Teachers’ Perspective about Delivering Lectures for a Large Group of Foreign Language Learners through Online

Abstract

Teaching to a large group of students in an online space is different from teaching the same course unit in a physical classroom in a traditional classroom setting. Yet online classrooms without boundaries and walls, have created opportunities for teachers to accommodate a large group of students anywhere at any time. The Department of Modern Languages, University of Kelaniya, offers six foreign languages French, German, Japanese, Chinese and Korean for Bachelor of Arts General Degree and Honors Degree programs. The student enrollments for the first year General degree program exceed the number of hundred for Chinese, German and Korean languages due to the popularity and demand for these languages in the local and foreign job market. The department has implemented its own set of methods to manage a large number of students physically by dividing the class into groups and by monitoring the classroom sessions with the assistance of several teachers. Yet the sudden transition of teaching from physical to online has posed controversial opinions among teachers, as it was uncertain how managing a large group of students online would affect the performance level of the learners. Therefore, the objective of this research was to examine teachers’ perspectives of delivering lectures to a large group of foreign language learners online. Data was collected using a survey, where 15 lecturers teaching Chinese, German and Korean were selected as the research sample using the purposeful sampling method. According to the findings of the research, it was evident that the teachers are having a positive aspect about delivering lectures to a large group of foreign language learners online, as video conferencing software has allowed the teachers to distribute learning materials, maintain the motivation and enthusiasm among learners, do interactive activities and conduct assessment and evaluation process successfully.