THE IMPACT OF ART ON TEACHING ENGLISH TO BACHELOR STUDENTS OF ARCHITECTURE

The study has two main goals: to determine the students’ knowledge of and interest in visual arts (painting), considering the nature of the respondents’ bachelor studies of architecture, and to determine whether the implementation of a creative activity based on well-known paintings into their English classes can enhance their writing skills in this language. Therefore, research was conducted including 21 bachelor students of architecture at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Niš who selected English as their elective academic course in the first year of study. They participated in this empirical research during the spring semester of the academic year 2023/2024. The study analyzed the participants’ language performance, particularly their writing skills, and their knowledge of the paintings used in this experiment. Regarding the analysis of the participants’ language skills, five grammatical and lexical points were studied. Moreover, the results of their knowledge of art are shown. The obtained results show that the participants performed better when exposed to the visual stimuli (paintings) and that they constructed grammatically correct sentences when using the vocabulary related to their field of study. The obtained results might be useful for devising the EFL teaching materials aimed at tertiary-level students of architecture to include not only the practice of English grammatical structures, but also the reading practice of the original English texts. Thus, the students would be able to observe and understand these structures in meaningful contexts.