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JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
books to learn from or have a chance to print copied materials
sent via e-mail.
Backup solution
If, however, at least one party (either the teacher or the student)
has the book, it is viable to conduct the lesson by one party
sending a picture of the relevant page to the other on messenger,
viber or whatsapp keep that page open on the mobile phone and
conduct the lesson on the computer using a different programme,
such as skype, zoom or Microsoft Teams.
Visually impaired students
Some students, which do not use Braille writing, depend on their
magnifying glass to learn at school. Even though there are
magnifying options online and offline too, it might be so hard for
the learner to constantly switch over between the words to
magnify or the teacher to see that without a special computer for
the online learning needs of such a student it might simply
impossible for such a student to engage in online learning.
Universal speaking exercises
Online teaching is geared mainly towards oral teaching and
therefore almost all verbally conducted exercises are suitable to
be executed online. A fine exercise for which no extra prop is
needed except for a timer is when a student has to talk about a
given topic for a minute. A picture-based speaking exercise may
be timed, too, as it is done at language exams, where students
have to speak about a given picture for a minute. The picture is
shown to the camera of the teacher for a given time (e.g. 10
seconds) after which the student has to describe what and how
s/he remembers about the picture.
Storytelling is also possible either one-to-one or as a group in
which each member says a sentence as part of a common story
the beginning of which is started by the teacher. A modification
of this exercise may be when the members of the group have to
tell a story, but the teacher keeps interrupting them with linkers
based on which they have to modify each sentence but keep the
topic. Applications enabling multiple speakers to hear each other
well are skype, messenger (sound transmission problems may
occur), zoom, teams.
5.3 Further methodological comments
An advantage of synchronous e-learning is that it enables
exercises to be conducted that would be otherwise impossible.
One must acknowledge that remote teaching tools and devices
possess different features from a physical classroom and that by
getting acquainted with them using them to the advantage of
foreign language lesson content one can greatly foster
motivation towards learning and deepen the learning experience
in unforeseen ways. Following examples of exercises serve as
proof of this statement.
Video-based exercises
It is great fun to take the devices the parties use and show them
around their house or a certain part of, and then compare each
other´s dwellings. It is fun for the teacher, too, if they also must
remember details about the student´s house. The excitement part
of it is the fact that the video shown is real, on-the-spot and will
not repeat (
Petrovič, Murgaš, 2020). The programmes enabling it
are skype, zoom, messenger, viber and whatsapp.
Asynchronous assignments
Once a physical class emerges to its end the teacher has to have a
clear idea about what kind of homework s/he will give to class,
if it has not been prepared or copied even earlier, but what can
happen is that such a hardware may not be in line with what has
actually happened or been achieved in class and, for this reason,
might need a lot of explanation or should even be dropped.
The instance of online teaching enables the teacher to examine
the content of the lesson and send the most relevant HW also
being able to choose from the wide variety of online games,
acting as possible basis for HW. Online exercises enable for
multiple repetition and therefore HW is learnt much more
thoroughly. Programmes one can access this way are skype,
messenger, viber, whatsapp, all CLMs and LMSs.
In a regular class usually there is a problem to ensure conditions
in which groups of students do not disturb each other. To ensure
groups of 3-4 do not disturb each other in a regular class the
teacher can separate them by sending them into different
classrooms if there are some available. If not, groups are likely
to listen to each other wanting to overhear great ideas. Even pair
work is hard to do with 4 students if space is crammed and the
teacher does not want to waste time moving around classroom
objects. Solving this problem is perfectly possible teaching
online due to the fact that there is programme Microsoft Teams,
which enables the division of a group of students into small
groups. Within this setup communication is enabled only within
the designated group members, which is a great way to solve
puzzles, for example, and compare the results at the very end.
Students may also prepare exercises for each other and do them
within a given time. They will never know the answers for the
exercise they receive from the other group as the control button
for opening or closing the communication channels is in the
hands of the teacher (assignments for groups with zero
disturbance).
One of the problems a teacher has to deal with while teaching is
correction of continuous speech. Teachers tend to struggle with
trying to balance out the amount of correction they supply and
the amount of correction students demand during so-called free-
style speaking. Teachers might believe that leaving a student to
speak with mistakes will embed those mistakes within fluent
speech on the long run, which is partially true. For this reason, if
there is a topic to talk about, some teachers have a tendency not
to let the student speak with mistakes, which might result in the
student never acquiring high enough self-esteem to become a
fluent speaker. A great solution for this problem is teaching
using a chat-enabled online tool. While the student speaks about
a topic or gives a lengthy answer the teacher has the chance to
record the mistakes and (given s/he is quick enough) correct
them all in the chat box. Once the student is done, the teacher
sends all her/his notes in the chatbox in one go and the student
has a chance to review all the mistakes s/he has just made in a
non-intrusive way. If the teacher wants to correct the student
while the student is speaking, doing so by sending the correct
sentences, words, expressions in the chatbox is a non-intrusive
way of doing so, because the student is not stopped by the voice
of the teacher just the notes s/he receives from the teacher. The
student may still decide to ignore the teacher´s notes in the chat
and refer back to them once s/he is done, if reading the notes
would divert his/her thinking from his/her main line of thought.
It is impossible to precisely review what has happened during a
lesson without a lesson plan. If a teacher asks a student to try to
recall what s/he has done, what were the highs and lows and
what s/he has learnt the likelihood of the student responding
fluently is meager. Yet, if the teacher keeps recording in the
chatbox what is going on during the lesson (meaning s/he acts
like a tape-recorder by speaking and writing at the same time)
the student is perfectly capable of recalling all the exercises and
by reflecting on them embeds the information learnt during the
lesson more than without this recap phase at the very end (self-
reflection).
A great tool in skype, and less so, but to a certain extent in zoom,
too, is the ability to conduct the communicate process in three
ways simultaneously: verbally, in writing and via emoticons.
Verbal communication takes place through the screen, written
communication takes place in the chat (works excellent in skype,
but shows as one speech flow in zoom) and feelings are
expressed by the use of emoticons appearing either on the screen
for a short time as the teacher´s positive or negative reaction
what has been said or a positive or negative reaction to what has
been written in the chat (triple communication channel). The
usage of emoticons is enabled on both sides of users therefore
opening up a wider communication channel on the side of the
student if the teacher is open enough to receive emoticons from
the students as evaluations of the exercises being done.
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