Innovation in Language Learning

The three largest Estonian state professional higher education institutions – Estonian Academy of Security Sciences, Tallinn University of Applied Sciences, Tallinn Health Care College) – have a long tradition of teaching the Estonian, English and Russian languages for specific purposes (LSP), i.e. language used in professional communication, where vocabulary, terminology and language elements are determined by specific needs and competences (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987; Dudley Evans & Saint Johns, 1998; Laurence, 1998; Swales, 2000).

Our long-term experience in teaching LSP and effective cooperation between the institutions gave us the idea to compare the structures of our language teaching systems through the analysis of student feedback. Students were asked to provide feedback on the language teaching system of their higher education institution. Each institution was interested in its students' assessment and feedback on their institutions' language teaching system.  The research provides the opportunity to learn and adopt the best practices, methods and approaches implemented by the other higher education institutions. Student feedback was also used to highlight and analyze the main problems that students faced when learning a language for specific purposes. A comparison of the results showed the similarity in the problems faced by the language teaching systems of the three higher education institutions. 

The study was conducted during the years 2020-2022. The results of current research may be of interest to universities practicing LSP teaching.