An analysis of the development of CALL literacy during Spanish lockdown in an English for Tourism course.

Abstract

This paper presents the strategies that were implemented –in order to support the new students’ needs– in a course of English for Specific Purposes, more specifically, English for Tourism II, from the Degree in Tourism of UNED, the Spanish National University of Distance Education, during the period of strict lockdown due to the crisis caused by COVID-19 pandemic (from March 14 to the beginning of June 2020). UNED has traditionally been based on blended learning, so students develop, through their studies, Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) literacy (Tafazoli, 2014, 2017). Even if technology is, and has been, the most essential support tool for teaching and learning, some activities that were developed before the crisis in a face-to-face format such as mentoring sessions, the final exams had to be offered exclusively online. The acquisitionof new digital skills (Dudeney et al., 2013) was thus challenging for both mentors, teachers and students. In this paper, a comparative analysis between the academic years 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 is carried out, in order to analyze the differences between both periods, and to obtain data on how the shift to a fully online course under a lockdown context affected students’ performance. In this sense, the main research question posed here is: is there a difference in students’ performance and results between the two academic years? Another research question, deriving from the main one, is: how can students’ computer assisted language learning and/or digital literacy skills be encouraged through motivation? Results show that students were more involved and motivated in the course in 2019-2020, and that the marks obtained were significantly higher.