Promoting the Effectiveness of Language Teaching Through Online Academic Word Lists and Extensive Reading in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction

Language education in schools has been severely affected after the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic and this extraordinary situation compelled nearly every institution to conduct its educational activities online. Every new change brings its own ritual, thus to some extent compulsory online education system required teachers to use technology-related pedagogy and find adequate solutions to increase the effectiveness of language teaching. In fact, the stakeholders of language education who were influenced by the pandemic were not only teachers but also students. The transition from in-class to online teaching and the lockdown enforcements have changed particularly the duration of time that students allocated for studying and extended the hours they spent at home (Mishra, Gupta, & Shree, 2020; Zhang et al., 2020). The compulsory changes on time management in learning and teaching hours compelled teachers to offer more to the point and compact solutions i.e. academic word lists (AWL) on the way of helping students to tackle their language learning challenges. Yet, the students did experience not only linguistic but also social and emotional related challenges in the context of pandemic. Coupled with the anxiety of pandemic, the implementation of lockdown led students and teachers to experience state of feelings like loneliness, isolation, stress and depression (Yavuz, Ozbilgin, & Kamasak, 2019; Mosanya, 2020). Thus, emotional states of students has become more important than ever in current much demanding unprecedented education contexts.

Studies (i.e. Bakla, 2020; Renandya & Jacobs, 2016) find that extensive reading (ER) or pleasure reading which appeal to the needs and expectations of language learners might improve learning performance through increasing the pleasure or interest of students without loading additional productive tasks or follow-up language work on their shoulders. Therefore, this paper aims to suggest some language learning methods i.e. AWL and ER which might be useful and motivating for students spending most of their time at home and studying online. The paper starts with detailed explanations on technical sides and linguistic benefits of AWL and ER then continues with how they can contribute to language learning of students in the Covid-19 pandemic. In the final part, some practical implications about the issue are discussed.