Assessing Student Inclination for Language Learning Via Open Distance Learning During Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

At the end of 2019, the world witnessed a coronavirus outbreak, bringing significant challenges to many sectors, including education. This study aims to examine UiTM students' ability to cope with learning English during the Covid-19 pandemic via ODL. The study looked at students' readiness to learn online thoroughly, their efficiency in fulfilling the syllabus requirements, self-motivation, and computer literacy skills. The instrument measured four factors: computer literacy skills, efficiency, learning readiness, and self-motivation with 5- point Likert Scale. Thus, this study computes the sum of item responses over the set of individual items. As for data analysis, the association between these variables was discussed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and multiple linear regression to answer the objectives of this study. Correlation analysis showed a positive correlation between student preference to learn English and computer literacy skills, efficiency, learning readiness, and self-motivation. Regression analysis showed that the four independent variables of the study were statistically significant towards students’ preference in taking English courses via ODL. Computer literacy skills contributed the most towards students' preference for ODL for English courses in terms of variable importance.