Challenges of Online Teaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic in an English as a Foreign Language Context: A Process Tracing Approach

Abstract

The prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic worldwide has affected educational systems around the world and has forced education systems to shift to online learning. The present study was motivated to explore the challenges (common technology-driven and content-specific challenges) facing an English as a foreign language teacher throughout an online English course in Iran. The main participant of this study was a female teacher, with 17 years of experience in teaching English to children, teenagers, and adults. To this aim, a process-tracing approach was employed in an online English class with 10 female students, all teenagers, to unravel the causal mechanisms involved in the beginning, middle and end of the English course. The results showed that the greatest challenges throughout the course especially in initial and mid sessions were caused by deficient technological resources. The two other causal categories, human and content resources, were at their peak early in the course and then reduced significantly by the end. The most troublesome challenges the teacher faced were platform limitations, internet connection and human resources’ unpreparedness for online education. Though the teacher’s as well as most students’ technological knowledge and media literacy showed an increase by the end of the course, some students’ slow adaptation challenged the teacher until the end. As for the content-based challenges, teaching vocabulary and speaking was considered the most challenging one due to lack of teacher’s physical contact with students.

In search of well-established evaluative criteria for the emerging qualitative methods of L2 affective variables

“…For the latter, he suggested making sure that the findings (even of case studies) can have public concerns, and be of value to the public. For example, the process tracing approach taken by Shahnama et al (2021) , despite being a case study, provided insightful predictions of sources of challenges in the online L2 courses held during the COVID-19 pandemic. The causal mechanism discovered could benefit all L2 teachers and learners experiencing language learning during the pandemic.…”

“…The process tracing approach proved to be an effective longitudinal qualitative research method in unwrapping the causal mechanisms accounting for the boredom grown in the online language course. One of the most recent studies has been conducted by Shahnama et al (2021) to investigate the stressful challenges an EFL teacher faced during an online English program of an intermediate level of proficiency. These researchers employed a process-tracing approach to discovering the causal mechanisms accounting for the troublesome distracting issues that occurred in the beginning, middle, and end of the language learning program.…”

“…What is new seems to be the need for linking the data-based findings to the related theories, which has been done to different degrees in the existing dynamic qualitative L2 affective factors literature, depending on the methodology used. For example, the process tracing studies (e.g., Shahnama et al, 2021;Yazdanmehr et al, 2021) have done so because an obligatory step defined in the process tracing approach is to find theoretical justifications for the state of a certain affective variable at every temporal phase of study. Pope, 1995, 2000a,b) contended that in qualitative research rigor is guaranteed by having a systematic and self-aware research design, data elicitation, analysis, and generalization of findings (if any).…”

Online English Grammar Instruction Using Polysynchronous Approach During Pandemic Times

“…Limited online grammar learning research is available in the literature, especially concerning the Covid-19 pandemic situation. However, most research on learning English during the pandemic is still general, for example, regarding the integration of certain technologies in learning English as a foreign language (Inayati & Waloyo, 2022;Ghounane, 2020) or in learning English for special purposes-English for Specific Purposes (ESP)- (Sutrisna, Lagatama & Dane, 2020); and about challenges and lessons learned in learning English during the pandemic (Muslimin & Harintama, 2020;Karuppannan & Mohammed, 2020;Shahnama, Yazdanmehr & Shirvan, 2021). Of the few studies that specifically address the topic of online grammar learning during the pandemic, one of which was conducted by Ghobrini (2020) in the context of secondary education in Africa.…”

Chinese English teachers’ occupational intention during distance education: The role of burnout and job-related stress

“…Likewise, educational institutions in China, including schools, colleges, and universities, were also forced to undergo an immediate transition to remote educational settings in order to mitigate the spread of the Coronavirus among stakeholders ( Gao and Zhang, 2020 ; Hong et al, 2021 ). The abrupt transition from face-to-face to remote education environments confronted educational institutions with a range of serious challenges ( Shahnama et al, 2021 ; Silva et al, 2021 ), including increased turnover intention among teachers ( Collie, 2022 ; Matthews et al, 2022 ). Teachers’ turnover intention, also known as teachers’ intention to leave, generally pertains to teachers’ reluctance to pursue the teaching career ( Liu and Onwuegbuzie, 2012 ).…”