How to Make Learners Engage in an Online Grammar Class

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has led our lives to the so-called “new normal” status with a lot of unprecedented challenges since early spring 2020. It has a severe impact on education and makes it change dramatically. Online learning is probably the best and the sole solution to meet the twofold target – maintaining the learning-teaching process and staying safe for the community. Schools of all levels have shifted their instruction from the traditionally class-based to e-learning and on digital platforms. While e-learning is becoming more centric in education, it is also a challenge for both teachers and learners due to some reasons. Examples of these include poor online teaching & learning experience, lack of students’ motivation & autonomy, and even the lack of, or the unstable support of technology. It is not easy to create an interactive online lesson between teachers and learners, and it seems to be the most common challenge for online teaching & learning, especially for an online grammar lesson. In most EFL contexts, including Vietnam, grammar lessons are often taught in the form of traditional practice isolated from contextual meaning, therefore, learners are not likely to have chances to use what they have learned into communication, and the effectiveness of online grammar lessons is still less than what is expected. How to make learners engage in an online grammar lesson is the focus of this paper. Based on the theory of second language teaching and learning, the authors have conducted online grammar lessons with a group of 30 pre-intermediate students in a language centre from February to March, 2021. The focus of the study was the task designing and the strategies employed in order to facilitate students’ engagement in their e-learning.