A pedagogical model for closing ESP lexical gaps in technical universities: microlearning and spaced repetition amid air-raid alerts

Abstract

The general problem addressed in this study is how to sustain and measurably improve ESP lexical acquisition in technical universities when instruction is repeatedly disrupted by air-raid alerts, forced relocation to shelters, and intermittent connectivity, conditions that undermine the distributed practice required for durable terminology learning. The purpose of this article is to design and empirically justify a disruption-tolerant pedagogical model that integrates microlearning and spaced repetition to reduce ESP lexical gaps among technical university students in Ukraine (energy, IT, mechanical engineering) under recurrent air-raid alert interruptions. The study indicates that integrating microlearning with spaced repetition can stabilise ESP vocabulary growth in technical domains when instruction is repeatedly fragmented by air-raid alerts, because learning is reorganised into short, recoverable cycles supported by planned retrieval. The model`s effectiveness appears to derive aligning lexical input with authentic professional genres and assessing not only recognition but also productive use in sentence-level and task-based outputs.