The effect of stay at home days on the language learning motivation of foreign language students during the COVID-19 pandemic process

Abstract

World has been going through an unusual transformation process in terms of economy, health and education system due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Education system could easily adapt to ‘new normal’ period for digital technology had already developed online education. Students, teachers and academics in all over the world have had the chance to use digital platforms to persue education online. As other countries, Turkish universities have been applying online education during pandemic. Stakeholders in education have been affected in online education system differently. In this study, it is aimed to determine what language students experience in online English courses during the COVID-19 pandemic, their motivation situation towards online English language education, whether they could use Internet effectively and take online English courses or not, what techniques they found useful and whether lockdown days affected their language learning motivation or not. In this study, one of the qualitative research methods, case study design was used. The participants in the present study consisted of students studying in the 1st and 2nd grade of the English Language Teaching Program of Bartın University, Department of Foreign Language Education, in the spring term of the 2020-20021 academic years. The data were collected by sharing a link to the students with a fully structured interview form prepared in Google Form. In the analysis of the data, frequency, percentage calculations and content analysis technique, which is one of the qualitative methods, were used. Findings show that stay at home period in pandemic process did not affect the motivation of language students negatively. Even though there was a lack of positive energy face to face education brought and the psychological impacts of COVID-19 precautions on the students, students tended to study English willingly in pandemic process. It was determined that students were aware of the positive impact of technology, used various websites and social media tools to practice English, and attended online courses, albeit very few. Thus, it was concluded that students positively evaluated the process of staying at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic in favour of learning and practicing English.