O n f e r e n c e

Short paper 
ESP course design at higher school institutions is quite a challenge, because it has to 
meet the National Educational Standard requirements and take into account the most 
important trends in the sphere of education worldwide, such as lifelong learning. 
Widespread ICT use in the modern world including education and language learning 
might seem a solution to the above problems, but we realize that they entail a number 
of new uncertainties. A great variety of open resources bring up the task of their proper 
selection for particular language courses and activities, and their communicative potential 
needs applying serious methodological and pedagogical efforts for its realization in the 
foreign language classroom environment.
Besides that, selection of electronic resources is complicated due to the fact that few of 
them have already been properly evaluated in terms of their methodological significance 
for the ESP course design in an institutional context. Due to the fact that the resources 
differ in the degree of complexity involved, it is vital to attempt grading them according 
to this parameter for the sake of coming out with substantiated recommendations for our 
colleagues. The complexity of some resources, such as on-line corpora, is an obstacle in 
its own right to their wide integration into ESP courses despite multiple arguments and 
examples of benefits of using corpora in language teaching (e.g., Boulton, 2011). We 
believe that an alternative approach principle applied to fulfilling CALL tasks could 
become a good criterion for including them into the ESP course because it provides 
grounds for discussion and ways of solution to some of the listed problems.
Generally, acquisition and further development of professional foreign language 
competence among higher school learners is important at all stages of their education, 
with master degree programs being especially challenging. It is explained by the fact that 
postgraduate students are learning a foreign language for the last time in the 
institutional context, preparing for its further use in scientific, professional and life 
contexts, i.e. lifelong learning.
Due to the fact that, according to contemporary views, interactive ways of learning any 
discipline are more beneficial for students, we underline the significance of peer 
communication as means of mastering CALL environment, regardless of task complexity 
level. Having noticed that alternative approaches to fulfilling CALL tasks do stimulate 
discussion among learners, we decided to try using this alternative approach principle as 
unifying for the consideration of several CALL tasks, which were tested and approved by 
us in the course of English language studies as part of master curricula implemented in 
Peter the Great State Polytechnic University of St. Petersburg. As soon as the authors 
have got the experience of teaching both linguists and non-linguistic majors, this paper is 
not aimed at specifying the existing difference between both categories of students, but, 
rather, accentuating common features of their CALL-competence acquisition. Even 
though it was very difficult to choose the CALL-tasks to prove the feasibility of the above 
principle, we hope that the six tasks, enumerated by us according to their degree of 
estimated difficulty, will be exemplary enough for the illustration of our intention to 
prepare postgraduates for their professional and scientific practice in the best possible 
way.
Now let us give practice-oriented examples of alternative CALL-task modes, starting from