The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed an abrupt change in our teaching practices. Particularly the online assessment of students’ writing has been an unprecedented, novel situation for many English foreign language teachers. What is novel about this issue is the constraint of adopting it in a critical situation in which it has been an alternative way to assess students in the absence of the physical presence of students. The shift from face to face assessment to online assessment has been a novel experience for many Moroccan English foreign language teachers who have never implemented it before nor have any background knowledge about its mechanisms and methods albeit there are some teachers who are familiar with online teaching and online assessment. The issue has generated important points for English language teaching practitioners and stakeholders about the strategies and challenges of this compulsory mode of assessment during COVID-19 lockdown. From this perspective, the purpose of this paper was to reflect on writing assessment in the era of COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of teachers. The paper aimed to explore the perceptions of Moroccan English foreign language teachers about online writing assessment and the challenges that encountered them.  For this purpose, data were collected from 100 English language teachers in the region of Casablanca through the use of questionnaires. The findings of this study substantiated that most participants considered online assessment of students’ writing a real challenge and hence hold a negative attitude towards it. Based on the results of this study, it was recommended to teach digital writing skills to English foreign language learners and design teaching training programs about online writing assessment.

This research was conducted to investigate the relationship between two variables:  critical thinking skills and argumentative writing skills in Moroccan Preparatory Classes of Higher Engineering Schools (Classes Préparatoires aux Grandes Ecoles) ( CPGE), Omar Ibn Khattab Meknes . The participants were the 2nd year Maths and Physics (MP) students in CPGE, Omar Ibn Al Khattab Meknes. 60 students participated in the study from a total number of 120 students. The research adopted the correlation design to measure the degree of association between two variables using the statistical procedure of correlation analysis. In this regard, a critical thinking test (AssessmentDay Practice Test Experts, 2018) was administered to test  students’ critical thinking skills. Then, the students were asked to write an argumentative essay about social networking and creativity. To analyse the collected data, the study resorted to SPSS software (Statistical Package for the Social Science, version 23). Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to investigate the significant relationship between critical thinking skills and argumentative writing. The result of the research displayed that the correlation coefficient is 0. 941, which means that the two tests are positively correlated and the correlation is very significant. The result of such correlation displayed clearly that critical thinking and argumentative writing have a positive relation.

Covid-19 has pushed Moroccan education officials and stakeholders to shift to online education as the best possible substitute for in-class teaching. It was confirmed that face-to-face and physical contact are the main ways of virus transfer. So, school closure was an unavoidable decision by decision-makers and educationists alike. The sudden nature of the shift from in-class to online education means that both professors and students were not ready for this new form of education. This study, hence, investigates the attitudes of Mohammadia school of Engineering students in Rabat towards online education during the Covid-19 pandemic. The research design in this study is quantitative, in which questionnaires are used to collect data from 100 third-year students. The collected data are described and analyzed using descriptive statistics.  The findings indicate that the majority of students believe online education is not as effective as face-to-face education. Respondents also mentioned some challenges and obstacles that hindered the success of online education. The findings lead the researcher to yield some recommendations in the field of online education in Morocco.

This study intends to explore Moroccan English pre-service teachers’ experience with using cell phones during their internships. Nineteen instructors were picked at random from the Rabat CRMEF (Regional Center for Education and Training Professions). Interviews were conducted with all nineteen participants. The results displayed that trainees’ preconception on the complexity of using smartphones may affect their tendency on employing this mobile tool as an instructional medium. The findings also revealed that pre-service teachers are not ready to integrate smartphones in EFL classrooms due to the lack of ICT training, distractions that smartphones bring about, and schools’ policies banning the use of this gadget.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0029/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

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