The infrastructure of the class – the use of technology

learning EU English for specific purposes. Only some of them realise the specificity of the EU language during the course.

The teacher-researchers underscored the importance of involving the Internet in the context of the teaching material compilation. The EU professionals related the elements of their specific areas of employment to the knowledge of relevant websites, terminology databases, software and electronic dictionaries in the same way. Szonja, the interpreting professional elaborates on the idea of ‘Internet sources awareness’ as follows:

It has just crossed my mind that it is extremely important to know where to look for things. It is fine that things change very quickly, but it is mandatory for professionals to have the knowledge of which websites contain the most relevant and most up-to-date information they need. There are public language databases, they are accessible to everyone. The EUR-lex website contains the legislation multilingually. I would definitely teach these things to those who learn this subject. And naturally, the websites of the EU institutions should be taught, looking up things on the site of the Parliament, or that of the Council. (Szonja, EUPR/3)

It is important to note that many students, when asked about their preferred activities or tasks, mentioned that they liked the types of activities, which involved the use of the Internet.

They enjoyed doing research on the Internet on any kind of topic. Nowadays the Internet is the primary source of information in all kinds of context. The EU course and its teaching materials, therefore, unavoidably use it to match the students’ expectations to deliver teaching in a modern manner. Alexa’s excerpt illustrates well why students think the use of the Internet is crucial for the course:

The Internet is the thesaurus of everything, you can find all the information you need depending on the depth of your quest. You can find the EU institutions there and the answers to many of our questions on this topic. Moreover, if we want to dig deeper, we can use the online scientific electronic libraries. Everything is there. (Alexa, S/7)

Similar Internet-related remarks were made by the UTE teachers when their opinion was requested about their students’ preferred activities and learning strategies. Natali, the French teacher complements in a few words the benefits of the Internet by emphasising the importance of having a technically well-furnished class:

They like browsing the Internet for particular pieces of information. I am lucky that the course takes place in the computer room. I prepare videos to be watched and listened to.

When they made a presentation, they also included some kind of video too because they like to listen to real language use. Then we could discuss these videos and there were debates on them, so this is a kind of complex activity. (Natali, T/2)

The same issue was commented by Lea, a teacher-researcher, from the point of view of the teachers’ difficulty. Lea thinks it is important to have the class in a computer room. She also refers briefly to the Internet as the primary source of the teaching material for teachers who lack full expertise on the EU:

One of the difficulties of the teacher of an EU English class is the lack of expertise andinsufficient background knowledge of the subject. The information they can find on theInternet can be of great help. If the teacher does not want to choose the material resources from the Internet, it can be difficult to know where to turn to get interesting materials. (Lea, TR/2)

A similar problem was described by Hanna, the teacher-researcher at Corvinus University, who placed equal importance on the use of the Internet and detailed her answer by mentioning the type of information which can be regarded as a useful source for the EU course:

I think the EU English teacher is lucky because she will find loads of information on the Internet. The official documents of the EU are there, the regulations, the tenders, and the call for proposals. Each EU institution uploads its own information. The teacher can choose a topic or a text from there by taking the learners’ subject expertise into account.

There are many videos, videos of press conferences, for instance. On many occasions, the transcripts of the videos can be found there as well. There is a thing called Europe by Satellite and another channel, which is called the Euronews. So based on the language level of the learners, the teacher can compile the teaching materials from the Internet.

(Hanna, TR/3)

The communication channels used in the target situation connect members of the same discourse community. Thus, they can be easily involved in exchanging information and correspondence with each other. This points towards a changing role of the teacher, which is to make students fully embrace technology in learning by showing them where to find the information they need concerning EU topics, and at the same time, using technology to teach in the classroom.