engleski

Benefits and drawbacks of literature circles in Moodle chat for the students of English as a foreign language

The aim of this paper is to study the benefits and drawbacks of using Moodle Chat for the implementation of literature circles in the English language classrooms among university students by establishing the suitability of online chats for implementing literature circles, and to obtain student feedback and their assessment of the conducted activities. Literature circles are widely used in language teaching to promote active learning, develop communication skills and encourage critical thinking, creativity and self-motivation. Furthermore, they are highly effective in developing other soft skills such as problem solving, leadership, teamwork and empathy which are in high demand in the contemporary job market. Technology advancements and the development of new e-learning tools have opened myriads of possibilities for developing language skills in less conventional ways. Therefore, instead of the traditional literature circles conducted in class, students have been given the opportunity to conduct literature circle discussions in the Moodle Chat environment in their own arrangement, without direct teacher intervention. The added value of Moodle Chat is that the conversations are recorded and provide material for further linguistic and discourse analysis and can be adapted and used to assess the students' level of proficiency in both general and academic English. We wanted to know about the benefits and drawbacks of the literature circles in higher education for the students of English language through the action research done with our students. The respondents are first- and second-year students of English Language and Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek, Croatia. The combination of measurable usage data, student feedback, reflections and suggestions identified that the Moodle Chat was an effective e-learning tool for developing language skills in less conventional ways. The authors recommend, and provide suggestions on the use of Moodle Chat as a method for teachers of foreign languages as it can be highly effective in developing not only language skills, but also soft skills such as problem solving, leadership, teamwork and empathy.

communication skills, literature circles, Moodle Chat, soft skills, TEFL, action research

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