Online language learning in times of crisis: Hindrance or opportunity?

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many changes to the way teachers teach and students learn. Although there is a surplus of research on online education, the transition period to online education is also worth investigating. This study set out to explore language learners' perceptions of how they were impacted by emergency remote teaching (ERT). All the participants were students attending an English medium university in Turkey. The mode of teaching, changes in teacher-student and studentstudent interaction, online tools and materials used in the courses were investigated by a comprehensive self-developed online survey and the data were triangulated later by semi-structured interviews conducted with the volunteering participants. Most found the transition to ERT demanding, particularly the loss of face-to-face interaction; however, some students benefited from being able to better regulate their own learning process thanks to the recorded lectures and online materials. Students also appreciated receiving regular feedback from instructors about their progress. Research Article

Covid-19 Pandemic and Emergency Distance Turkish Teaching

“…There are also negative aspects such as technical problems, less participation in class, lack of course material, low motivation, difficulty of classroom management and measurement and evaluation problem. In this context, considering the existence of both positive and negative aspects of distance education, this result is similar to other studies (Ozkose, Ari, Cakir, 2013;Ozbay, 2015;Baris & Cetinkaya, 2016;Paydar & Dogan, 2019;Gungor, Cangal & Demir, 2020;Karakus et al 2020;Kaya, 2020;Erzen & Ceylan, 2020;Er Turkuresin, 2020;Sumardi & Nugrahani, 2020;Balbay & Erkan, 2021).…”

Learning at Risk? Language Teaching Under Emergency Remote Conditions

“…On the whole, our study suggests that learners show flexibility to handle unfortunate circumstances in their learning environment as long as they are motivated to successfully complete their programme (in our case in order to start their undergraduate programme), and they appreciate attempts of their teachers that help them achieve their academic aim (cf. Balbay & Erkan, 2021;Erarslan, 2021). This may explain the somehow surprising result of this study that a remarkable number of students saw their speaking skills improved throughout the course even though it has been suggested that ERT favours the learning of reading and writing at the expense of speaking (Öztürk-Karataş & Tuncer, 2020).…”

“…The importance that the learners attached to the role of the teachers is indirectly confirmed in the teachers' reports on how they addressed challenges posed by ERT. In other words, the instructional practise planned and realised by the teacher appears to be the main factor to overcome the challenges of ERT (Balbay & Erkan, 2021) and contributing to the teachers' professional satisfaction (MacIntyre et al, 2020). Those practices, including the design of individual and collaborative assignments that engaged learners in online research, selecting videoconferencing tools different from the institutionally provided platform, online feedback, conducting shorter lessons in which screen sharing is reduced to create a classroom atmosphere or allowing learners to select topics to be covered in classes, exemplify how teachers address challenges created in their specific context displaying "an ecology of contextual agency where the development of teacher agency is incorporated into the evolution of the environment and its relative factors" (Chen, 2022).…”

“…Digital competencies should encompass the knowledge of how to use digital tools skilfully, how to adapt teaching practices to the ERT modality and to develop a social awareness that helps establish or maintain communication with learners (Moorhouse, 2021). If the technical infrastructure is not sufficient and/or digital competencies to deliver language education effectively are not developed, learners are likely to perceive ERT-based teaching demotivating because interaction as in face-to-face classrooms does not occur (Balbay & Erkan, 2021;Seçkin et al, 2020) or, for example, feedback is not given adequately (Sumardı & Nugrahanı, 2021). As an outcome of this modality effect, a preference of reading and writing over speaking and listening as the means of instruction in virtual foreign or second language classrooms (Sayer & Braun, 2020;Zorčič, 2020;Dahmash, 2020;Hartshorn & McMurry, 2020) and language teacher education (Atmojo & Nugroho, 2020;Bailey & Lee, 2020;Ersin et al, 2020;Moorhouse & Beaumont 2020;Öztürk-Karataş & Tuncer, 2020) has been reported.…”

“…Contributing to a growing number of studies from different foreign or second language learning contexts aiming at examining this new way of learning and teaching (e.g. Altavilla, 2020;Atmojo & Nugroho, 2020;Balbay& Erkan, 2021;Doncheva et al, 2020;Famularsih, 2020;Hartshorn & McMurry, 2020;Hernández & Flórez, 2020;Mahyoob, 2020), this study attempts to respond to the "the hope that others will continue to explore the impact of this period on the ELT [English language teaching] community" (Moorhouse & Kohnke, 2021, p. 375), expressed in a recent review on the effects of emergency remote teaching (ERT) on foreign and second language instruction. Some rather disillusioning experiences of the researchers gained in their own instructional practices gave a strong impetus to explore whether or not ERT jeopardised learning in their own context and to explore potential impacts of ERT by examining the case of ELT pre-service teachers at a Turkish university.…”