Abstract:

Studying a foreign language has always been a challenge. In this article, a case study in 2020 shows that distance education meets some needs to preserve students’ skills. This study is made with courses from the second and third academic year in the RUDN University. Students may forget how to speak a second foreign language without practices and communication skills, especially when the world is in sanitary confinement. In this context, from the end of 2019 until November 2020, an order has been given to all teachers in the RUDN University. This order forces university staff to use different network platforms and create their own platform (in Russian, and especially in the RUDN University, they call it TUIS, in English: TTIS). In those Platforms educational contents are shared (videos, lessons, exercises, and tests). At the same time, other programs are used (Skype, ZOOM, Microsoft Teams) for instant communication to preserve students’ skills. This article’s study is based on point rating system in two different courses in the RUDN University: “Practice your second (French)” and “Referencing and annotation in a second foreign language (French).” From a practical experiment teachers show their ability to adapt for a new teaching method using technology and an effective teaching to meet the demand of students to improve their speaking skills, but new nuances are always discussed in this case. Are students cheating? How can we control their personal skills? What kind of exams can be the more effective to test them? An answer will be given in the results of this article. A discussion can always upgrade the given method in this article.

Keywords:

e-learning, distance education, TUIS, MS TEAMS, foreign language teaching (FLT).