ESP for biotechnology purposes in Serbian higher education: the skills required and blended learning environment.

Abstract

Biotechnology engineering is a complex domain that explores the use of living systems and organisms to develop products or any technological application that uses biological systems and living organisms to make or modify products or processes for specific use in the production of raw food, feed, and food processing. English as a foreign language in biotechnology engineering reflects the complexity in terms of content knowledge, language skills, and strategies characteristic of biotechnology. The article focuses on the knowledge and skills a biotechnology engineer should acquire with the emphasis on communicative language ability in English as a foreign language for specific purposes, as well as on the gains and obstacles of a blended learning language environment from the perspective of a Serbian higher education setting. Additionally, small-scale research was carried out to examine the potential differences in the levels of biotechnology undergraduate students' communicative language ability in two language learning environments - blended language learning and face-to-face language instruction in prepandemic and pandemic times. The obtained results indicate that blended learning instruction during the pandemic enhanced the students' communication skills in English for biotechnology purposes.