The impact of COVID–19 on ESL learning in India: Problems, challenges, and coping strategies

COVID-19 has significantly affected the teaching-learning continuum in India. Most of the educational institutes had adopted online mode for the delivery of content and pedagogies enabled by digital technology, devices, and platforms. The pandemic has adversely affected English language learning in India, for learners used to learning ESL in a real-life situation through regular face-to-face mode experienced challenges in earning ESL through virtual mode. Learning English to develop the required language skills in virtual classrooms was anything but easy. Nonetheless, Indian students, as this study finds, took up the challenge by their stride and survived the altered learning conditions forced by the pandemic. This student-centric study aims to explore the impact of COVID-19 on language learning, the problems and challenges faced by student-learners, and the strategies to overcome them. An online survey was conducted to collect data from a group of students (n=400) using a survey questionnaire and mixed methods were used for data analysis and interpretation. The results indicate that the students experienced moderate to high-level difficulty in language learning and their coping strategies worked out