An Investigation Of The Major Challenges Encountered By Algerian Efl Teachers And Their Impact On The Students’ Academic Performance During The Coronavirus Pandemic.
Auteurs : Mehiri Ramdane . Dambri Mohamed Laid .
Résumé
Technology has given language instructors enormous opportunities to utilize online platforms to improve learners' language competence in difficult situations like the COVID-19 epidemic. This study attempted to investigate the challenges that Algerian EFL teachers and students experienced while using online teaching during the Coronavirus pandemic. In doing so, five (05) teachers and fifty (50) students from the English Language Branch at Mohamed Khider University of Biskra, Algeria participated in the study. A mixed-methods approach consisting of interviews and questionnaires was used to explore the teachers’ challenges in online education and their impact on students’ academic performance. This study focused on answering the following four questions : what are the major challenges encountered by Algerian EFL teachers in remote language teaching during Coronavirus pandemic? What is the impact of these challenges on students’ academic performance? What are the problems faced by EFL students? And is online language learning a real alternative to face-to-face education? The findings indicated that EFL teachers encountered several challenges such as time management, learners’ poor engagement and motivation, technological illiteracy and gadget-related issues. The findings also indicated that EFL students encountered other challenges such as the lack of variety in language learning materials, distraction at home, troubles with the Internet flow, the access to e-learning platforms, and they find remote learning tedious and monotonous due to the lack of interaction with their peers and teachers. Moreover, based on the data gathered from the tools employed in this study, the aforementioned challenges had a significant negative impact on the students’ academic performance; i.e., their language proficiency has decreased after the shift to distance language learning.
Mots clés
Online platforms, COVID-19 epidemic, Algerian EFL instructors and students, negative impact, students’ academic performance
