Promoting Creativity of Engineering Students in the Foreign Language Classroom

The article focuses on the issue of promoting the creative abilities of Food Science majors through the Foreign (English) language course. English language course is one of the non-core academic disciplines which provides plenty of educational opportunities for future engineers to stimulate their creative abilities. Study of the theory and practice behind engineering education and foreign language teaching helped to identify the following gap: the need for promoting the creativity of engineering students through non-core academic disciplines and insufficient attention for its implementation through the English language course. In the process of bridging this gap, a key research question arose: how to encourage professional creativity of engineering students in the English language classroom? The purpose of the article is to study and identify the most versatile and effective learning techniques and strategies promoting creative abilities for Food Science majors. Teaching experience in various universities helped to identify the following effective learning strategies and techniques: the method of interdisciplinary projects, business games, presentations, the interdisciplinary case-study method, and authentic texts. All of these strategies are versatile and can be easily used through the English language course to develop a creative component of professional competence for future engineers.