Impact of technology on speaking and writing skills of masters in engineering esp learning

Dissatisfaction of Ukrainian employers with the FL performance of engineers in the workplace reveals the gap between ESP university instructions and the expectations of employers. This gap provides opportunities for additional research to examine materials and technology that can benefit engineering student performance in Business English for Specific Purposes course which shares the characteristics with General English, English for Specific Purposes, Business English and is considered the most difficult ESP subset both for teaching and learning. In this paper, we investigate the influence of engineering podcasts chosen through needs analysis and online technical writing materials on students’ speaking and writing skills in a profession-based context. To be more specific, we examined which of the two sub-skills was acquired with better progress. This study followed two groups of Masters majoring in Agricultural Engineering and Electrical Engineering and Energy (n = 115) in Ukraine through 2020/21. To design the course, we conveyed a two-phase questionnaire to examine engineering students’ opinions on the necessity of acquiring four basic skills and sub-skills. After having integrated English podcasts for engineers by Olivia Augustin, the engineering career coach podcasts and technical writing videos with the experimental group both groups were tested at the end of the course. To assess the statistical difference between the groups Pearson criterion in Excel was used. The research results showed that students highlighted speaking and writing skills as the main challenges. Technical writing skills were enhanced by using technology in Business English for Engineering Purposes classroom. The experiment has demonstrated that there is no significant difference in improving speaking skills in the control and experimental groups. Further research should consider other effective strategies for improving students’ speaking performance in Business English for Engineering Purposes.