Distance Education – New Practices and Challenges in Teaching and Learning a Foreign Language in Secondary Schools

Abstract

During the COVID-19 epidemic, the experience of distance learning placed the teaching and learning process in a different, previously untested educational context, in which students autonomously follow the learning process under the guidance of their teachers. Prior to this experience, organizational and structural considerations governed how technology was used, with teachers integrating web-based learning to supplement traditional classroom instruction. During the emergency remote teaching it was not a question of upgrading previously established web-based learning practices, but of introducing new methodologies and approaches.

This paper focuses on distance foreign language teaching in secondary schools and the unique aspects of developing communicative competences at a distance. We discuss the difficulties that teachers have encountered when returning to the classroom and highlight the benefits that allow teachers to develop new dimensions of web-based learning practices. The purpose of the survey was to look at how students perceived distance learning in terms of developing their communicative competences and their linguistic basis (grammar and vocabulary). We were also interested in how other factors influenced their experience, how distance education encouraged their autonomy, and what kind of changes they perceived in themselves and their teachers during the learning process.

The findings indicate that while distance foreign language teaching provided students with a variety of opportunities to develop their communication competences and encourage their autonomy, they also faced significant difficulties in their use of technology and in self-regulation of their learning, which in light of innovative teaching and learning approaches poses additional challenges for the future.