Kinesthetic Learners in Online EFL Classes

Abstract

The spread of Corona virus in 2020 resulted in major changes in our lives on so many different levels. Education is one of the areas that witnessed a dramatic shift from in class lessons to online ones. This paper aims at investigating whether the kinesthetic learners are engaged in these online lessons, it also explores the challenges that English as a foreign language teachers’ encounter when implementing strategies for engaging kinesthetic learners in the online lessons, and the procedures that English language teachers can take in order to engage the kinesthetic learners in their online classes. For this purpose, ten English language teachers from University of Duhok from two colleges (College of Languages and College of Basic Education) were interviewed and their online lectures were observed.  The findings revealed that most teachers use methods that encourage the engagement of the kinesthetic learners. However, there are several challenges encountered including teachers’ and students’ lack of knowledge about online teaching and learning, bad internet connection, the difficulty of recognizing the learner’s learning style in an online teaching and learning environment, teacher and students’ lack of motivation and enthusiasm for online learning, students misleading their teachers by pretending to be present in the online lecture, students’ resistance to participate in activities …etc.  The participants also provided some suggestions regarding the best ways for involving the kinesthetic learners in such classes. The study ends up with a few conclusions and recommendations.