CONCLUSION, DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.2 Research Discussion
5.2.2 Responses to Second Research Question
The second research question of this study is: What are the challenges and opportunities of Chinese high school teachers in online English teaching in difficult times? The survey results showed that the challenges of online English teaching are: 1) students are not independent in study English online; 2) lack of effective interaction between teachers and students; 3) low learning efficiency of students. According to Songbatumis (2017), the challenges in English teaching are students have insufficient
vocabulary, low motivation and low learning efficiency. Teachers’ teaching ability is immature, and they have limited types of teaching methods together with lack of professional training. Furthermore, Simamora (2020) also propose many responses to the challenges that are instructional experiences when teaching online. For example, the negative effects of online teaching, students are not independent in learning, as well as teachers and students have little interaction. On the contrary, the opportunities for online English teaching are that teachers could switch their teaching methods, and they use blended teaching methods to teach language online. This finding is consistent with Geng, Law & Niu (2019) that the blended teaching method has a good role in promoting students’ interactive participation in the classroom. At the same time, blended teaching methods could strengthen cooperation and communication with students (Fitri & Zahari, 2019). In addition, Habibi, Mukminin & Sulistiyo (2018) showed that online teaching is convenient. Teachers and students can carry out learning activities through the Internet anytime and anywhere. Teachers can also be used the Internet to create virtual learning lessons and transformed the authentic learning environment into online teaching.
Generally, in order to ensure the smooth progress of online English teaching during the epidemic, teachers should actively respond to the challenges of online English teaching to effectively solve them. According to Wardoyo & Herdiani (2017), it proposed that teachers should have a positive teaching attitude to face the challenges of online teaching. Meanwhile, they should actively cooperate with the school’s teaching tasks and carry out online teaching activities. At the same time, to prevent the decline of students’ academic performance, it can cause them to lose their motivation.
Teachers should take effective measures to overcome the challenges in difficult times.
This was in accordance with the statement of Aghaalikhani & Maftoon (2018). The education plan during the Covid-19 pandemic reflects that it is difficult for students to
learn independently when they attend online classes. Teachers should encourage and train students to improve their autonomous learning abilities (Yajie, 2021). Moreover, teachers should also guide students to use network resources to expand their learning range. In addition, this shows that teachers have played a key role in promoting the development of online English teaching. They guided students to complete learning tasks in the online teaching process (Pit-ten Cate, Markova, Krischler &
Krolak-Schwerdt, 2018). Baldwin (2019) effectively expressed that teachers will help students to practice course knowledge. They will also solve the learning difficulties encountered by students and encourage students to actively participate in online courses. Furthermore, teachers should build a web-based workshop to improve students’ listening and speaking skills. Kunkel (2017) showed that teachers send documents, pictures, videos, and other content through the workshop to organize students to discuss topics, which can effectively increase students interaction.
Meanwhile, the students helped each other through conversation and chat in the workshop environment, and they learned together to improve their communication skills (Prabhakaran, Pantina, Gutjahr & Nedungadi, 2018). On the other hand, teachers can formulate an online authentic evaluation management system. Teachers should make assessment-timely statistics on students’ learning conditions and academic performance. Then teachers will implement solutions to students who do not meet the criteria as well as improved students’ learning behavior. This was in accordance with the statement of Karacaoglu (2018) that both teachers and students expressed that online evaluation was beneficial and effective, and they are satisfied with the process.
Online evaluation was more popular because it can intuitively reflect the students’
learning status and motivation to help teachers manage students effectively (Maqableh
& Alia, 2021).
At the same time, teachers should seize the opportunity of online English teaching. They switched the traditional teaching approaches to communicative approaches and transmitted knowledge to students through online teaching. This was in accordance with the statement of Redmond (2011). The teachers have transformed from the low motivation of online teaching to a method that focuses on student experience and promoting online active learning. In addition, teachers believed that online teaching could effectively guide students to learn. Baldwin & Ching (2019) expressed that Teachers should pay attention to the online courses design. They combined the topics that students are interested in and study materials to design a course syllabus to improve students’ enthusiasm. El-Bishouty, Aldraiweesh, Alturki, Tortorella & Graf (2019) showed that teachers could use online resources to combine students’ specific learning styles to design course syllabus. Furthermore, the teachers will also supervise the students to practice the key and difficult knowledge of the course syllabus. In addition, teachers should innovative more suitable teaching methods based on their teaching experience and classroom summary (Mynbayeva, Sadvakassova & Akshalova, 2018). Meanwhile, teachers should also strengthen the learning management of students. This finding is consistent with Kalyani &
Rajasekaran (2018), the teachers need to redefine the teaching experience to attract the attention of students, and they also need to implement innovative teaching methods for students. Teachers used more comprehensive teaching methods that could make their online teaching more interesting (Wang, 2020). However, to better use of network resources to assist teaching, teachers should also improve their teaching abilities and teaching professionalism. According to Rozhkova & Olentsova (2020), it proposed that an important criterion for assessing the professionalism of teachers is teachers’
application and implementation of network technology. While network technology can help teachers improved their teaching quality (Supriyanto, Hartini, Irdasari &
Mumpuni, 2020). On the other hand, teachers can organize and create an online seminar. Garcia & Yao (2019) expressed that teachers discussed problems around online teaching topics in a group. They explored independently through the Internet and asked for the help of relevant experts from online resources to solve the problem together. Teachers had to learn together and shared their experiences in online seminars so that promoted the development of their teaching ability (Murray, Lachowsky & Green, 2017).