European Scientific Journal March 2018 edition Vol.14, No.8 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431 30 Connecting the English Class to the Internet of Things Mariana Coanca, Lecturer PhD Romanian-American University, Romania Doi: 10.19044/esj.2018.v14n8p30 URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.19044/esj.2018.v14n8p30 Abstract It goes without saying that the World Wide Web drives learners/students to become more autonomous as it offers an array of tools that cater for students’ diverse needs and learning styles. This paper connects the teaching and learning English for Specific Purposes to the ecosystem of the Internet of Things. More precisely, we explore the concept of Internet of Things and its characteristics and address seminal questions about its role in education. After analyzing the findings, we focus on the educative value of digital technologies to our practice as language educators. Drawing on our experience of teaching with web-based tools, we showcase a lesson plan that increased students’ motivation, interaction and engagement. The paper concludes that teaching will definitely become more and more dependent on technology but policy makers need to consider proactively the use of digital technologies as pedagogical tools and to collaborate extensively with educators and technology experts/developers to create innovative strategies for education. Keywords: English for Specific Purposes, Internet of Things, instruction, lesson plan Introduction Digging into literature we have found many definitions for the Internet of Things (IoT), which basically means a world of objects (cars, mobile devices, portables, etc.) that are connected through the Internet (Savu et al., 2017). Concerning its origin, it is worth mentioning that Kevin Ashton coined the term “Internet of Things” for the first time, during a presentation on supply-chain management in 1999 (Ashton, 2009; Khodadadi et al., 2016). ICT experts have reported that every 90 days, technology evolves significantly. The latest forecast from International Data Corporation (IDC) reveals that worldwide spending on the Internet of Things (IoT) will reach nearly $1.3 billion in 2019, from $698.6 billion in 2015 (Hernandez, 2015). Therefore, the IoT growth rate is exponential as shown by the forecast in