Digital Educational Resources as a Component of Linguistic Environment Basis for ESP Blended Learning

Abstract

The augmentation of ESP state of the art and benchmarking, as an instrument of improving the quality of college students training, has become the basis for the report. The attempt to find out and analyze the hindering obstacles on the way of this process and search for efficient boosters of its improvement has resulted in singling out such component of ESP teaching and learning linguistic environment as students’ individual work in the college resource centre (CRS). The aim of the report deals with the principal factors of the arrangement, and, in particular, its ‘saturation’ with self-study materials. The first results of the search resulted in a substantial change of teaching/learning paradigm at the college with its shift towards virtual educational reality which caused purposeful reconsideration of class-room teaching techniques, profound alterations in selection and use of individual self-paced learning materials in CRC. The conclusions of a semester-long experience are inspiring though it is obvious that more objective criteria of control and assessment of students’ progress in mastering ESP competences are required urgently.