Technology-Assisted Teaching during the COVID-19 Pandemic: L2 Teachers’ Strategies and Encountered Challenges

Abstract

Technological advancement has changed the landscape of education by providing technological tools and opportunities for distance learning. Recent research has explored different aspects of online teaching, but few studies have examined the strategies employed by Asian second language (L2) teachers in the online classroom and challenges they encountered. This study extends this research line by investigating the pedagogical strategies which Vietnamese L2 English secondary school teachers employed in online teaching and challenges they encountered from applying these strategies. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with eighteen randomly selected EFL teachers from ten secondary schools in Tra Vinh Province, Vietnam. The study adopted a content-based approach to data analysis. Results showed that the teachers used a diversity of pedagogical strategies regarding classroom management, instruction delivery, students’ engagement, and interaction. During the teaching process, they dealt with four main types of challenges: technological, pedagogical, organizational, and psychological. The findings suggest implications for online teaching and teacher education for online language teaching.