ needs and pace of studying. Multimedia

resources enrich the content and make the learn-

ing environment more interesting and appealing

to the learners.

Two newly designed ESP Moodle-based courses

for prospective IT engineers and police ofﬁcers on

Moodle platform have been developed and piloted in

Donetsk Law Institute of Ministry of Internal Affairs

of Ukraine and Kryvyi Rih National University. The

ESP courses testing was carried out with the primary

objective of meeting learner’s needs and enhancing of

four language skills. Selection and analysis of practi-

cal assignments, texts, video and audio podcasts were

premised on the conceptual framework proposed by

Day (Day, 2011). The author of several ESP text-

books, he has tended to stay around the English for

. . . side (Day, 2011). At the same time he recognizes

that both approaches are ﬁnding their rightful place at

creating ESP courses, it depends on ad hoc features of

a specialism. For example, IT engineers do not need

to come in contact with many unfamiliar people so it

is difﬁcult to imagine a lot of communicative situa-

tions with their participation; hence it appears that the

need to learn functional vocabulary and reading au-

thentic professional texts is a starting point for ESP

designers. On the other hand, police ofﬁcers contact

lots of people every day, so it is to be taken into con-

sideration in drawing up the special course syllabus.

Accordingly, based on the results of theoretical

scientiﬁc treatises and practical analyses of our pre-

vious research we have designed the special courses

“Business Communication Technology for Law Stu-

dents” and “Business English” (for Computer Engi-

neering).

Let us consider their syllabus in terms of the

compatibility with four language domains (speaking,

reading, listening and writing). The course “Business

English” is an optional discipline in the second year of

studying a foreign language in the ﬁeld of “Computer

Engineering” in Kryvyi Rih National University, af-

ter studying the one-year basic course “English lan-

Organisation of Business English for Speciﬁc Purposes Course on Moodle

349

guage”. The structure of the course “Business En-

glish” includes different components that are used

both independently and as successive parts within the

course. Each element of the course is aimed at achiev-

ing a speciﬁc target level of proﬁciency in profes-

sional English. The main goal of the discipline is the

formation of students’ professional language compe-

tencies that will contribute to their efﬁcient function-

ing in the cultural diversity of educational and profes-

sional environments.

ESP syllabus for department of Computer Engi-

neering includes four content modules such as:

1. Work, employees and organizations

2. Production. Marketing. E-commerce

3. Finance. Business etiquette. Personal qualities

4. Culture. Telephone conversations and e-mails.

Business skills

The ﬁrst content module considers Business En-

glish topics such as types of jobs and types of work,

recruitment and selection, ways to improve job op-

portunities and elaborate a personal plan for life-

long career success in IT, people and workplaces,

problems at work, managers, executives and direc-

tors, career advice and stories from information tech-

nology experts, organizations. The second con-

tent module of the syllabus deals with manufactur-

ing and services, competitors and competition, e-

commerce, proﬁtability and unproﬁtability, success

and failure, startup success: how to launch a Tech-

nology Company. The third content module deals

with personal ﬁnance, inﬂation and unemployment,

wrongdoing and corruption, business ethics, projects

and project management, leadership and management

styles. The fourth content module concerns business

across cultures, cross-culture communication, tele-

phoning, business communication, curriculum vitae

(CV) and job applications, meetings, effective con-

versation, oral presentation, agreement and disagree-

ment, e-communication. All content modules are par-

tially based on the units from the book series “Busi-

ness Vocabulary in Use” and include revision of gram-

mar topics such as tenses, time clauses, modal verbs,

inﬁnitive, gerund, conditional sentences, passive, re-

ported speech, etc.

In developing the Business English course we

used authentic texts related to employee motivation,

effective leadership, competitive advantage, and a se-

ries of professional topics. The professional repre-

sentative topics for an ESP syllabus focus on func-

tional areas – language for recommending, express-

ing opinions, giving advice, showing agreement, etc.

The tasks and activities were selected for the purpose

to satisfy the emerging need for enhancing such skills

as presentation techniques, negotiating, meeting skills

of future specialists. The time allotted to Business

English (one class per two weeks) is not enough for

teachers to cover the whole content. As a result, some

points are left uncovered. To overcome this problem,

we suggest using Moodle course and where possible,

leave reading and writing tasks (individual and col-

laborative work) for self-study or homework on this

platform. According to quarantine requirements stu-

dent talking time is organized on Google Meet, which

ensures plenty of opportunities for speaking practice

and discussion PowerPoint presentations.

Accordingly, based on the results of the ob-

servation, students’ and tutors’ interviews we

have designed another special course “Business

Communication Technology for Law Students”

(https://elearning.dli.donetsk.ua/course/view.php?id=

516#section-0). The course is represented on the

e-learning site of Donetsk Law Institute on Moodle

platform. 258 students of different legal specialisms

are engaged in its approbation. It is intended for

advanced students specializing in criminal police,

preventive activities, pre-trial investigation, law en-

forcement activity and other related specialisms. The

purposes of the course have been established in accor-

dance with the criteria of authenticity, purposiveness

of the language, and professional appropriateness

of the content. This therefore corresponds fully to

English-through and English-for approaches. The

program of the course is targeted at the wide range of

students of legal specialisms of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th

years of studying. It stems from their willingness and

readiness to adopt learning material and to understand

its applicability in their career context. We have in

mind the proper level of professional knowledge and

also their level of language proﬁciency. Besides,

the ESP course demands motivation, dedication and

responsiveness from the students. The main objective

of the special course is to improve students’ reading,

listening, writing and speaking skills within profes-

sional context. The course is structured at different

levels of proﬁciency and our program integrates the

skills in the professional area into foreign language

proﬁciency.

Let us detail the learning outcomes according to

the language domains. By the end of the course stu-

dents should:

• reveal subject-speciﬁc language from a range of

authentic sources;

• communicate about legal topics;

• read and comprehend speciﬁc legal texts, course

brochures and job advertisements;

• differentiate and exploit various sources of infor-

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

350

mation (written, spoken and video);

• be aware of principles of writing study- and work-

related letters;

The special course “Business Communication

Technology for Law Students” consists of ten topical

units (TU), which are summarized here.

Syllabus of special course “Business Communica-

tion Technology for Law Students”:

TU 1. “Importance of Communications Skills for Po-

lice Ofﬁcer’s Career”; by the end of this unit

students will be able to: acknowledge the need

to apply effective communication in practice

of law enforcement activities; understand top-

ical vocabulary and learn to use it in an appro-

priate context; support topical discussion.

TU 2. “Technique of Oral and Written Professional

Communication”; learning outcomes: to get

acquainted with communicative techniques,

identify the key sentence (topic sentence) in a

paragraph, write an appropriate CV.

TU 3. “Conﬂict Resolution Technics for Dealing

with Conﬂicts”; learning outcomes: to collect

and organize information, develop an under-

standing of authentic topical video and carry

out practical activity in accordance with a cur-

rent legislation.

TU 4. “Technique of Business Discussion with a

View to Get Necessary Information”; learn-

ing outcomes: to master the information of

the topical text, make up a plan using the key-

words and phrases, annotate the texts.

TU 5. “Etiquette and Code of Ethics for law ofﬁ-

cers”; learning outcomes: expound critical

thinking abilities and cultivate work ethics, im-

prove listening skills; select and summarize

the important information.

TU 6. “Interrogation of Witnesses and Suspects”;

learning outcomes: exercise skills of summing

up the video information, summarize the infor-

mation, and make up constructive dialogues.

TU 7. “Collaboration with Civil Society and Preven-

tive communication”; learning outcomes: to

be aware of exploiting iron in the modern

world, creation and excavation of iron ore de-

posits, adopt the information from video, draft

the report of the survey.

TU 8. “Law ofﬁcer’s positive image formation”;

learning outcomes: to analyze the information

of the video, speak conﬁdently about the key

terms connected with positive image of law of-

ﬁcers; plan a presentation on the topical video.

TU 9. “Intercultural Business Communication Tech-

nique”; learning outcomes: to understand the

elements of culture and intercultural com-

munication that impact business interactions

(based on the video), analyze a written text in

terms of layout, genre, functional types, to en-

hance your skills in the dimensions of intercul-

tural competence.

TU 10. “Communication with Mass Media”; learn-

ing outcomes: to discuss the political, legal,

and economic inﬂuence of media industries

and the balance between business interests and

serving the public, analyze media messages

and their impact on society and the individ-

ual through a critical lens and recognize the

purpose and inﬂuence of different media mes-

sages on diverse audiences.

Vocabulary plays a crucial role in ESP courses. It

is important to prepare the word-list of target vocabu-

lary previously and add to about 25-30% of non-target

lexis that is in the text or video. Ready-made vocab-

ulary provides a good basis from which to further re-

ﬁne the text / video and makes it possible to under-

stand clearly (to select) what new words to focus on.

The ESP course “Business Communication Technol-

ogy for Law Students” on Moodle platform provides

an opportunity to enrich topical vocabulary of the stu-

dents drawing up Glossary. All the stakeholders are

free to add new items, whether they are target, non-

target or emergent vocabulary items (emergent vocab-

ulary occurs unplanned during the lesson or working

with the text). Each topic of the course contains Glos-

sary, its core part is prepared beforehand by the tutor

and experience has shown that about 40-50% of new

words are added by trainees.

The Business English course for Computer Engi-

neers also includes Glossary on the main page which

is called “Business English Vocabulary”. Student can

easily add to and ﬁnd in this Glossary the most com-

mon words and Business phrases, with deﬁnitions. In

the process of creating an entry, they have to ﬁnd the

deﬁnition of a new word on the Internet and give an

example of using it in an article or a living conversa-

tion. Each entry appears with the author’s name and

the teacher can rate it. The work on creating a com-

mon glossary of the student group supports collab-

orative work, expands business vocabulary, develops

the ability to analyze data, highlight the main thing,

sort information, also enhances proﬁciency in reading

and writing. This Glossary combines and links two

approaches English-through and English-for since

the dictionary can contain not only professionally-

oriented vocabulary but also words that are found out-

side the future work environment.

Organisation of Business English for Speciﬁc Purposes Course on Moodle

351

Designing practical video and reading exercises

is fully in line with the English-for approach. The

source of vocabulary in the course is the authen-

tic reading and listening texts given from real po-

lice experiences and training courses for policemen

in Canada. As regards the assignments to test un-

derstanding of those videos and texts, their wording

comply with English-through approach, for example,

watch the video and complete the notes below with

the appropriate words; put these terms in the order

they appear in the video; match the words to their

meanings etc. One of the exercises there is on ﬁg-

ure 1.

We are working on listening skills based on au-

thentic professional oriented material. This approach

works well with drilling exercises aimed to remem-

ber the words, collocations or constructions. At the

next stage students need to exploit the collocation

in real communication. So it makes sense that each

unit of the course concludes with a communicative

task. Taking into account opportunities which Moo-

dle provides and speciﬁc circumstances of e-learning

we have developed the communicative situations on

the basis of Forum module (ﬁgure 2), which makes it

possible to organize asynchronous discussions lasting

for limited by the teacher period of time.

It is really convenient for learners because they do

not have to write their view at once, there is some time

to think about and frame their thoughts. Successful

online interaction on Moodle forums allows students

to drill not just writing skills but the ability to incor-

porate content into higher levels of thinking, namely

critical thinking. There are a few types of forums,

for example standard one – every participant is able

to start his/her own discussion or otherwise continue

someone else discussion, another type – the tutor can

limit the time of debates, the number of replies, can

allow to upload the ﬁles if it supports the learner’s

point of view. By and large, experience supports this

method. It motivates students to communicate with

each other, they do not pay attention if the opponent

is the 4th or the 2nd year student, they tolerate any

other distinctions and the only thing that makes sense

is to ﬁnd support for their position and ﬁnd the right

words to defend their point of view. The role of a

tutor is to come up with the suitable career oriented

topic to discuss, to frame the task clearly and facili-

tate the learners’ discussion in the proper context. For

example, the topic is: How Soft Skills in Police Can

Help Win the Day; the offered communicative situ-

ation is: Did you know that some of the skills de-

manded of police ofﬁcers from society include criti-

cal thinking, conﬂict resolution, trust-building, adapt-

ability and active listening?; the instruction is: How

does communicative approach affect community re-

lations? Write 3–5 sentences. Try to reply to your

group mates’ ideas (https://elearning.dli.donetsk.ua/

mod/forum/view.php?id=20499). English-for ap-

proach is appropriate to make up such tasks. It is all

needs-based. It focuses on the language and com-

municative skills that are relevant to the learner’s

prospective career situations. Different types of fo-

rums can compensate a lack of live communication,

to a certain extent.

Each discussion topic introduced in the course

Business English for Computer Engineers (ﬁgure 3)

includes a video clip selected by the teacher and

several questions for students (http://mlib.knu.edu.ua/

course/view.php?id=20507). We use the standard fo-

rum for general use with open discussion. The teacher

and manager have permission to rate student replies.

This activity created according to the English-for ap-

proach and promotes effective written communica-

tion, drills reading and listening skills.

A wiki is a very popular and fast method for cre-

ating content or documents as a group. Teachers can

post new assignments for students to submit and has

editorial control. Wiki tool is used in Business En-

glish course for the following purposes:

• students’ collaboration; Wikis provide inter-

classroom collaboration, cross-classroom collab-

oration, i.e. students can work collaboratively on

projects, creating a class product;

• audience extension; work can be organized in dif-

ferent ways, it can be done individually (everyone

has their own wiki which only they can edit) or

collaboratively (everyone being able to edit it). A

teacher can give a task to one or two students, en-

gage all group in work or even several groups the

same specialty;

• facilitation of student work, i.e. they can easily

distribute work between group mates. The wiki

enables editing of an existing document in a really

meaningful way, get feedback and allows integra-

tion with the work of others;

• practice and improvement of writing skills; Wikis

enhance the process of student writing by allow-

ing them to post as much, and as often as needed.

It enables teachers to view drafts contributes to

effectively assessing student development in writ-

ing;

• reﬂection and generalization of knowledge; Wikis

also provides a space for students to construct and

reconstruct knowledge.

The assignments are posted on Moodle using the

Wiki tool for course Business English for Computer

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

352

Figure 1: Example of Exercise based on English-through approach.

Figure 2: Forum on the theme of “Importance of Communication Skills for Police Ofﬁcer’s career”.

Engineers. Students have to ﬁnd out differences

between Resume, CV and Bio-Data, complete the

chart (ﬁgure 4), list types of resume, and prepare

tips for making an effective Resume, CV and Bio-

Data (http://mlib.knu.edu.ua/mod/wiki/view.php?id=

16201). These papers are the most typical documents

to use in the hiring process, possess their own impor-

tance and specialty, most of the students are confused

with what is the difference between them. This as-

signment is an example of cross-classroom collabora-

tion, everyone being able to edit this chart, ﬁll empty

cells, in this way students from two groups have op-

portunities to work together.

Wiki Jobs in IT is posted on Moodle within

studying the ﬁrst content module “Work, employ-

ees, and organizations”. IT professionals help com-

panies maintain their digital infrastructure, provide

troubleshooting assistance to technology consumers,

keep data security procedures. Students have to pro-

vide examples of IT jobs that help them ﬁnd the

right career path that suits their interests, skills, and

goals. The assignment involves searching for infor-

mation on average salaries, typical duties, and re-

quirements for IT professionals. In the process of

completing this assignment or any other Wiki, stu-

dents create multiple drafts while improving their

writing, because of the way multiple authors’ com-

ment and change texts. In the Wiki, multiple drafts

Organisation of Business English for Speciﬁc Purposes Course on Moodle

353

Figure 3: Forums on the course Business English for Computer Engineers.

Figure 4: Example of Wiki assignment.

can be easily viewed through the revision cycle

in the page history (http://mlib.knu.edu.ua/mod/wiki/

history.php?pageid=53&page=0). Figure 5 provides

a guide to changes the student made, a record of time

and date, the process of writing that students under-

took, and a history of all versions.

Another Wiki assignment deals with the topic

Job Interview (http://mlib.knu.edu.ua/mod/wiki/view.

php?id=16205). Students have to know its types,

how to handle a job interview, which is an impor-

tant part of employment, what tips they should have

in mind when they apply for a particular job, pecu-

liarities of job interview etiquette, and be ready for

the most common questions. This assignment is an

example of English-for approach and online inter-

classroom collaboration, students edit this online doc-

ument, distribute work between group mates, make a

table of content, then look for the necessary informa-

tion, place it according to sections, and ﬁnally create

a class product.

The database activity (ﬁgure 6) on Moodle plat-

form allows students to independently build a bank

of record entries about topics of the Business English

course for Computer Engineers (http://mlib.knu.edu.

ua/mod/data/view.php?id=16210). The structure of

the entry is deﬁned by the teacher and include text,

slide, URL with useful resource, and chart. This

activity allows students to search the collection of

records within the course, evaluate them and left their

comments on entries. Efﬁcient use of this activity

in the context of the English-for approach promotes

developing student reading and writing skills. Also,

these assignments develops critical thinking and ini-

tiative, the ability to search and analyze data, facilitate

collaboration, and provide access to a piece of new in-

formation.

On the other hand, English-through approach is

equally efﬁcient. Let us consider the example of

that, while policemen are ﬁghting crime and handling

emergencies they probably come across many English

speakers. Some may commit crimes, while others

may be victims of crime. In both cases, police of-

ﬁcers need to ask and answer questions in English.

Their job may also require them to speak to English

speaking witnesses (https://elearning.dli.donetsk.ua/

mod/quiz). In the course “Business Communication

Technology for Law Students” the trainees are offered

to put the words in the right order to get the ques-

tion or replies necessary to provide some information

for English speaking tourists, ask for some identiﬁca-

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354

Figure 5: Revisions on the page History.

Figure 6: Database for Business Language Course. The entry “The phone etiquette”.

tion or pull people over. This type of tasks includes

three exercises from 8 to 10 questions and replies

each. While the learners are putting the words in

the right order, they are learning important career ori-

ented phrases and collocation. We have used English-

through approach to revise the grammar rules but used

Organisation of Business English for Speciﬁc Purposes Course on Moodle

355

functional lexis. This proves once again that combin-

ing and mixing of English-for and English-through

approaches are efﬁcient in teaching ESP courses.

Another tool Moodle provides to teach ESP

courses effectively is Interactive content (H5P). It en-

ables the tutor to create interactive videos, question

sets, drag and drop questions and many others. In

addition to diversifying and makes bright the process

of learning, interactive activities emphasize the rele-

vance of professional lexis, videos and texts the teach-

ers have selected for ESP course (ﬁgure 7).

We are working on listening skills by giving the

students enough challenging things to do; they can-

not listen to the text again and again but have to catch

the point at once. All of these things could conceiv-

ably be done if the learners are prepared and familiar

with the lexis. In interactive content activities ESP

language are professional oriented. They will apply

this knowledge in the future career (https://elearning.

dli.donetsk.ua/mod/hvp/view.php?id=33168); every-

one will take a job interview. In addition listening ex-

ercises are appropriate in both teaching-learning mod-

els (online or in-class). If the listening exercises are

targeted on the more detailed learning the lexis and

text analysis, the students can access to the listen-

ing and video material without limitation, they can

control the mode of playback – pause, stop, or use

rewinds the video. Different forms of learning, re-

membering and recalling are at teacher’s and student’s

disposal due to applying of Moodle.

In addition, there are other options of online learn-

ing run on the Moodle platform. We have worked

out assignments, quizzes and exercises for the Moo-

dle course, which are available to the students online,

and can be accessed from anywhere. The participants

of the experiment have completed the same tasks dur-

ing blended and traditional classes that have shown

the difference between paper and computerized tests.

When completing a quiz or assignment on Moodle

platform, the students receive immediate feedback

on their answers, identify their mistakes, re-attempt

quizzes (pass the test once more time) or resubmit

the assignment. The special course includes a great

variety of activities. The exercises have been cate-

gorized according to English-for and English-through

approaches and they have positive inﬂuence on En-

glish language proﬁciency.

Video conferencing helps compensate for the lack

of live communication during a lockdown and we

use it as an additional tool to Moodle within com-

plex training Computer Engineers on Business En-

glish course. Due to Google Meet educators can

see on the screen the whole student group, conduct

discussions, and develop speaking skills. When do-

ing distance learning video conferencing helps us to

check student’s pronunciation and communicate with

them more clearly with facial expressions, and intona-

tion. Educators or students can present their screen or

a speciﬁc window in Google meet, share information

such as documents, charts, tables, photos and etc.

Figure 8 provides one of the examples of Google

Meet implementation in online teaching Business En-

glish course for Computer Engineers. The student

shares his screen with the PowerPoint presentation on

the topic “The Essential Rules of Phone Etiquette”.

The process of preparing slides increases the visual

impact of information, helps students to focus on a

particular topic, analyze and synthesize the material.

The question and answer session begins after the stu-

dent’s public presentation of the slides. Such activ-

ities are proposed in relation to the English-for ap-

proach facilitate to evolve self-conﬁdence, creativity,

listening and speaking skills.

BigBlueButton makes it possible to design the

links on video online classes in real time in the Moo-

dle course immediately. The web-conferences create

an illusion of real presence in the classroom which

has a positive impact on the learners’ attitude to ed-

ucational process, they expand bilateral cooperation

of students and tutors giving the opportunity to ask

for clear explanations and getting feedback. Big-

BlueButton offers some ad hoc options, for example,

the teacher can determine the time range of joining

the BigBlueButton conference beforehand and note it

into the students’ timetable (calendar), note the name

and description of a coming lesson. Moodle service

sends messages to every student enrolled the course

automatically. The learners accede to the web-class

easily with no special links or invitations. The only

thing they need to do is to enter the course and press

the BigBlueButton. One more feature of this Moodle

tool is capability to facilitate two or even more con-

ference halls simultaneously.

Taken together, these results suggest that Moodle

can be an ideal platform for promoting efﬁcient dis-

tant studying and improving language skills because

it creates multi-tool learning environment that is con-

venient to use by teachers and students as well.

3 CONCLUSIONS AND

PROSPECTS FOR FURTHER

RESEARCH

The present study was designed to examine the scope

of ESP e-based courses “Business Communication

Technology for Law Students” (DLI) and “Business

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

356

Figure 7: Interactive video; the topic “Police interview questions and answers” (Interactive Content).

Figure 8: PowerPoint presentation on Google Meet.

English” (KNU), and investigate the options of Moo-

dle platform in order to improve English language

proﬁciency of prospective law enforcement ofﬁcers

and IT engineers. Data from this study reveal that

professional oriented special courses on Moodle plat-

form raise the possibility of teaching four language

skills (speaking, writing, listening and reading) in

online mode during the lockdown period and be-

yond. The investigation has explored the relation-

ship between four language skills’ advancement and

apparatus provided by Moodle and some other re-

sources like Google for instance. To this extent, Video

conferences based on BigBlueButton (Moodle) and

other Internet platforms offer a broad range of op-

portunities to drill speaking even in distant teach-

ing/learning mode. Interactive content (H5P) encour-

ages the course designer to create interactive videos,

questions sets, drag and drop questions and so on. Be-

sides the interactive activities make the educating pro-

cess bright, they have a substantial inﬂuence on listen-

ing, reading and writing skills’ development. The ap-

propriate use of different kinds of Forums, Wiki and

Database activities on Moodle platform in the con-

text of English-for approach brings along enhancing

of learner’s reading and writing skills. We can con-

clude that Wiki and Forums services encourage stu-

dents to share their thoughts and views more freely

coping with their fears and uncertainty.

Taken together, these results suggest that the spe-

cial courses on Moodle platform largely compensate

impossibility of face-to-face communication with the

teacher or in-class activities. The learners are able to

develop and advance their speaking, listening, writing

and reading skills according four language domains

due to the tools and abilities that Moodle platform

provides. This study has set out guidelines to be fol-

lowed while tailoring the ESP Moodle course. The

most signiﬁcant of these principles are:

• outcome-oriented approach – focusing on mean-

ing and content before form; the materials should

be not only authentic but career relevant; if only

the outcome is applicable in real professional ac-

tivity it makes sense; the practicability is impor-

tant incentive to learn the foreign language;

• functional language – mainstreaming language

(lexical sets, collocations, grammar structures)

into context using a career relevant situations, new

language phenomena are easier to remember;

• layout – an increased focus on speaking and lis-

tening skills than writing and reading;

Organisation of Business English for Speciﬁc Purposes Course on Moodle

357

• learner’s centered approach – learners are en-

gaged in interaction and informative communica-

tion as regards ﬁlling of the lesson’s content; for

example, the students are asked to prepare the pre-

sentation or questions to discuss as a home task,

they have to select the material, come up with

their ideas to demonstrate it and attract the group

mates’ attention so they try the teacher’s role on

accordingly;

• facilitating – a prominent reduction of teacher’s

explanations or his virtual absence changes the

role of the teacher from a lecturer to co-facilitator;

this, in turn, is linked with the requirement to de-

ﬁne recommendations and instructions clearly and

meaningful.

The results of our study add to the rapidly expand-

ing ﬁeld of e-learning on Moodle platform. The em-

pirical ﬁndings in this research provide a new under-

standing of narrowly focused approach to designing

of ESP Moodle-based courses and their implementa-

tion in the context of distant learning/teaching pro-

cess under pandemic threatening. The available op-

tions and practicalities of Moodle platform have been

analysed. Consequently, we have concluded that ESP

courses on Moodle platform are able to replenish to

some extent the lack of traditional in-class education

due to diversity of instruments and activities provid-

ing by Moodle and other on-line resources. Moo-

dle can be an ideal platform to promote efﬁcient dis-

tant under-facilitation of the teacher or self-studying

courses because it creates multi-tool learning environ-

ment that is convenient to be used by teachers and stu-

dents as well.

It is worth noting, the paper presents the interme-

diate results of the experiment. It is expected to get

qualitative and quantitative analysis of students’ lan-

guage proﬁciency by the end of this year. It is planned

to compare the results of the students in 2018–2019

when they regularly attended university classes and in

2020–2021 when educational process was disrupted

by lockdowns. This would be a fruitful area for fur-

ther work.

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