AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
Figure 9a:
Screenshot. Game “Match”
Figure 9b:
Screenshot. Game “Gravity”
There was a chance to play live games, but the teachers decided
not to overload their students with such activities.
Production. The final stage involved the development of
students’ productive skills.
Under quarantine, the process of learning foreign languages
sometimes loses its communicative nature, but the proposed
ICTs can be useful for the development of skills of dialogic and
monologue speech as well as skills of professional
communication. The basic platform Zoom allows teachers to
maintain the communicative nature of learning through the
ability to communicate with the whole group and to create rooms
for dialogic speech under the supervision of the teacher.
To achieve these objectives we have developed a system of tasks
such as role-playing“therapist – client” when students practised
exactly those exercises and muscle groups, ligaments and body
parts that were presented in the video; moreover, a general
discussion was always before role-playing in pairs; case tasks,
when they were creating workouts prescribed by doctors, then
recorded them and demonstrated them on the screen for the
general discussion.
The Zoom platform makes it possible to design real
communicative situations and to promote discipline and respect
for classmates. The ability to record and view classes allows
students to develop self-correction and peer-correction skills.
The use of ICTs not only develops the communication and
professional skills of future ergotherapists but also contributes to
the improvement of soft skills, which are crucial to a successful
professional life in the new socio-cultural environment.
We would like to point out that students used either their PCs or
smartphones to complete the mentioned tasks.
At the end of the 2019/20 academic year, we carried out a survey
and an interview among the 1
st
year students (specialty No. 227
“Physical therapy, ergotherapy”) with the purpose to get relevant
feedback concerning
a series of English classes with ICTs.
According to the survey after the course, students were satisfied
with the motor actions they performed at home because they
were able to deepen their knowledge of physical therapy and
fitness. Thus, modern ICTs, elements of Total Physical
Response
were
quite harmoniously combined with
communicative teaching methods during online English
learning.
The following are the constructive comments by
future
ergotherapists who have watched video content on the Lumowell
channel related to their specialty and then performed specially
designed tasks:
Danylo L.,
1
st
academic year: “I am a former sportsman and a
practising trainer, who is used to studying on my own as there
were lots of onsite trainings before competitions. This distant
course is a great chance to experience the overseas approaches
and insights into the training process. I like the Quizlet tasks and
YouTube videos as I can watch them again and practice my
language skills as well as master my therapist’s skills. When the
quarantine is over, I will use these exercises with my clients at
the gym. It is not just language learning it is learning the
profession with video support. I like the games “therapist –
client” in Zoom rooms where we could write the training
programs for simple physical disorders”.
Olena P., 1
st
academic year: “I like tasks within the course titled
“Foreign Language”. It is always interesting to me to watch
videos about my future profession on YouTube and to perform
exercises to practice and remember professional English
vocabulary. Authentic videos, clear English speech by presenters
and speakers, interesting and challenging exercises developed
by the academic staff based on video content motivate me to be
competitive in the future on the international labour market due
to a high level of English, and not only to focus and go deeper
into the world of ergotherapy”.
Dmytro T., 1
st
academic year: “Learning English (professional
vocabulary in particular) is vital for us. To be a successful
ergotherapist, one must constantly study the best global
practices, attend training seminars, and communicate with
foreign colleagues, with the English language being the
intermediary in this process. Therefore, watching videos and
taking a Quizlet test as a form of an extra homework assignment
is quite justified”.
Kateryna M., 1
st
academic year: “At first, I was disappointed
with the online studying in general as it was inconvenient for me.
I am a computer unfriendly person from a small village with a
poor Internet connection. However, English classes helped me
overcome my fears, the ability to study the material at home with
the right speed for me, and the ability to watch videos repeatedly
as well as many exercises made me a stronger student. The vlogs
we created as well as role-playing we could record with my
classmates as home tasks gave me positive emotions and
confidence to speak using professional language”.
4 Conclusions
So, the integration of ICTs into the educational process and
learning English by ergotherapists in higher educational
establishments of Ukraine is both an interesting and unique
challenge. Since today, in the digital age, it gets harder and
harder to interest students using conventional teaching tools.
That’s why there is an utter necessity to turn computers, laptops,
and smartphones into teachers’ assistants. Within the COVID-19
pandemic, the educational process became online. Academic
staff of Ukrainian higher educational establishments started
using different software not to lose time and engage their
students with e-learning.
Thus, we have also motivated future ergotherapists to apply
ICTs while English classes. It has been a labour-intensive, but
exciting process based on the CLIL approach. Accordingly, we
have used the Lumowell channel on the YouTube platform. Free
online educational platforms as Quizlet and Zoom have helped
us to design a variety of tasks and test the understanding of the
video content watched.
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