English for Specific Purposes
Wrld

ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES: E-LEARNING

Galina Kavaliauskienė

Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania

Abstract

Online learning has gained popularity due to technology progress. The concept of online learning comprises all forms of electronically supported learning. The term is used to refer to the out-of-classroom and in-classroom educational experiences via online technology. Its classic definition means the integrated combination of traditional learning with web based online approaches.

This article examines students’ perceptions and attitudes to integrating online activities in the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) language classroom. The respondents in this study have been the University students of two different specializations, namely students who study either Law or Law & Management. The specially designed questionnaire has been administered to the two samples of respondents. The data have been analyzed statistically by a means of a Software Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). It has been established that the frequencies of the positive and the negative responses do not only depend on the respondents’ specialization but also differ within the different groups of the same specialization. The findings mean that there is resistance towards online learning which might be due to students’ individual likes and dislikes. Statistical treatment of the students’ responses allows determining the degree of the strength of relationships as well as their statistical significance. No linear relationship has been found for the positive responses between both samples. A linear relationship between negative responses of studied samples has been found at the significance level of .009, i.e. the probability of 99%, which indicates that the findings may be extended beyond the examined limited number of respondents.

Key words: English for Specific Purposes, online learning, respondents of different specializations, statistical treatment by SPSS.

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