Language Education During the Pandemic

Book excerpt: This edited book explores and illustrates successful practices for online assessment and community-building, based on the authors' own classroom practice during and in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. The authors argue that what has happened during the coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally changed perspectives on language education, and that if the importance of using online teaching tools in the classroom was dimly understood before the crisis, the language teaching establishment has now fully realized their potential and must continue exploring this further, even as the option to return to in-person teaching becomes widespread. Ranging from online activities to course design, the volume presents a comprehensive outlook at distance learning in modern foreign languages. It does so by focusing on those two aspects that, within an emergency scenario, have proven most challenging, namely: how to assess students in a non-controlled environment and how to foster a sense of community from the confinement of our isolated learning spaces. This book will be of interest to academics and practitioners in Language Education, as well as teachers and teacher trainees.