Teaching speaking in the times of zoom: Striving to maintain a good level of oral interaction between students in the Spanish as a foreign language classroom

Abstract

Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, educational institutions all over the world were forced to make the executive decision of quickly and effectively transferring face-to-face classes into an online format. Issues such as technical difficulties, varying degrees of digital literacy within a given team of teachers or the question of how to preserve the essence of face-to-face classes in an online environment are among the many challenges that have affected and hindered the practice of instructors all over the world. With a focus on the teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language (Español como Lengua Extranjera, ELE) and video-conferencing platforms such as the software known as Zoom, in this paper we discuss the importance of continuing the practice of teaching speaking in an online environment. Subsequently, we present a number of strategies that we have put into practice in our online ELE classrooms in order to try and maintain the same or very similar level of interaction between our students when compared to face-to-face classrooms.