Teaching English Online during COVID-19: Tradition versus Individual Talent

Abstract

English teachers, all over the world, have always preferred face-to-face mode of teaching to online teaching. With the advent of the Covid 19, however, a reversal has taken place. As the medium becomes the message in online teaching, the major challenges for the traditional Indian English teachers surfaced: (1) Neophobia, (2) Technophobia, (3)Internet connectivity, (4) Materials preparation, (5) Lack of visibility of class as a whole at a time, (6) Monitoring, (7) Non-cooperation from some students,
(8) Overdependence on Paralanguage,  (9) Innovation with pedagogical tools, and (10) Assessment. This study used telephonic survey and convenient sampling method focused on a questionnaire that was designed to elicit data. Data was collected from 300 respondents from100 Engineering colleges spread across five Indian states of India--Andhra Pradesh,Telengana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. The final data for study takes into consideration 100 faculty members based on region (each state 20 participants and urban and rural), age group (freshers: 1-3 years, mid-career: 4-9 years, seniors:10 years and above), gender (50male, 50 female), teaching experience, etc. This study finds that the English faculty in Engineering colleges have adequately adapted to teaching English beyond the classroom although the young and female teachers are ahead of senior and male teachers. It is concluded that the journey of teaching English online has gone from anxiety to comfortable to excitement phase during the Covid-19 period.