Speaker
Description
The COVID-19 pandemic has been the unprecedented and unexpected occasion to all around the world since 2020. There were 130 country-wide closures that affected approximately a hundred million learners at the time of February 2021 (UNESCO, n. d.). This caused a significant paradigm shift in educational mode, i.e., face-to-face learning environments to online/virtual learning environments. As a result, this qualitative study explored pre-service teachers’ perceptions of English language education and the role of schools and teachers in the post-COVID-19 era. Fifteen EFL pre-service teachers joined the interviews, and 36 argumentative essays on the topic of English language education were collected in this study. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the interview data and written products. The findings revealed that the pre-service teachers deeply considered technology use as essential, and the future English language classes should be reframed in the post-COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, developing digital literacy seems to be the key to EFL teaching and learning. Some suggestions of classroom technology integration are also discussed in this study.
Biographical note(s) of the author(s)
Eunjeong Park is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language Education at Sunchon National University. She currently teaches EFL preservice teachers and supports their acquirement of English language teaching certificates. Her specialty lies in research paradigms, specifically research method designs. Hence, she has conducted a variety of different research on EFL language education. Her research interest includes teacher education, second language writing, mixed methods research, and the interdisciplinarity of foreign/second language learning in education and applied linguistics.
Affiliation of the author(s)
Sunchon National University (South Korea)
