Abstract:

In March 2022, Slovak students protested against being externally tested in their school-leaving examination due to the two-year pandemic, during which they were mostly educated online. They had not criticised their teachers for two years, expecting they would not be tested like two last-year secondary-school leavers (in 2020 and 2021). They started to intensively complain about their language teachers’ approaches after the minister had decided not to allow students to complete their secondary education without external measurements of their language proficiency.

The two-year pause in systematic education caused students to stop paying considerable attention to preparing for their school-leaving examinations. Their teachers did not support their protest as they tried to educate them, searching for various ways languages can be learnt and acquired. The government provided the students with sufficient materials for studying and learning more intensively, which guaranteed adequate preparation for being tested externally.

Our study explores different ways of teaching during the pandemic, analysing legislation and COVID 19 restrictions to provide an objective picture of the situation in the country. Major problems will be identified, and reasonable solutions will be suggested. The students’ results achieved in the school-leaving examination in English will be analysed, focusing on particular issues that arose during the officially-administered tests. Statistical analyses proved that students’ worries had been irrelevant.

Keywords:

Learning during the pandemic, external measurements of language proficiency, students’ worries, statistical analysis.