DaF, COVID-19, and newer technologies: Experiences from an Indian University

Around late 2019 to early 2020, the world was first hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The imposed lockdowns created newer challenges for the education sector, as they led to a temporary suspension of physical classes and forced both teachers and students to switch, at short notice, to online teaching. In this paper, I discuss the impact of the pandemic on foreign language learning (FLL) in India and examine the strategies employed by teachers to address the challenges posed by the lack of physical classes.

FLL is a specialized form of learning because of its reliance on learner participation. Certain FLL methods such as “embodied learning” consider the impact of bodily movements in the learning process (Kosmas, 2021). In their research on FLL for preschool children, Toumpaniari et al. (2015) noted that physical activity involving gross motor activities can lead to better cognitive functioning and higher academic achievement scores. They also observe that research within the theoretical framework of embodied cognition has shown that embodying knowledge using more subtle motor activities, such as task-relevant gestures, has a positive effect on learning (Toumpaniari et al., 2015). Research on FLL for adult learners shows that they pay more attention to the teacher's verbal explanation when embodied actions are used (Matsumoto, 2019).

The pandemic created a situation in which learning with embodied action was not possible. Klimova (2021: 1793) notes that online teaching fails to offer a “strong teaching presence, which is a catalyst for the development of social and cognitive presence and a key component of traditional professional training.” She notes further that whilst students find online language classes effective, “face-to-face classes cannot be replaced” (Klimova, 2021: 1793). In this paper, I outline the methods I employed to compensate for the multisensory approach of embodied learning and examine to what extent online teaching can serve as an alternative to physical classes with respect to FLL.

The data presented here is based on my DaF (Deutsch als Fremdsprache—German as a foreign language) teaching during the first lockdown period in India (March–May 2020). The data was collected at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (henceforth JNU), a premier state university based in New Delhi. In April 2020, JNU opted for online classes and extended the semester by 1 month to compensate for the time lost, so the data collected for this paper is from the period April to June 2020. The students I taught were intermediate learners of German: At the time of collection of data, they were in the second year of their BA program in German Studies and had done 1 year of German starting from ab-initio level in their first year. It is expected that the language proficiency of BA-2 students is at the B1 level. However, this was not entirely the case: out of the 32 students registered in BA-2, some performed at the level A2/B1, whereas there were others performed at B2 level.

The course I taught was called “Advanced Textual Grammar”. The purpose of the course was to build on the skills gained in the first 12 months of learning and acquiring advanced grammatical structures of German. Students get rigorous training in constructing sentences with features such as Konjunktiv-I, Konjunktiv-II, passive voice, modality, and so on. Teachers are not bound by a certain number of texts they must cover; rather they can choose texts depending on the needs and wants of a certain group. For example, if a certain number of students want to read fairy tales, teachers generally make an effort to utilize such texts in the classroom and teach grammatical structures through them. Such flexibility ensures that students feel included and stay interested in learning. Moreover, dealing with varied genres allows students to get acquainted with different registers of the language.

The first lockdown in India was announced with immediate effect on 25 March 2020. Students at JNU were instructed to return to their hometowns as soon as possible. The classes would restart only a few weeks after the first lockdown was announced. The first key challenge was the lack of equal internet access among students, as they came from different parts of India. Students living in remote areas experienced difficulties attending classes for the entire session because they did not have a stable internet connection. Moreover, not everyone owned a PC or a laptop. They had to rely on their smartphones instead for attending classes. The second challenge was the impersonal nature of online teaching and the lack of embodied learning. Most of the students did not have a broadband internet connection and used mobile data instead. In order to make sure that they could attend the required number of classes (4 h/day, same as in-person classes), they needed to turn off their videos to save data. However, this also had the consequence that classes felt very impersonal, as I had to communicate with a blank screen, which is not the optimal situation for DaF lessons.

Third, the lack of physical classes also resulted in a lack of group activities. At the time of data collection, JNU had not subscribed to the Zoom software and features such as breakout rooms were not available to me. On Zoom, the DaF teacher can give students a topic for group discussion, divide them into breakout rooms in groups of 3–5, and visit each room to monitor their progress. The lack of such a feature on the platforms that I used (Skype and Google meet) meant that a significant part of DaF teaching could not be realized. Finally, as part of its policy of inclusion, JNU offers admission to students with visual impairment and also offers extra classes for them. However, if DaF teaching material is not available in braille, it can be sometimes challenging to ensure all students get equal opportunity. One of my students from this group had a partial visual impairment and required teaching material to be made available in A3 size (print copies). During the lockdown, it became difficult to address the student's learning needs due to the lack of physical interaction.

The first step toward finding solutions to the challenges outlined above lay in creating learning materials that were readily and universally accessible, and available in multimodal form. For this, I relied on commercial platforms such as Deutsche Welle. I used Deutsche Welle because its YouTube channel has a series of instructional videos at various levels. On the Deutsche Welle website, manuscripts of these videos are available. My approach included reading the manuscript first with the students in the first class, discussing grammatical structures and culturally coded words, and then watching the videos with the students in the next one and conducting a debate with the students on the given topic. The combination of such videos and texts proved to be great aids in developing the listening and reading competence of students. The accessibility of these learning materials helped all students, including those with disabilities.

The second approach I employed was to record all the online interactive sessions and upload it to my YouTube channel. The purpose of these uploads was to help students who did not have regular internet access, as it allowed them to catch up with classes whenever they had internet access. The “analytics” feature of YouTube allowed me to track how the number of views the videos of each interactive session received (Figure 1). The third approach I employed was to use an online language learning platform through which I set weekly goals for students. I chose Duolingo, as it could easily be installed on Smartphones and also allowed me to add all my students to a virtual classroom, where I could set weekly goals for students (such as achieving 300 points per week). As completing 1 exercise leads to 15 points in general, it meant that students had to complete 20 exercises per week. It must be added here that these assignments were not meant to replace normal assignments; they were rather meant for self-practice. Finally, for overcoming the impersonal nature of online teaching, I made sure to get each student to speak in the class. I asked, at random, any student to participate in the debate (in India, it is not out of the norm to use this strategy). The purpose was to ensure that students were active during the entire class.

The first major constraint was ensuring that no copyright violation occurred. All the Deutsche Welle texts were under a creative commons license, so that did not cause any issues. However, the videos to which these texts belonged were protected by copyright. Therefore, I had to make sure that whilst recording the teaching session, I started recording only after having played the DW video. There was no option to play it once the recording started because it would lead to copyright strikes. This was a challenge because if a student had a question or requested to replay a certain part of the video, I would have to stop recording, play the video, and restart recording. This led to multiple recordings for the same training session which was inconvenient both for students and me. The second constraint was that, due to unstable internet connection, students would automatically get logged off and rejoin a session, which was distracting and would interrupt the flow of the classroom. Finally, as Duolingo assignments were meant as additional homework for practice, it was difficult to keep students motivated to regularly do these assignments.

The case study described above presents its unique challenges and the solutions taken offered some important lessons. The first important lesson, for both teachers and students, was that teaching could transcend physical boundaries. Second, although online classes cannot include physical activities and embodied action as is common in in-person classes, they can still offer a holistic learning atmosphere by engaging students, making them active participants in the learning process, and ensuring that learning materials are accessible in multiple formats. Online teaching was useful because of its integrative character and the convenience it brought for everyone. It allowed us to record classes, which was previously rather difficult at JNU due to the lack of facilities. Moreover, online teaching allowed smooth transition among different functions required for multimodal teaching. For example, teachers could interact with students, play a video, display and read a text together, open a word document and type notes in there that would be visible to all students, and finally record the session. Using all these functions in physical form is time-consuming.

The alphabetical display of names on Google meet allowed me to ensure that each student got time to speak and practice their spoken skills. In the feedback submitted by students, the response to online teaching was positive, although two of them did express the wish for printed materials and a return to in-person teaching. What did not work so well were the Duolingo assignments, perhaps because they were an additional assignment meant for self-practice, and it was not easy to keep students motivated in such a case. I want to conclude this paper by pointing out that both physical and online teaching have their own merits and drawbacks, and online teaching should not be aimed at replicating physical classes. They should be viewed as different modes of learning in their own right.