Abstract:

Nowadays, in the middle of the third academic year amid COVID-19 pandemic, when teachers and students get used to switches from face-to-face to distance formats of education the issue of using Information-Communication Technologies (ICT) in learning English takes on a new dimension. Although both sides of educational process have become rather confident users of ZOOM or MSTeams or other software used to conduct online classes, effective lesson time decreases (mostly because of technical issues) making self-study rise in importance.

Today’s students have been growing alongside with the Internet and can be fairly called digital natives so using ICT for arranging self-study seems reasonable and suitable. On the other hand, the Internet provides millions of pages and platforms applicable for learning English although their quality varies greatly. Before working out recommendations for students what and how to use it is necessary to find out what they have been using for improving their English language (EL) skills if they have at all.

To obtain information about students’ preferences in language education formats and the ways they use Internet resources to master their EL skills Google Forms seem to be a comprehensive and easy to use software. A survey comprised about 200 students and revealed interesting information to analyse.

The survey showed that a little bit less than 60% of respondents preferred face-to-face format of English language classes, 19% chose ZOOM, and the rest tended to a blended format. However, 88% of students use the Internet for improving EL skills, in particular: more than a half watch authentic videos; about 10% watch news; about a quarter reads news and other materials; the same situation is with using special sites for training grammar rules; about a third uses platforms based on a flashcard principle to learn and master new vocabulary. Although watching video is the most popular way of implementing the Internet into students’ self-study, in terms of ‘ZOOM-class’ activities ‘reading-translation’ got the most votes (57%), followed by watching/listening (50%) and working in small groups in session rooms (27%), students could choose several answers and add their own. An important result is that about 90% of the students want to learn more about Internet resources available for improving EL skills.

Thus, the students do use the Internet for improving EL skills but there is a need for a detailed regularly updated tutorial to facilitate students’ informed search for web-resources for English learning and to indicate ways of combining such resources with curricula if necessary. One part of such tutorial can be devoted to websites created and supported by well-known providers of EL education such as British Council, BBC, US State Department, etc. supplemented by other international and/or domestic resources reviewed by teachers. Another section will provide students with information about ‘flashcard’ platforms such as Anki, Quizlet, memrise, and recommendations how to use them for mastering technical vocabulary taught within curricula. The third one can deal with MOOCs and contain directions how to combine language acquisition with subject-matter learning.

Keywords:

Self-study, ICT in language education, students’ survey, online classroom.