THE PERKS AND DOWNSIDES OF TEACHING ENGLISH ONLINE
Cristina-Laura ABRUDAN, Ioana-Claudia HOREA
Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Oradea, Oradea, Romania
Abstract: In the 1990s, the rise of the Internet throughout the world helped significantly the job of the English language teachers, in ways of having access to vast information and access to new methods of teaching foreign languages. We think that, back then, nobody thought of what technology and access to Internet would mean to us one day. But since the beginning of 2020, the world has been going through an unprecedented crisis. The pandemic has changed everything: family behaviour, schools, businesses, environment, and so on and so forth. The world has been divided into two: the businesses and companies that have been stopped and the sector of the jobs that continued working. Since many countries have faced lockdowns, subsequently many schools have closed their doors. The teachers have faced the situation of delivering courses using virtual classrooms, not matter how tech-shy they have been. Of course, online teaching English has both advantages and disadvantages. The question is simple: do the perks outweigh the downsides of teaching English online? The answer is difficult. It depends on every teacher. The present paper is trying to throw some light on this question.
Keywords: teaching English; innovation; on-line technologies; education research.
