Nation-building and identity development through ethnocultural content in university English for Specific Purposes courses in Kazakhstan

Abstract

It seems obvious that that educational activity establishes conditions for the development of a person capable of combining ancestral traditions and values while maintaining their distinctive ethnoculture. This paper investigates how integrating ethnocultural material into English for Specific Purposes (ESP) university courses contributes to nation-building and students’ identity development while at the same time exerting impact on ESP curriculum advancement. The empirical part of the research involved 104 first-year engineering students learning English as a foreign language for specific purposes. The experiment demonstrated that exposing students to regional material and enabling them to communicate in English about their region empowers them in their national and regional identity, while contributing to nation-building goals of university education. The findings of the study reveal that integrating ethnocultural material into ESP university courses positively impacts both students’ motivation and their national identity development.