Foreign Language Education Through Online Communities of Practice

Abstract

COVID-19 affected some facets of daily lives including politics, finances, and education. Increasingly, educational institutes turned to online education following the pandemic. Due to this sudden shift, the stakeholders were not ready to fulfill the outcomes and face the challenges that it brought. Foreign language teaching context poses separate challenges to the learners and the teachers due to limited language input and output. Considering the significance of teachers and the effect of teacher education on student achievement, this study focuses on the reflections of teacher candidates on online language teaching practices in an EFL context. The participants attended an online practicum course where they observed online English classes offered at the high school level for 14 weeks and designed tasks to improve pedagogical practices. By analyzing the reflections and the tasks designed for language teaching, the study offers the challenges of online EFL classes and presents practical tasks to address them. The study also offers implications for online language teacher education.