The English Language in Engineering Education: Continuity of Research Traditions and the Development of Humanities Competences: A Scoping Review

This paper offers a scoping review of research on the role of English in higher engineering education. The analysis included 48 sources of evidence published between 2016 and 2025. The relevance of the review stems from the fact that English functions both as the lingua franca of scholarly communication and as a meta-subject within engineering training, simultaneously influencing the continuity of research traditions and the development of engineers’ humanities competences. At the same time, the field remains methodologically fragmented: studies of ESP/EAP training, the humanitarisation of engineering education, and the continuity of scientific schools are typically addressed in isolation and employ heterogeneous conceptual vocabularies, which reduces the comparability of findings and complicates their application in curriculum design. The novelty of the work lies in the analytical systematisation of the ‘English / ESP–EAP → humanities competences’ relationship and in structuring it into a matrix model. The article aims to systematise evidence from Russian and international publications covering the period 2016–2025, proposing an integrative analytical framework for examining the role of English across two interrelated dimensions: (1) supporting the continuity of research traditions of scientific schools; (2) developing the humanities competences of future engineers. Explicit inclusion and exclusion criteria, thematic coding, and synthesis of findings are applied (PRISMA-ScR checklist). The review suggests that English proficiency supports the chain “scholarly communication → educational continuity → competence outcomes” by enabling access to publications, data, conferences, and international collaborations, as well as by increasing the visibility and reproducibility of research. As a design tool, the paper proposes an original matrix model of humanities competences developed through ESP/EAP. The proposed matrix is an analytical tool derived from a thematic synthesis of the included publications. It is concluded that the matrix may be used by instructors and programme leaders to align stakeholders’ objectives and to design a seamless learning trajectory (school – university – doctoral training) and associated assessment procedures; further work will focus on its operationalisation and empirical validation.