COMICS-BASED ONLINE COURSE AS LEARNING RESOURCE FOR ENHANCING STUDENTS’ SPEAKING ACTIVITY

Some junior undergraduate students of technical universities might be reluctant to speak out at foreign language classes due to a number of reasons. The transition to online learning caused by the Covid19 pandemic exacerbated this trend. Today, one of the important tasks is to search for non-standard solutions that could encourage students to actively participate in the foreign language classroom discussions, make “silent ones” speak. Using comics as an additional educational resource could be one of such solutions in case of students' interest in them and teachers' awareness of their didactic potential. At the preliminary stage of the current study, a questionnaire revealed the interest of the 1^st and 2^ndyear students in comics and the lack of experience of using them as an educational resource among Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University EFL teachers. After creating an open online course on the Stepik platform based on the popular comics Ava's Demon and Ghost Blade, aimed at developing productive speech skills, its effectiveness was assessed as part of the intensive independent work of the students from the “risk group” due to their poor performance in the course of foreign language in the spring semester of 2020/2021 academic year. The analysis of the learning outcomes of the online course and monitoring the students’ work in the English class after the end of the course supported by their answers to the end-course questionnaire confirmed the online course effectiveness in developing the speaking skills of “silent” students. Further research steps are outlined.