University Students and Their Attitudes toward Online Learning of Language for Specific Purposes

This study presents the results of quantitative research conducted among university students of tourism studies regarding their attitudes toward the teaching approaches in their online language courses for special purposes online courses (LSP) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our main goal was to analyse the attitudes of university students from two Slovenian tourism faculties towards the online teaching approaches in the LSP courses provided by the Faculty of Tourism at Brežice (FTB), and the Faculty of Tourism Studies-Turistica at Portorož (FTT). Four research hypotheses were put forward aiming at the students' attitudes regarding their gender and affiliation, their self-evaluated technological knowledge, and their attitudes toward the foreign language lecturers' teaching methods and approaches. 468 students completed the survey, 66 of whom were from FTB and 75 from FTT, who had responded to an anonymous online survey and the results of the quantitative study are as follows: respondents had evaluated their technological knowledge as well as the teaching approaches used by foreign language lecturers fairly positively. As for gender and LSP teaching methods and approaches, no evidence was found that students' attitudes were statistically significant, as did the affiliation and the self-evaluated knowledge of tools for remote LSP learning. The findings imply that LSP teachers might want to adopt a common strategy for online foreign language teaching nationwide and provide a commonly accepted, equally motivating, and safe teaching environment.