Abstract:

The Covid-19 pandemic led to an unexpected transition from traditional classroom-based education to online teaching and learning. As its appearance froze the whole Planet, the schooling system has been rapidly activated in the online environment. It seemed the “perfect” solution for some unpredicted times. Who knew things about online teaching? The crisis it has generated has forced the educators to reassess their teaching strategies, teacher-learner relationship, professional practice approaches. And one cannot underestimate that for many years faculties have held strongly negative attitudes toward online learning. On one side, online teaching has really saved the system from not being blocked but, on the other, educators have been “thrown in the dark” and students have got disengaged.

What does “online teaching” mean? Our paper aims first at defining the concept of “online teaching”, as there are a lot of terms related to this type of education. According to Keegan’s (1988), it was, at its beginnings, characterized by: the separation of teachers and learners which distinguished it from face-to-face education, the influence of an educational organization which distinguished it from self-study and private tutoring, the use of a computer network to present or distribute some educational content, the provision of two-way communication via a computer network so that students may benefit from communication with each other, teachers, and staff.

Has, therefore, Zoom been enough for online teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic? Has it met the needs of teachers and students? In order to answer this question, an important step in our paper is the analysis of the correlation between the online education and the learning strategies in as far as the foreign language students are concerned, followed by the identification of the shortcomings related to the videoconferencing tool when considering the learning strategies applied to foreign languages. The literature mainly records three types of language learning strategies: metacognitive, cognitive and socio-affective. Scientists consider of uttermost importance learning strategies since the trainer could facilitate students’ improving both strategies and performance in foreign language learning. Chamot (2001) postulated that learning strategies are important in second language acquisition for two main reasons. First, by investigating the strategies used by second language learners during the learning process, better insights into the cognitive, social, and affective process in language learning can be gained. But what about socio-affective strategies within the remote teaching? Our research hypotheses refer to the lack of feeling, of having in-person feedback impossibility of structuring the intra-session interactions via physical location, etc. At the same time we get back to our research in 2012 (Ungureanu / Georgescu 2012) in order to use the results regarding last year students’ language learning strategies in order to compare them with the results obtained through a questionnaire that we applied during the pandemic crisis to 50 Foreign Language students in order to provide data on the learning strategies predominantly used during the lockout period as well as on the teacher-learner interaction levels. The results may help teachers adjust to students’ new and recently identified needs providing them with the best learning opportunities in order to become successful autonomous persons.

Keywords:

Learning strategies, foreign languages, socio-affective strategies, online-teaching, performance.