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JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
address. The student then had a couple of days to download
these files after which the programme disabled their further
downloadability.
Another solution was to transfer the lessons to zoom, which
company has been able to upgrade its features, including perfect,
undisturbed sound transmission to adjust to the needs of 200
million users on a daily basis by March 2020 (Yuan, 2020).
Some students, however, were unable to install this programme
and their education process had to adjust to the features offered
by and available only on skype.
Young learners (YLE) exam preparation
The teachers had to suspend all exam-preparation endeavors as
part of their general language exam courses due to the fact that
they would not have been able to conduct face-to-face group
mock exams regarding the hygienic limitations in place at that
time, without which the students would have felt unprepared and
anxious to take the exam. Mock exams are, as embedded in their
name, mock exams and if the exam is conducted face-to-face,
online exams don´t provide the same objective conditions nor
the subjective feelings a student undergoes.
Backup solution
All the young students have been offered the autumn 2020 dates
as a substitute for the June 2020 dates and every accepted this
suggestion.
Picture-prompted vocabulary exercises
If students do not know a word, the teacher has the chance to
show them the picture of it and then oftentimes no translation is
needed whatsoever, especially if the problem is a concrete and
not abstract word. Due to the lagging of computers and teaching
applications it is often time-consuming if not impossible
altogether to step out of the programme and look for a picture of
the word and paste it to the screen of the ongoing lesson as this
process may freeze the programme being used and the lesson has
to start all over, like in case of skype. Even though zoom enables
picture and sound sharing, it is not user-friendly enough to
enable the lay teacher to switch screens while keeping the
student connected. In other applications like messenger or viber
there is no screen sharing function at all.
Backup solution
Pasting the pictures of the new words in the chat flow once the
lesson is over is an elegant solution, as it serves as a reminder of
the new vocabulary learned during the lesson plus it is a sign that
the teacher keeps the interests of the student truly at heart on the
long run. A prerequisite of this is the necessity for the teacher to
keep track of the new vocabulary learnt during the lesson a
separate sheet of paper.
Paper-based activities
No physical activity which is based upon choosing from a pile of
cards, closing the eyes and hiding, board game, ordering words
into a sentence mixed among more members of a group, and no
pair work activities which involve cooperating using cut-up
pieces of paper can be done online. For this reason, the human
interaction part is greatly cut out from the online lesson plan just
like suspense and excitement, which naturally accompanies the
process of playing games.
Backup solution
There are educational games that can be played online but
sophisticated programmes are needed to make them accessible
online for multiple players, which simple collaboration tools do
not support. There are however, a number of games not
necessarily for teaching foreign language (English) but even
more so suitable for this purpose (bearing in how useful CLIL
teaching is proving to be). Any games aiming at teaching or
testing the basics and even more advanced knowledge in natural
sciences designed for English native speaker kids in elementary
schools worldwide will do for English as second language
students as long as they understand the game to be played. The
greatest advantage of playing online games is their in-built try-
and-error feature, which enables the stress-free learning of facts
and the grammar surrounding it. The possibility to repeat an
exercise over and over until the student reaches full points
predestines every learner to be a winner, a straight-A student and
to stay motivated for the next game to take (and the next level to
master in English).
5.2 Methodological considerations due to technical problems
There are such hindrances to teaching online that no backup
solution is capable of offsetting. In the following there are
summarized the most common problems the teachers of the
presented language school came across during teaching under
the pandemics.
Poor or no internet connection
This problem is very difficult to solve. If such an issue arises
there are some ways out of it: one, move the lesson to a less
jammed time, when information transmission quality may
improve due to fewer users; two, check the software and
hardware issues or change internet provider altogether; and
three, replace online teaching with phone teaching.
Backup solution
Teaching trough the phone solves this problem instantly. The
teacher places her/his phone in front of her/him, calls the student
on face-time and they can see and hear each other while
conducting the lesson mainly from the book.
In the case of the caller not being subscribed to such a package
that would enable unlimited calls or lengthy calls for an
affordable price, one can try putting together a quick offline e-
learning course. Since many coursebooks have special student
interfaces accessible by the teacher too, the teacher may design a
short learning programme based on the materials available for
the student from the website of the publishing house of the
coursebook being used, set a reasonable learning pace for the
student shown, ideally on a time schedule too, regularly send
homework and tests by e-mail and require them to be sent back
by a given time. Such a programme, however, may be
established only if there are elaborate reading and listening
exercises available for the student, as they must replace the
teacher´s tutoring role. In addition, offline e-learning cannot go
on forever as there must be meaningful conversation taking place
between teacher and student.
Poor voice transmission
Speaking is the most vital part of a lesson. Without speaking
there is no instant communication available. A problem which
can occur is that there is internet connection but voice
transmission is weak.
Backup solution
The teacher can try moving to zoom, which has an embedded
state-of-the-art software audio processing programme designed
specifically to suppress room noise and reverberation (Yuan,
2020). Should this app not work either due to hardware issues
the teacher may still move to teaching on face-time or the phone.
Poor picture transmission
This is a typical issue in case of poor internet connection, where
data transmission capacities are overloaded by transmitting
picture and voice at the same time.
Backup solution
The solution in this case is to keep on teaching but turn off the
picture, which might be a solution in case of skype or zoom
lessons, where picture and voice are transmitted on separate
routes. A huge advantage of both programmes is that both of
them enable the use of the chatbox while communicating
without picture transmission overloading the system, and
therefore all the advantages of the chat may be used –
supplementing the whiteboard, to a certain extent.
Unavailability of printed materials
When classroom teaching has to move to remote locations, it is
not always possible to ensure that all participants have classroom
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