Teachers’ Perspectives towards Teaching English Online at the Tertiary Level in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The drastic and unplanned shift to online teaching caused by the Covid-19 pandemic offers researchers with unprecedented opportunity to examine a wide range of issues related to online language teaching and assessment. The current study surveyed English language teachers (N = 161) from several Saudi universities regarding their experience with teaching English online. Five themes were explored: institutions’ resources and technical support, knowledge and training, attitudes, effectiveness of teaching and assessment, and overall experience. The results demonstrate the readiness of Saudi universities for online teaching in terms of resources and technical support. In addition, teachers were found to have the necessary knowledge and training needed to carry out their online teaching and assessment. Teachers’ attitudes were mixed towards teaching English online, which may be due to personal preferences and different teaching contexts. The same was also found for their opinions towards the effectiveness of online teaching and assessment as compared to in-person teaching and assessment. While the teachers’ experiences were largely positive towards online teaching, concerns were raised regarding student engagement and assessment reliability. Saudi universities are recommended to capitalize on what they have achieved during the pandemic and offer innovative solutions to enhance assessment reliability and student engagement.