Public diplomacy in language education during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The pandemic has had a considerable impact on all spheres of life. Likewise, it has affected all levels of education changing conventional interaction patterns. The new format of learning influenced the motivation on the whole and its components in particular. The paper presents results of the survey conducted among students of Linguistics that contains self-assessment of motivation for FL learning in general and at the time of pandemic during distance learning. The reported overwhelming opinion concerning the lack of proper communication in the new settings along with an overall decline in all types of motivation is forcing the faculty to look for new ways of encouraging language learning and compensate for the absence of face-to-face classes. In solving this problem, the resources of public diplomacy appeared to be a very helpful tool. The paper explores changes in the language learning process both from the teachers’ and students’ standpoint. It also gives a comparative overview of motivation types in conventional learning settings and distance-learning ones. The authors focus on the potential benefits of public diplomacy contacts in language learning.

Keywords

• foreign language learning
• language education
• motivation
• public diplomacy
• distance learning
• learning settings