ENGINEERING STUDENTS’ MOBILE TECHNOLOGY PREFERENCES - TOWARDS ECLECTICISM IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING
ENGINEERING STUDENTS’ MOBILE TECHNOLOGY PREFERENCES - TOWARDS ECLECTICISM IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Summary/Abstract: Mobile technology in all its aspects has become part of the instructional process at a fast pace in most countries of the world lately. Research has already analyzed its advantages and limitations from various perspectives, such as the students’, the teacher/course designer’s and other stakeholders’, as there are both benefits and risks in using it. The aim of the paper is therefore to investigate the preferences of Romanian engineering students in terms of mobile technology using, both for academic study in general and for foreign language learning in particular, as well as for personal purposes outside faculty, including job connected ones, with a view to enhancing the efficiency of foreign language courses for scientific and technical purposes, by appropriately integrating such means - in a methodological approach based on a communicative core and comprising further components that render it a more complex, eclectic character, based on well-justified options from the pedagogical viewpoint. A range of data collecting instruments have been designed and implemented to investigate this aspect, ranging from Students Questionnaires, through focus groups and up to interviewing most inventive/best mobile technology users per each group of students in the sample. Another aim of the research has been to enhance the trainees’ awareness as regards the advantages, but also the equally possible shortcomings, of using mobile technology in various manners and to provide them support in embedding such mobile technology uses in their repertory of (language) learning strategies, with a view to fostering their post-course studying autonomy. Findings are discussed in terms of their influence upon the teaching/materials design options, and specifically created tasks in this respect are briefly suggested.

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