A THEORY-BASED TEACHING AND LEARNING OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN THE COVID-19 CONTEXT: AN INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

ABSTRACT Until the recent past, a great deal of the request for distance courses stemmed from their ability to provide access to individuals who are motivated to learn or improve proficiency in another language, but are geographically isolated or restricted by work, schedules, and/or other considerations. Today, the current virtual realities are no more the same. In fact, the covid-19 pandemic has laid down its constraints in the educational arena and has made distance teaching and learning almost compulsory. It is then important to think of how face-to-face courses especially those related to foreign language acquisition can get successfully replaced by the distance ones. Thus, this article aims at scrutinizing foreign language learning theories to find out different methods, strategies and techniques of distance teaching and learning that can validly replace classrooms teaching and learning practices. It further seeks to make recommendations in the light of the explored the theories. To reach such goals, the article uses the qualitative research method to collect secondary data. The research has arrived at impressive results. Among several others elaborated on in the findings and recommendations section of this article, distance teaching and learning courses ought to be designed to meet the learner-content, learner-instructor, and learner-learner interactions. Key-words: Collaborative input, Covid-19, interaction, learning, teaching