KINESITHERAPY STUDENTS’ SATISFACTION WITH ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSES DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

ABSTRACT Introduction: Students’ satisfaction is a major issue in a language learning course. The main task of the specialized English course for kinesitherapy students is to provide language knowledge and skills, and stimulate oral production, using interactive learning techniques, reading and listening materials on human anatomy, and health care for students’ future careers. Methods: The aim of the research was to study students’ satisfaction with the specialized English course held during the Covid-19 pandemic (spring semester, academic 2021-2022). The subjects were 51 students from the Faculty of Public Health, Health Care, Kinesitherapy and Tourism at the National Sports Academy “V. Levski”. They completed anonymously a Questionnaire of Student Satisfaction with Speaking Classes (Asakereh, Dehghannezhad, 2015), consisting of 6 scales: Linguistic related items; Psychology related items; Socially related items; Course book related items; Instructor related items and Educational system and facilities-related items. A 5-point Likert-type scale was used for evaluation of students’ satisfaction. Students also completed a survey, including questions about their gender; age; type of high school they finished; preference for the type of education (online, face-to-face or blended). Results and discussion: The results indicate that student’s satisfaction with the English course was high, irrespective of gender or age. Students from language or science schools were less satisfied by language communication with their colleagues, compared to students from other schools (t50=2.39, p=.021). Most students prefer face-to-face education (54.9 %), least prefer online education (13.7%) and about one third prefer blended education (31.4%). Conclusion: The results of the study show that students need to communicate directly in person on professional topics, and that learning specialized terminology is useful and important to them.