The Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has caused disruptions in education in Turkey, as it has in many parts of the world. Faculties of Education that require practice teaching (practicum) are affected as well; due to the shutdown, pre-service English language teachers (PTs) are deprived of the field experience and actual classroom teaching practices in authentic school settings. Practicum constitutes an important part of teacher education and during practicum, “cooperating” teachers (i.e. teachers at practicum schools) and university instructors as teaching practice supervisors play crucial roles in equipping PTs with necessary theoretical and practical skills. The present study took place in the English Language Education program of a competitive state university in Turkey. At the university, all theory-oriented courses moved to synchronous platforms without much difficulty with almost full attendance of the students. As for the practicum, Turkish Higher Education Council let the universities decide for themselves. As researchers working at two different universities, Bahçeşehir University and Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey, we designed an alternative practice to meet the needs of PTs and maintain the quality of the practicum: “e-practicum” under the supervision of the university supervisor who acted as the “e-mentor”. The aim was to increase PTs’ teaching competence and prepare them for online teaching. A virtual classroom consisting of twenty-five PTs was formed and six PTs performed microteaching to their peers who acted as students by using Zoom. After the e-practicum sessions, peers gave detailed feedback to the teacher PTs. The university supervisor provided e-mentoring right after each session. Then, each teacher PT reflected on e-practicum experience and e-mentoring. The findings revealed that PTs found the e-practicum useful because it helped them overcome online teaching fears.
2025-10-10
Although various e-learning technologies have been in use for decades, the rapid worldwide spread of COVID-19 has made online teaching and learning 'the new normal'. Many academic units, such as our team of Learning Advisors at Auckland University of Technology, have had to make quick decisions about the design of online learning experiences for students. This study reports on the creation of online writing workshops for postgraduate research students. In our context, research students can self-enrol in 'one-off' workshops where they typically do not know each other. As teaching staff, we also had little prior knowledge of how best to design student participation in synchronous writing activities. An initial challenge was thus to identify different means through which students can participate online, and then use these findings to inform workshop design. Our findings centre on an online participation matrix with two sets of simultaneous options: whether participants are identified or not; and whether their participation occurs as a series of discrete actions by individuals, or as simultaneous actions by multiple participants. In Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, we found that these combinations give rise to observant, anonymous, episodic, concealed, or discursive participation. We define and illustrate each of these participation types, discuss their sequencing across an entire workshop, and reflect on specific adaptations from face to face settings. These findings are of particular relevance to teachers who are exploring a variety of software features and want to make principled choices for the design of activities in online writing workshops.
This paper considers the challenges and possible solutions of moving a group speaking assessment from face-to-face mode to online mode during the coronavirus pandemic from February to May in 2020. The assessment involved 168 higher diploma level students from a range of departments at a tertiary institution in Hong Kong taking their second English subject at university. The students generally have a low level of English (Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education level 3). They are in their second semester in their first year at university which runs from September to July each year. The students’ first semester was curtailed due to the civil unrest in Hong Kong that led to the closure of the university campus in November 2019. The modified speaking assessment was successfully conducted in early May 2020. Feedback from the English language teachers in the subject was generally positive with the general feeling that students received a more accurate grade as a result of the one-to-one discussion assessment than they had previously received with the group discussion assessment. Grade data appear to confirm this. Student feedback to the modified assessment was mixed with some preferring the original ‘group discussion’ format while others opting for the revised ‘one-to-one discussion’ format. Overall, there were some administrative concerns, and the assessment rubric needs to be further modified if the revised format is continued.
This article deals with the challenges in training English language preservice teachers in the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach through adopting synchronous online teaching using Zoom and the development of CLT tasks in the time of COVID-19. It outlines the teaching context, explains the rationale for training preservice teachers in the CLT Approach and the challenges of adopting CLT with distancing pedagogic practices where face-to-face sessions were not possible. It first examines the challenges of using synchronous online learning before explaining the rationale for adopting Zoom to train preservice teachers. It then describes how training was carried out, discusses the outcomes of the training and reflects on the practice of using synchronous online activities for training preservice teachers in the CLT Approach. The article concludes with teaching implications for educators looking at training preservice teachers in the CLT Approach through synchronous Zoom.
The current Covid-19 pandemic has forced many language classes to shift online. The shift needs to be carried out carefully to avoid jeopardizing the quality of the lessons. This paper showcases online tools that are used to support an academic writing module taught at the National University of Singapore. These tools are Zoom, Microsoft Office 365, and LumiNUS, the university’s internal Learning Management System (LMS). These tools are selected because of their accessibility and familiarity. More importantly, they support critical thinking tasks in the academic writing module. These tasks are (1) identifying sentence functions in a paragraph; (2) identifying sentence functions in relation to verbs; and (3) answering a grammar quiz. The tasks are completed either synchronously or asynchronously. Lastly, this paper presents recommendations for ELT instructors and EAP students, as well as suggestions for the use of online tools and curriculum development.
The ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact upon education across multiple sectors, fields and disciplines. Campus closures, strict self-isolation and physical distancing measures require educators to rethink all aspects of course delivery. In response, many institutions have transformed face-to-face learning to online delivery at extremely short notice. Furthermore, for institutions delivering transnational English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) education, the pandemic poses significant challenges for providing effective English for Academic Purposes (EAP) support. This paper aims to contribute towards the ongoing discussion related to COVID-19’s impact on English language teaching. Specifically, the paper presents a reflective overview of how five individual EAP courses across four Sino-foreign universities based in China, and at the forefront of the global COVID-19 pandemic, responded to this crisis. To provide a variety of contingency models, EAP courses at two Sino-US and two Sino-UK universities at different stages of development are discussed.Through reflection and comparison, areas of good practice and the key challenges faced when transforming EAP courses from face-to-face to online delivery are discussed. All five EAP courses are compared using interaction, learner autonomy, feedback, and leadership and institutional support as key themes. The paper also presents practical implications drawn from the shared experiences of EAP practitioners from all four Sino-foreign universities. Ultimately, the paper aims to share the lessons learned by EAP practitioners to support those who may be required to make similar adjustments to their course delivery both within and beyond EAP teaching contexts.
Open Educational Resources (OER) are characterised by being available in the public domain under an open license, typically Creative Commons, so they can be copied, redistributed and reworked. The literature shows OER to be under-recognised in TESOL but the argument in this discussion paper is that the coronavirus provides an opportunity for OER to be integrated into the university curriculum. This is not simply because OER are free of cost, although this is not an insignificant advantage in an industry often under severe financial constraints, especially in a period of severe disruption as witnessed with the coronavirus. Of more significance are claims that the adoption of OER can enhance pedagogy. Three case studies are used to demonstrate the value of OER in coronavirus-affected university settings. The first is a personal scenario while the second and third are putative constructions of OER use. My own case study is of using OER to create an observation procedure to support instructors transitioning to online teaching. In the second study, OER are used to teach faculty how to write grant proposals. In the third, OER are a source for student oral presentations. This leads to reflection on the claims made for OER as regards pedagogy and the challenges they face The conclusion is that the impact of OER remains potential until the research base is fuller but at the very least the coronavirus represents a testing ground for raising awareness of and experimenting with OER.
In Thailand, social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic came into effect halfway through the university semester with teaching moving from the classroom to online. This was a completely new paradigm for most teachers. To understand the impact of the shift, a survey of all 52 English language teachers at one respected Thai university was conducted with two main focuses. First, teachers were asked to rate the seriousness of 17 potential problems at two time points, after the first week of online teaching and several weeks later. Second, teachers were asked to give comments about these problems and about the advantages and disadvantages of online teaching. Effect size differences between the two ratings were calculated. For the qualitative data, keyword analyses were used to identify patterns in the responses, and responses with similar content were grouped. The findings show that initially teachers rated many of the problems as serious, but that they quickly found solutions such as dividing lessons into a greater number of shorter units. However, problems remained with identifying suitable stimulating activities and marking student assignments. Teachers were ambivalent about the benefits of online teaching citing practical advantages but also highlighting difficulties in achieving some English language objectives and in gauging student reactions. Directions for dealing with the issues arising from these findings are given.
The unexpected descent of Covid-19 has driven many countries into lockdown. Universities have been forced to shut down physical spaces, which has left many teachers with the daunting task of transitioning their courses to the online environment. This article describes an EAP teacher's process of applying Chakowa's (2016) Digitally Enhanced Learning (DEL) model to adapt face-to-face EAP materials for online teaching and learning. First, it concisely reviews the DEL before illustrating how the model was applied, along with personal reflections on procedural steps and technological choices. After that, empirical data is introduced, which supports that the DEL can be a useful tool for adapting classroom teaching materials for online learning. The article concludes with recommendations on how other teachers can apply the DEL.
This study seeks to understand the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on a group of university ESL learners and their teachers in the U.S. While some schools quickly closed to protect students and teachers, others transitioned to remote teaching and learning. In addition to challenges associated with moving instruction to an online format, many teachers and students have had to grapple with a variety of additional issues regarding health, employment, finances, and other concerns. With the aim of better understanding the effects of the pandemic on students and teachers, researchers prepared a survey that addressed stress levels, learning and teaching English, and remote instruction. Participants indicated how important learning English was before and after the pandemic and responded to an open-ended question soliciting their perspectives on what was most difficult during the pandemic. The researchers looked at their responses, demographic information, and proficiency gains to learn more about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students and teachers. The results of this study show that the effects of the pandemic increased stress for both students and teachers across an array of contexts. Although still relatively important, the priority for teaching and learning decreased for both the practitioners and their students during the pandemic due to a variety of new stressors in their lives. The transition to online instruction was more challenging for the students than the teachers. Results also show that during the pandemic students experienced less language development for speaking than for writing.
This paper describes how the content knowledge in an Academic English Writing, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) module 'Colour: Theory, meaning and practice' was adapted to online delivery to adjust to the COVID pandemic social distancing measures. The module is delivered to small groups of approximately 15 students, and, in face-to-face mode, the pedagogy exploits this by engaging students in small group discussions, dialogue, questioning, and oral presentations. In a face-to-face mode, the content is unpacked and scaffolded dialogically throughout the tutorials. Shifting to an online delivery in a well-equipped setting (technology was widely available to tutor and students) involved deliberate scaffolding of content and orchestration of the various technologies and the various interaction they afford in order to achieve the same learning outcomes. In doing this, the author found that the Legitimation Code Theory dimension of semantic gravity, which conceptualises content knowledge in terms of levels of abstraction, was helpful to guide the scaffolding of content over the tutorial. The paper describes the content and the aim of the module and one specific tutorial on Colour in Film leading to a written assignment. It then briefly explains how Legitimation Code Theory was used in this context. The tutorial stages are described to demonstrate how students were provided different types of activities to engage gradually with increasingly abstract and theoretical content.
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