Language acquisition through massive open online courses (MOOCs): opportunities and restrictions in educational university environment

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of the use of massive open online courses (MOOCs) in modern universities, their effectiveness in general as well as the restrictions MOOCs have in terms of allowing students to form the same level or a comparable level of competence in studying of various disciplines as the full-time study provides. The author focuses on the implementation of MOOCs in language acquisition and provides empirical study data on the phenomena linked to language acquisition in terms of both didactic aspects of conveying information and of personality traits of the students that are connected to academic achievement. The data presented in the article suggests that the current state of MOOCs is still inadequate to provide a quality language acquisition in most students as well as setting up a problem of development of better tools to use in MOOCs in terms of acquiring new language and forming a set of independent learning competencies in students. The author provides specific restrictions and outlines possible solutions and the technologies that can be used to improve language acquisition via self-paced courses.

Creativity and Personality Traits as Foreign Language Acquisition Predictors in University Linguistics Students

“…Numerous studies show that openness to experience and especially conscientiousness are significant predictors of academic achievements for most studied subjects, including FL/SL [15][16][17]. Recent Russian research based on the FFM has shown that conscientiousness impacts the academic achievements of Russian university and grade-school students [18][19][20][21]. However, a study of Russian linguistics students' academic achievements in different subjects showed that none of the FFM traits are associated with a student's final grades in English (as the "first" and mandatory FL), while conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism are correlated with the final grades for their "second" elective FL [18].…”

“…In Russian psychology, a large number of FLA studies have been carried out using the System-Functional Model of personality traits developed by Krupnov [22]. Researchers consider sociability, curiosity, persistence, responsibility, and initiative as the FLA factors for different university students [19][20][21][23][24][25]. In particular, it was revealed that persistence is more closely related to success in FLA than curiosity [19,20], and initiative has a contradictory correlation with FLA assessments in linguistics and non-linguistics university students [21,23].…”

“…Researchers consider sociability, curiosity, persistence, responsibility, and initiative as the FLA factors for different university students [19][20][21][23][24][25]. In particular, it was revealed that persistence is more closely related to success in FLA than curiosity [19,20], and initiative has a contradictory correlation with FLA assessments in linguistics and non-linguistics university students [21,23]. These findings are consistent with those of other studies, which showed that students' academic achievements are more strongly associated with conscientiousness than openness [15,16].…”

“…We assume that an explanation of these results may be connected to the following aspects: (1) The complex characteristics of the relationships between creativity and FL proficiency indicators, which may be mediated by other factors, including personality traits; (2) the ambiguous assessment of students' creativity in FL learning by teachers, which corresponds to the assumptions by Shaheen [34]; and (3) the differences in the educational and evaluation systems used by different countries, such as the inconsistencies in the results from studying of personality traits as academic achievement predictors in Russian samples [18][19][20][21]23,24].…”

“…This assumption is consistent with the results of other studies, which show that students' academic achievements are more closely associated with conscientiousness and persistence, rather than with initiative, openness, curiosity, etc. [15,[19][20][21]23,24]. Overcoming these problems is not so much a psychological and educational problem as it is a social one.…”