Responses of the English-Language-Teaching Community to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The global pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus has had a disruptive and profound impact on English-language teaching. To reduce the spread of the virus, teachers and learners had to suspend in-person teaching and learning. This led to the widespread adoption of synchronous and asynchronous online teaching. Obviously, this period has led to immense challenges for teachers and students alike, but it has also provided a unique opportunity to understand the potential affordances of online teaching in English-language teaching. This study, a systematic thematic review of empirical studies pertaining to English-language teaching and the COVID-19 pandemic, identifies and analyses the key knowledge generated by the English-language-teaching community during the pandemic. It ends with a discussion of the lessons learned from the pandemic and suggests potential areas for further research.

A bibliometric analysis of linguistic research on COVID-19

“…Within the linguistic field, literature reviews tend to focus on COVID-19-related language education exist. For instance, Moorhouse and Kohnke ( 2021 ) explore the lessons learned from COVID-19, and identify and analyze the primary knowledge produced by the English-language teaching community during the epidemic, also offering recommendations for further research on this particular subject. A systemic literature review of adult online learning during the pandemic by Lu et al ( 2022 ) compiled and assessed 124 SSCI literature of empirical studies using a systematic literature review and the literature visualization tool CiteSpace.…”

The Impact of Covid-19 on the Design of Online Language Teaching Through Zoom

“…Studies have demonstrated that "interaction and multimedia communication can be effectively enhanced in language learning through SCMC" [5]. However, despite the geographical expansion of research, in the most recent survey containing publication statistics on the topic of emergency remote teaching (ERT), it is unclear why there is no publication data covering the situation in Ukraine [21]. In this paper, the synchronous learning platform Zoom is seen as a tool to develop sociocultural competence of the students, with the help of which learning will become more intensive and more individualized.…”

Learning at Risk? Language Teaching Under Emergency Remote Conditions

“…Accordingly, teachers may experience ERT as frustrating or as an opportunity to deve lop professionally when they succeed in adapting their practices to the new modality (Farrell & Stanclik, 2021). In sum, ERT appears to constrain foreign or language teaching but also to provide affordances that are being and need to be furtherly explored in research to reconceptualise remote teaching as an option in language instruction beyond the pandemic (Erarslan, 2021;Moorhouse & Kohnke, 2021).…”

“…The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has changed education dramatically worldwide because schools were forced to provide instruction through remote teaching extempore due to school closures (Moorhouse & Kohnke, 2021;Pokhrel & Chhetri, 2021;Schleicher, 2020). The change in the teaching modality has had far-reaching consequences, especially for but not restricted to learners from socially disadvantaged backgrounds (UNESCO 2021): Learning is impoverished or interrupted when technical infrastructure of educational institutions and home environments are insufficient, teachers, learners, school administrators or parents suffer from limited digital literacy skills, and validated assessment and evaluation measures can no longer be applied.…”