Teaching English Pronunciation Online during the COVID-19 Crisis Outbreak

Abstract

[EN] The abrupt emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020 forced tertiary professors to urgently adapt the face-to-face courses they were lecturing to emergency remote teaching. Researchers of different fields have started to investigate and share their thoughts on which are the best methodologies to guarantee a high-quality learning experience while coping with students’ anxiety and teachers’ lack of technical background. The present study examines the adaptation of an English pronunciation course at Rovira i Virgili university to the online setting imposed by the outbreak of the pandemic. The students who took the course were asked to fill in a satisfaction survey containing multiple choice, Likert scale and open questions on the different measures taken and the general progress of the course. Results show that students were higly satisfied with the adaptation of the course to the online context, and that the methods adopted and tools provided were useful and sufficient to continue with the adequate functioning of the course. Hence, this study is a sample of how to teach pronunciation remotely in particular, and how to successfully adapt a face-to-face university course to emergency remote teaching in general, guaranteeing students’ learning and engagement.