Dystopian science fiction as a means of teaching English to technical degree students

The context of international and Russian technical education in recent years has been marked by a growing tendency towards the humanization and humanitarization of students’ experiences that mostly draw from the technical disciplines’ syllabuses and contexts, thus practically encompassing that Chernyshevsky’s generic question of ‘What is to be done?’ and narrowing it down to a more teacher-wise version of ‘What to do with technical students in the ESL classroom?’ This pedagogical approach is largely informed by the necessity to corroborate and elevate the competence of a learner in terms of his or her multifaceted reality as part of the permeating global mechanisms of socialization, cooperation and integration. The reality of an engineering student, while being heavily packed with the requisite knowledge of core subjects, cannot be regarded as fully complete until there is a significant confidence that this knowledge can be successfully mediated to the target receiver and also possesses sociological, philosophical or psychological substance among other requirements, as suggested by supporters of the humanities’ role in technical education. This implies that potential links between engineering and humanities subjects cannot be overlooked if engineering school were to cater to revealing a multidimensional, competitive and open-minded personality of a student. These two ends of the scientific spectrum could actually navigate towards each other, creating a precedent for ‘collaboration and shared discourse’ between humanists and engineers [1, p. 139]. In fact, these ideas gain a crucial importance especially when talking about teaching a foreign language, the process which is nowadays per say bound to embrace the many layers of the student’s intellectual, psychological and socio-cultural development. Therefore, in the case of studying English as a second language in the classroom of engineering students, we cannot but stress enough the ever-emerging need to seek out new ways of imparting the syllabus that would not only encourage the formal acquaintance with the grammatical and lexical patterns that provide the basis for general and/or specific English courses, but also contribute to the overall fascination with the language itself, the ability to infer underlying meanings, the skills to analyze and apply the recurrent structures and, most importantly, the readiness to participate in communications with fellow students and potential employers. These byproducts of the communicative techniques’ use could become a strategic asset for future engineers who would feel more equipped and confident as regards their participation in the globalizing setting of our industry and society. One of the tools for providing such English language skill set could consist in redirecting our attention to alternative texts as a promising material for reading, class discussion and raising multicultural awareness.

Throughout the years of studying English abroad, I have noticed that such courses as language through literature are not alien to the foreign syllabus, especially in the Modern Philology departments, and emerge quite rapidly as part of the English Studies paradigm. However, I strongly believe that some of the ideas that inspired the introduction of such courses in the first place could prove to be beneficial not exclusively to humanities students, but their lifelong binary counterpart, that is, technical sciences students. First and foremost, reading in itself is a very engaging task that requires a student’s active involvement in the understanding of language items, the creating of certain imagery and the responding to its message, those fundamental principles being discussed by Harmer, who a priori believes in ‘the essentially humanistic and communicative nature of language’ as well as the high significance of ‘learner input’ overall [2, p. 291]. Reading in a foreign language should neither be marginalized nor privileged when it comes to encouraging Russian technical students to read in English, at least as an extracurricular activity, an elective course or a reading session obligatory task. That is why reading specific literature selections could help revitalize lessons, activities or exercises. In this vein, dystopian science fiction is capable of becoming a fulcrum for the teaching English courses particularly to technical degree students who could appreciate (or even evaluate) the technical component of such materials, their highly ideological content and language corpus. The latter does not necessarily have to be overburdened with technical terms but rather highlights specific uses of some grammatical and lexical items and, what is more, inspire the creative thinker in a mostly contained and sometimes extremely reserved engineering personality. It is my belief that using such literature could a certain extent help to find a common ground between technical background students and their English teachers looking for ways to reinvigorate some language exercises and build a bridge into a more multidisciplinary dimension.

There has indeed been research interested in literature as a point of departure for language teaching that seems to highlight the benefits of using narrative fiction, drama, poetry in an ESL classroom. Nevertheless, it seems that dystopian or science fiction perspective has not been addressed as much in this particular context and even less so in a Russian university setting. For example, A. Yang discussed the value of science fiction for teaching English as a foreign language in a student-oriented environment, but I would like to highlight a more specific approach of using dystopian science fiction oriented for technical degree students who are required to study English throughout a significant part of their studies [3]. Curiously enough, it is not until recently that the very genre of dystopia has been revitalized and gained a new life on the literary and critical scene on a broader scale. Nowadays, it is receiving more and more attention from both critics and amateur readers probably because of the huge success of such dystopian creations as “Hunger Games” (2012) and “Divergent” (2014) blockbusters. These due to their mass culture appeal, enabled the renaissance of interest in technologically advanced futuristic visions provided by different authors as a way to channel powerful critiques on some recurrent practices of modern times. This initial interest to such dimensions and their ultimate messages can really make space for some informed readings on the part of English teachers and their young and enthusiastic students.