Beyond Classroom Wall: A Review of Research on Online Learning in EFL Teaching Contexts During Pandemic COVID-19

Abstract

This paper attempts to synthesize and critically examine the empirical research on online learning particularly in EFL classroom contexts during the time of pandemic COVID-19. The research articles reviewed in this study utilized several inclusive criteria including (1) peer-reviewed articles; (2) studies using online learning framework in EFL classroom contexts; and (3) studies within the last 1,5 years. The aim of the review is to identify patterns and themes through qualitative content analysis across the research studies. Accompanying the qualitative data, the results of this study also present descriptive statistics characterizing the studies reviewed. To this end, a combination of search engine databases (e.g. ERIC; Google Scholars) and some reputable journal websites (e.g. tandfonline.com; springerlink.com) were utilized to navigate the research articles. Across the corpus of 85 studies, findings show the characteristics of the research studies. The quantitative approach in the form of survey-based online questionnaire (32%) was the most preferred research design. Then, the most prevalent research was qualitative design with interview (26%) for the data collection. Most of the studies in this topic involved students as participants (64%) in tertiary evel of education (74%). The results also indicate the commonalities (themes) including the challenges of emergency online learning, the perceptions and attitude of the research participants, and the practices of online language teaching. This study suggests English teacher education provide courses not only for face-to-face classroom, but also for online teaching and equip in-service teachers with training to conduct online teaching effectively and efficiently.