Teaching Languages Remotely

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic forced countless colleges and universities worldwide to switch to online teaching, and many language instructors delivered their course content the usual way but remotely. This synchronous solution was motivated by the urgency of the situation but also by the common belief that languages cannot be learned efficiently without the simultaneous presence of the teacher and other learners. However, new technologies at our disposal increasingly dispel this myth by rendering asynchronous language teaching very efficient despite a few challenges. This paper presents data from Université TÉLUQ, the world's oldest French-speaking distance university, offering remote language courses for more than 40 years in a minority setting, namely a French-speaking province in English-speaking North America. We present challenges posed by teaching asynchronously in remote settings and various solutions to circumvent or overcome these challenges.