Edutainment in Teaching Foreign Language to Generation Z Students

Abstract

The article deals with some new challenges that foreign language (FL) teachers face in the classroom while teaching the students of Generation Z. It also deals with edutainment as one of the methods in coping with those challenges. Nowadays Generation Z is the only generation of “digital natives” who have used digital technology since a very young age and are comfortable with the Internet and social media. These students like to experiment in learning, prefer visual learning, are good team players, they tend to have short attention spans, and prefer edutainment. Generation Z students appreciate learning if they consider it interactive with games and fun activities incorporated into the FL and curriculum. FL teachers need to use more technology in their teaching strategies. Teachers need to update their teaching strategies. They need to adopt more technology-based tasks, including visual content and to give students opportunities to feedback. It’s a good idea to start a class blog and think of reasons how students can use the class blog. Generation Z are multi-taskers so FL teacher can incorporate pictures, sounds, video into all the teaching activities. Students can also have listening, writing and speaking activities at the same time. FL teacher can also use such applications and resources as Kahoot!, Socrative, Pole Everywhere, Quizlet, YouTube, Instagram etc.

Shifting the paradigms in education: teaching foreign languages through communication

“…The next epoch, Generation Z, was born under relative social and political stability conditions, which provided him with a trouble-free childhood (Chumak & Andrienko, 2020). Concerning information technology, this generation, unlike the previous one, did not know a world without access to the Internet, social networks, computer games, and virtual communication (Cilluffo & Fry, 2019).…”

“…Unlike previous generations, Generation Z cannot imagine existence without all kinds of electronic gadgets, and without access to the World Wide Web, they live in the age of total digitalization. In the higher education system, there is a problem with intergenerational relationships (Chumak & Andrienko, 2020).…”

“…It becomes possible because of continuous professional development (Jurabekova, 2022). Some researchers in the field of sociology note the heterogeneity of Generation Z, which can be divided into young people interested in knowledge and the younger generation, aimed at material well-being without claiming a common high intellectual outlook and knowledge (Aalberse et al, 2019;Chumak & Andrienko, 2020). The task of a teacher who finds himself/herself in the student audience is to recognize these groups of students and develop the necessary learning requirements, using a differentiated approach when presenting material in a foreign language classroom with the help of communicative method.…”

“…For pragmatic students who want to learn a foreign language in a short time, on the contrary, modular training in mastering such disciplines as "Foreign Language in the Professional Sphere", "Intercultural Communication in a Foreign Language", and "Foreign Language for Business and Professional Communication" is highly recommended. Furthermore, the current generation can be characterized as a generation with certain personal characteristics, including high selfesteem and a high level of self-acceptance (Chumak & Andrienko, 2020).…”

“…Generation Z develops a fresh trend and adds gamification to the learning process: education through the game (Chumak & Andrienko, 2020). Gamification has existed before: these were training formats, and now they have received a new impetus for development.…”