Learning languages during the quarantine at the Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian College of Higher Education

Abstract

Introduction. The year of 2020 can be considered an exceptional one as the horrible COVID-19 broke outand spread all over the world. The new reality has totally altered the sphere of education. During the months-long quarantine in Ukraine in spring 2020 educational institutions had to close and all primary, secondary and tertiaryeducation had to transit from face-to-face learning to distance learning. Aims. This period was challenging for bothstudents and teachers. Our main objectives were to better understand the undergoing processes and get valuableinsights into how language teachers at a higher educational establishment managed to solve the tasks they hadto face and complete the educational process successfully. Methods. We have created an online questionnairefor tutors to fill in. Our research instrument consisted of three parts: in the first one, we asked our 18 respondentsabout their personal data; in the second part the tutors were asked to indicate on a Likert-scale how much theyagreed or disagreed with the given statements on issues directly related to distance learning, while in the thirdsection of the questionnaire we requested our research participants to answer open-ended questions and expresstheir views on how they managed to motivate their students to learn, or what caused significant problems forthem during teaching online. Results. The empirical findings revealed that for most of the tutors distance teachingwas a completely new area of experience as they had not tried doing it before the pandemic. They used a numberof online applications; however, it was Google Classroom that was used by all of them on the initiative of theirworkplace. The factors that caused the most significant difficulties for the tutors were, among others,the assessment of student performance and knowledge. There was a lack of trust on the tutors’ part as to whothe assignments were completed by. For some tutors it was frustrating not to be certain about whose work theywere assessing – whether the students’ or somebody else’s. Conclusions. A crucial pedagogical implicationderives from our empirical evidence, namely, that it is of utmost importance that tutors be trained how to teachonline. They should be given the opportunity to develop their digital skills needed for distance or online teaching.Our other finding also confirms the implication that tutors must be provided with the chance to develop theirskills as online teachers. In addition, it is advisable for tutors to develop mutual trust between them and theirstudents.