Language pedagogy in a pandemic: The shift to online instruction at a German university during the COVID-19 crisis
Donna J. Drucker 1 * , Karen Fleischhauer 1
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1 Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
* Corresponding Author

Abstract

The focus of this research is the practicalities of adjustment to a semester of teaching language wholly online in the current COVID-19 pandemic at a German university. Such a study is important in order to illustrate the ways in which language instructors who were already proficient in teaching online were able to marshal existing resources and to develop new ones to assist their colleagues in developing skills in synchronous and asynchronous pedagogical modalities. The findings provide evidence that language instructors and students benefit somewhat from general technological instruction but much more from instruction that is combined with language pedagogy. The main conclusions drawn from this study are that intra-linguistic and cross-linguistic pedagogical exchanges fostered the successful execution of fully online teaching, and that online learning is more than just a digital replicate of learning in person. It requires its own set of digital and knowledge tools to be executed effectively.

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.