The Development of Communicative Skills in Teaching Romanian as a Foreign Language Online
The Development of Communicative Skills in Teaching Romanian as a Foreign Language Online

Summary/Abstract: Since the advent of a new era of teaching, the development of communicative skills has been seen as one of the central objectives of language learning. However, the present-day context of the COVID-19 pandemic made us re-think and re-structure the majority of our teaching practices, including speaking activities that we used to suggest to our Romanian language students. In this paper, we have tried to tackle the topic of the development of communicative skills in teaching Romanian as a foreign language in an online classroom. The paper presents a list of obstacles that we, as teachers of Romanian as a foreign language, have encountered in the COVID-period teaching, such as students’ shyness and reluctance to participate due to various reasons, the difficulties linked to the organization of pair- and groupwork, the obstacles in correcting and moulding students’ pronunciation, as well as lack of feedback or reaction on part of students in the situations when a dialogue is intended by the teacher. All of these challenges are accompanied by potential solutions that we have found useful and efficient in our teaching practice. Moreover, the paper presents a number of activities that can be successfully used in an online environment for the development of learners’ communicative skills. Taking into consideration the challenges presented in the second section of the article, we have tried to give some practical suggestions on how the respective activities can be conducted in an online classroom in an optimal way.

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