COVID-19 Changes Teaching Practices: An Autoethnographic Account of a Japanese EFL Teacher

Abstract

COVID-19 has affected university educators on a global scale, and Japan is not an exception. Many EFL educators, including myself, began the academic year with much uncertainty as to how things would unfold. And, like many other EFL teachers in Japan, my spring semester classes were taught fully online. This study intends to illustrate the experience of a Japanese EFL university teacher amid COVID-19. It portrays how I initially changed my teaching practices to cope with the difficult situation but ended the semester with an increased feeling of competence as an educator. This experience is described autoethnographically in a three-part journey: Sho, chiku, bai. As Chang (2008) points out, one danger in autoethnography is excessive focus on the self. In order to avoid this, artifacts and comments of the students whom I taught were used for analysis in addition to autoethnographic reflections. Results pointed to three obstacles that I faced. Rewriting the course syllabus, getting students accustomed to information technology and altering my teaching practices. However, by the end of the semester students appeared to have developed close interpersonal relationships amongst their peers, improved IT literacy, and increased their motivation to study English. These positive results boosted my feeling of efficacy as an educator. Findings imply that there may be ways to change this tough COVID-19 situation into an opportunity to grow as a teacher. The research may provide instructional ideas that could possibly be implemented into other Asian EFL educators’ classrooms.