STUDENTS’ INTERACTION IN ONLINE CLASSES DURING COVID 19 PANDEMIC IN NORTH MACEDONIA

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to analyze students’ interaction activities used in online classes during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The notion of interaction is widely recognized in the field of second language acquisition following Long’s interaction hypothesis (1985) which states that language proficiency is highly increased if there is an interaction in the FL classroom. For interaction in online classes teachers need to encourage high student interactivity and create a supportive and friendly environment and the first step toward achieving this would be provide a syllabus that clearly and simply describes expectations for the course in general and notes specific guidelines for each assignment, instructions, and deadlines (Durrington et al., 2006). Therefore, this issue remains challenging for teachers who are expected to convert their classroom teaching into an online platform, thus, maintaining the students’ interaction as the central element in teaching. Without any doubts, this task requires additional time, preparation, and technical support. Adequate staff development and student motivation are critical to ensure that faculty can design online courses effectively and develop the skills in enhancing students’ interaction. The research instruments used for this study are students’ questionnaires, students’ reflections and classroom observations of online teaching. The study was conducted at South East European University (SEEU) in North Macedonia with 80 students majoring in English Language and Literature as well as 5 EFL teachers. The results of the study showed that students perceived interaction as a very important element of the qualitative teaching and have given useful suggestions for teachers to increase their engagement in interaction activities. Given the restrictions of online teaching, in all online classes observed, exemplary interaction was achieved through Question and Answer method Comprehension technique and Discussion and Analysis of Online Videos where the students interacted with the teacher and their peers.