Developing Professional Foreign Language Skills through Webinars as Online Tool

¹ Institute of Linguistics and Intercultural communication, National Research Technical University, Irkutsk, Russia
² Faculty of Service and Advertising, Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk, Russia
³ Faculty of Management, Logistics and Customs Affairs, Irkutsk State Railway Engineering University, Irkutsk, Russia

^* Corresponding author: s_fetisova@mail.ru

Abstract

This work is devoted to the technology of teaching students to organize and conduct webinars as contributing to their motivation and improving their performance when developing professional foreign language skills. Utilizing webinars encompasses both turning the focus from the teacher-centered approach toward learner-centered one and studying outside the classroom effectively. The research presented was carried out at two universities in Irkutsk, Russia: Irkutsk State Linguistic University (2014-2015) and Irkutsk State University (2017). 45 students of the Universities with the major “Advertising and Public Relations” were the participants of the learning experiment. The sign test, Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon U-test, were employed to confirm the results of the testing.