The Impact of Online Teaching on Interaction during the Pandemic: An Exploratory Study in CFL Classes

The Covid-19 pandemic caused a sudden shift in foreign language education from face-to-face instruction to online teaching in the United States over the spring of 2020. From perspectives of both teachers and students, this small-scale, exploratory study investigated the impacts of online teaching on class interactions during the pandemic. Twenty-three teachers and 24 students from college-level Chinese courses were surveyed online to solicit their perceptions of the impacts of online teaching on teacher-student and student-student interactions. One audio-clip of 50-minute elementary-level, online CFL class and a retrospective interview with the teacher of this class were also analyzed to provide an in-depth understanding of the online interaction. Findings showed the same or higher frequency of teacher-student interaction in online teaching as compared with that in face-to-face instruction, but the interaction became more teacher-initiated and teacher-centered. In addition, teacher and student participants perceived less interaction among students. The teacher participating in the retrospective interview reported changes in how she gave feedback in online teaching, e.g., when interacting with individual students, she tended to give explicit feedback; while interacting with the whole class, she was not able to provide immediate feedback due to technology constraints. Regarding the effects of these changes on L2 learning, participants voiced mixed opinions, but the majority evaluated the online student-student interaction as less effective than that in face-to-face instruction. The findings were discussed in light of the interaction approach of SLA, and corresponding pedagogical implications were proposed to foster the effectiveness of online instruction in CFL learning contexts