Challenges of Remote Foreign Language Teaching in Times of Pandemic

Abstract

The emergency remote teaching implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic imposed pedagogical challenges on teachers in diverse geographical contexts. This qualitative study aims to explore the experiences of eight foreign language teachers from five universities on remote teaching during the pandemic, in order to document educational experiences from diverse sociocultural contexts. A virtual adaptation of the classic semi-structured interview was used to collect the information. The findings show that teachers developed differentiated experiences on the virtual modality and faced challenges associated with teaching pronunciation, reviewing writing activities, listening comprehension, interaction, and oral expression during the training. Reflecting on these points could be useful for analyzing possible future scenarios, in view of the global climate-health landscape and the possibility of using remote teaching again for training.