ELT Students’ Perceptions and Attitudes about the Online Listening Courses During the Covid-19 Period

The outbreak of Covid-19 changed many aspects of people all over the world, including the type of education and learning/teaching styles. Transferring from face-to-face education to distance education brought some difficulties and challenges for both teachers and students. Among those observed challenges and problems, one of the most important ones was related to distance listening courses at an ELT department of a state university in Turkey. In the literature, no related or similar studies to discover the perceptions of ELT students about the online listening courses. Therefore, this present study aimed at discovering the 2nd grade ELT students’ perceptions about the distance listening courses carried out throughout the Covid-19 period focusing on whether students had encountered any challenges. To collect data, a 30-item Likert-type questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used. Randomly selected students (12) and listening course teachers (4) were interviewed to reinforce the findings of the study. Findings put forward that a great majority of the participants and instructors had negative perceptions and attitudes about online listening courses. The results of this current research will be of benefit to university instructors and syllabus designers in taking future urgent decisions and measures regarding the implementation of distance learning and teaching programs for students from different backgrounds.