The COVID-19 pandemic that was initially believed to be a health crisis, not only encouraged most organisations to revisit and re-adjust their working mode and style but also brought drastic changes into the work of educational institutions. The changes and disruptions introduced by the pandemic had been unprecedented and   probably not witnessed since the first part of the 20^th century.  Apparently, challenges with language teaching are not a new concern but they have taken on new dimensions over the past two years following the outbreak of COVID19 and the   compulsory shift to online teaching and learning.

The present research looks into the development of online language teaching in a higher educational context in Armenia during the pandemic. The research is positioned from the perspective of language teachers to address the intersection of COVID19-induced challenges and takeaways and evaluate the impact of these two on the future of in-person and virtual instruction of English language teaching in the context of higher educational institutions. A dive into the successes and failures earned throughout online teaching will provide a perfect segueway into identifying which language teaching practices that started during COVID1-19 should be retained and which should be dismissed. At the same time, the study of these practices has helped English language teachers project how the instructional changes will later on impact the planning and delivery of in-person lessons in terms of such components as   interaction patterns, student engagement, assignment and materials design.

The research starts with a brief insight into the context of March, 2020, when there was a rapid shift to online learning in all the higher education institutions in Armenia. For Armenia, a country, where virtual instruction was relatively unpopular at that time, this was an uncommon and new experience, gained through force rather than choice.  Making a fast transition from traditional in-person classes to virtual instruction was a particularly challenging experience for  learners but more for teachers, since they were making this shift unexpectedly out of emergency and did not afford other alternatives. Most language teachers and educators in the country were not ready to teach online because of insufficient training in planning and delivering online lessons and limited access to digital devices and tools. This led to some teachers maintaining the same teaching practices they did during in-person teaching, which in its turn jeopardized student engagement, teacher motivation, and integrity in student assessment.

However, as Rilke puts it “no feeling is final”. The onset of pandemic also paved ways for new technologies and revisited classroom routines to make language teaching compliant with COVID-19 preventive measures. However strange it may sound, the emergence of online teaching was a blessing for low-resource higher educational contexts with insufficient equipment and resources.  Past were those days, when a teacher had to rely on their personal resources or those shared by her students to administer a listening or a viewing activity in class. With technology at one’s fingertips, projecting a   slide, screening a video or playing a podcast took just a few seconds and became a routine. To add to that, online teaching created a vast room for creativity encouraging language teachers to think how they would re-design the activities they normally hosted in face-t-face settings to meet the requirements of online teaching. This   definitely gave way to creativity, encouraged teachers to explore more digital tools and hence enhanced their teaching capacity and professional growth.  COVID19-induced online teaching was not lost on life skills either. The unprecedented uncertainty posed by the pandemic made the teachers more agile and responsive both to the learners’ emergent needs and the changing needs of the time.

The present research has been conducted at the Department of English for Cross-Cultural Communication at Yerevan State University. To capture meaningful insights into the language teachers’ experience during pandemic teaching, the authors administered an online exercise asking the respondents to share their small successes in online teaching, list the challenges they had and identify the new ideas they have come up with. The exercise is built on ‘roses, thorns and buds’ format and encourages them to reflect on the period they have experienced and highlight the positive parts, identify the aspects they required or still need support with and mention something they are looking forward to experimenting with teaching. The exercise involved 15 female teachers (aged 26-60) and was hosted in an informal environment conducive to sharing. To unravel the depth and impact of the identified ‘roses, thorns and buds’, the authors used the qualitative and quantitative approaches to data analysis.

COVID19 has not been officially declared over. However intimidating it may sound, a new wave might be on its way. The research findings can be invested in addressing the challenges language teachers experience when teaching online, as well as generating opportunities for making teaching COVID-compliant in face-to-face learning environments.

1.Creswell, J. W., and Poth, C. N. (2017), Qualitative Inquiry Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 2.O’Hagan, C. (2020). Startling Digital Divides in Distance Learning Emerge. UNESCO. https://en.unesco.org/news/startling-digital-divides-distance-learning-emerge 3.Hyslop, K. (2020). What's University Going to Look Like This Fall? A Look at UBC's Choices and Challenges Could Offer Insights into Post-Secondary Education in a Prolonged Pandemic. Vancouver, BC: The Tyee. Available online at: https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/06/22/University-Fall-Covid-Return/