The current study intended to analyse the perception of foreign language higher education instructors and higher education students in Romania regarding the increase of their digital skills and the use of digital tools in the COVID-19 pandemic. Online instruction provided a multitude of challenges and opportunities for designing instructional content. Our respondents concluded that language learning games and gamified instruction represent valuable tools in reconfiguring the scenario within language classes. By exploring these opportunities that increase students’ participation, interactivity and accessibility, the teaching and learning experience can be improved and adapted to more complex and ever-changing technological advances.
This paper aims at providing an insight into the online/hybrid foreign language teaching and learning system in Romania. Drawing on the theoretical body of research of metacognitive and politeness representations within the field, the study further offers an analysis of how metacognition and politeness strategies are perceived by the main stakeholders of academic education (language learners and instructors). The focus is on describing specific aspects where the support metacognitive and politeness strategies enable a more responsible and engaging digital pedagogical framework that empowers learner autonomy and engagement. Emphasis is placed on highlighting context-ridden challenges observed in online/hybrid learning/teaching connected to various degrees of preparedness to deal with the dynamic frontal/online teaching shift and also on suggesting student-centred solutions. The obtained results of the study may inform subsequent developments of language mediation through the activation of digital cognition and social and emotional learning practices.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers and students were relocated in the digital space. In this study, we focus on two groups of students and two types of courses: electives on Romanian as a Foreign Language in Germany and seminars on the Grammatical Structure of the English Grammar in Romania. We analyse the role that student agency plays in the online teaching process. For this purpose, we applied a survey to analyse the effectiveness of the didactic strategies used with small groups in comparison with large groups. The findings of this study show that remote instruction at the university level during seminars/elective courses for small groups can be as efficient as on-site instruction for the learning process and, implicitly, for student agency development. Regarding large groups, the study shows that remote instruction can, at times, be even more efficient than face-to-face teaching, especially regarding student agency development.
Sustained silent reading is a weekly routine activity meant to enhance students' interest in extended reading of authentic texts, meant to improve their critical thinking abilities, socio-cultural knowledge, attention, reading skills and vocabulary. Hence, in our ESP course, SSR is used as a weekly activity both in class and at home, introducing our students to the topic under focus, but also keeping them engaged with the topic for the entire week. Our SSR project represents a continuation of a pilot project initiated in the academic year 2017-2018 and involves the students at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. The SSR project 2018-2019 involves nine steps: 1. students familiarisation with the SSR concepts and requirements' announcement; 2. texts sharing using google drive; 3. Weekly Facebook posts; 4. SSR performance during class time; 5. SSR homework; 6. analogue entry; 7. Optional delivery of presentations; 8. Online entry; 9. end of semester vocabulary test. As such, for ten minutes, at the beginning of each course, students have to read a text which focuses on the topic discussed in that course and selected by the teacher. The texts chosen are longer texts that the students have to finish at home. Students also receive the assignment to select three concepts from all the texts chosen for the SSR activity and three other concepts that they encountered in other courses and which are linked to their fields in general. They have to introduce them in a survey at the end of the semester, mentioning for each of them a definition, a context/a situation that reflects the usage of the concept and a translation. In order to prepare the students for this survey, during several courses, after SSR, the language instructor collects specialised concepts from the students, by involving them in various collaborative and interactive classroom activities. At the end of semester, students have the option to deliver presentations based on the SSR texts and the end of semester exam also contains concepts from the SSR. The SSR is an activity that helps our students improve their ESP skills, but at the same time, it has as an end result a collection of specialised texts and terminology, using a crowdsourcing technique which involves our students and gives them the role of experts in their fields.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.