Recent advances in the development of digital technologies have been transforming the sphere of higher education and, more specifically, the way foreign languages are taught. The accessibility of such tools as online dictionaries, corpora, automated writing evaluation programmes and machine translation (MT) are forcing educators to reconsider these instruments’ role and importance. While the technical and linguistic strengths and weaknesses of MT and student attitudes to it have been extensively covered in the research literature (Ситдикова, 2019; Bowker, 2019; Chon, 2021; Lee, 2021), teachers’ opinions have received less attention. The aim of this research project was to assess the appropriateness of using MT in a language classroom from a teacher’s perspective. An online survey was conducted among 52 ESP teachers at a number of Russian universities. The questions related to teachers’ familiarity with MT as a tool, the extent of their awareness of the student use of MT, their thoughts about the potential of MT in teaching English.
The analysis of the respondents' answers clearly demonstrates their interest in the promise MT application holds for their teaching practice and their support of its use in some types of activities. It also shows that the majority of respondents use only about half of the capabilities of MT. Besides, most of the teachers generally disapprove of the use of MT by students and are in favour of university administrations introducing rules to regulate its use in the educational process. Although acknowledging the convenience and efficiency of this tool, which can facilitate the process of students learning a foreign language, the teachers are also concerned about such matters as academic integrity, acceptable and unacceptable practices and plagiarism.