Technical, psychological and behavioural aspects of teaching EFL and ESP university courses online: A case study of the 2020-2021 curriculum

Taking measures against the coronavirus pandemic in 2020-2021 many universities all over the world had to transform their formal classes into distance or online courses. The article deals with the issues of online EFL and ESP teaching and the learning process in distance format under an instructor’s supervision. The research is based on the feedback data of the survey conducted for the Political Science students who were taking up the English language university course online in the 2020-2021 curriculum instead of formal classes. The aim of the research was to reveal the technical, psychological and behavioural aspects of English language distance learning in a virtual MS Teams classroom as well as to analyse the students’ self-assessment of the efficiency and results of the distance EFL course. Applying quantitative and qualitative data analyses together with the method of involved observation, the authors arrive at conclusions concerning the still existing technical problems preventing students from working effectively, the disruptive character of certain psychological and behavioural patterns in a virtual classroom, as well as discrepancies between the amount of effort students put into their work and their academic achievements. Study results show both the drawbacks of the distance online format compared to the traditional formal classroom and the possibilities of effective implementation of distance forms of education at some stages of the English language educational process or within particular modules of the curriculum.