O n f e r e n c e

Marina Kogan, Nina Popova
 
St Petersburg State Polytechnical University, St Petersburg, Russia 
[e-mail], [e-mail]  
Alternative Approaches to Fulfilling CALL Tasks as a Way of 
Stimulating Communication among Foreign Language Learners 
Bio data 
Marina Kogan,
Ph.D., Associate Prof., a full time member of Linguistics and Cross-
Cultural Dep. at SPbSPU; 20 years experience in teaching General English, ESP, about 60 
published papers; participated in a number of All-Russia and international conferences. 
Research interests: teaching English as a foreign language, computer assisted language 
learning.
Nina Popova,
Ph.D in Philology, Doctoral degree in Foreign Language Teaching (2012), 
Professor at SPbSPU; Managing Editor of 
Teaching Methodology in Higher Education
journal. 30 year experience in General English, ESP, stylistics; about 120 published 
papers; participated in a number of All-Russia and international conferences. In 1991-92 
spent a year at the University of Nottingham graduating as Master of English Language in 
Literary Studies. Research interests: interdisciplinary links, CALL, course design. 
Abstract 
ESP course design at higher school institutions in present day Russia is quite a challenge 
because it has to meet the recently adopted new National Educational Standard 
requirements and take into account the most important trends in the sphere of education 
worldwide. Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) should become an irreplaceable 
part of the new syllabi in accordance with the above standards but requires clarifying a 
number of points.
The paper focuses on an alternative approach principle which could help to select CALL 
tasks for the ESP course and become a solution to some challenges of modern HE 
system. An important condition for studying professionally oriented textual learning 
material for professional competence formation is conducting actualization of linguistic
material in specially created CALL tasks, for example, on-line vocabulary search, use of 
on-line corpora for training professionally-oriented collocations, machine-translated text 
post-editing, etc. Doing the assignments students are encouraged to work interactively 
and compare the most interesting and useful options of electronic resources. Comparison 
of the ICT resources used to prepare homework in pair work or classroom discussion of
ICT options was found to be beneficial for the formation of CALL-oriented communicative 
learner competence. 
The preliminary condition for the positive effect of implementing alternative CALL task 
approach is that higher school learners majoring in technology are advanced computer 
users and are motivated to discuss the pros and cons of the resources used. This results 
in activating their analytical abilities and foreign language speaking skills in classroom 
discussions. The research into this alternative approach principle in educational practice 
seems to be beneficial in higher school foreign language teaching and learning. It will be 
methodologically substantiated drawing on our daily practice with proper examples of 
CALL tasks given and analyzed. 

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-202- 
2014 CALL Conference 
LINGUAPOLIS
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