Through the Lens of EFL Teachers: Teaching Online on Lockdown

Abstract

There has been a growing interest in online EFL teaching studies after the COVID-19 outbreak. However, the majority of the studies have centered around students’ perspectives. The studies examining the issue from EFL teachers’ perspectives, on the other hand, are relatively scarce. Therefore, this study qualitatively investigated EFL teachers’ perceptions and experience in this critical process to bridge the gap in the literature. For the study, the data were collected through written semi-structured interviews with 25 EFL teachers in Turkey. Five themes with several categories emerged based on the thematic analysis of the data with MAXQDA 2020 package program. The teachers commonly focused on the challenges of emergency online teaching and suggested potential solutions. The primary stemmed from the poor communication between teachers and students due to low engagement levels and technology-related issues. The teachers also struggled to find proper online EFL teaching materials since they had no or little experience in online education and did not know how find teaching resources. They suggested providing EFL teachers with workshop opportunities to learn how to tackle technology-related problems and improve their online material developing skills. This study may extend the relevant literature by providing a deeper insight into EFL teachers’ practices and recommendations for practitioners of online teaching