Abstract
Interaction is seen by many English language teachers and scholars as an essential part of face-to-face English language classrooms. Teachers require specific competencies to effectively use interaction as a tool for mediating and assisting learning. These can be referred to as classroom interactional competence (CIC). However, the situation created by the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic which began in early 2020, and the recent advancement in technologies have led to teachers conducting synchronous online lessons through video-conferencing software. The online environment is distinctly different from the face-to-face classroom and teachers require new and additional skills to effectively utilise interaction online in real time. This exploratory study used an online mixed-method survey of 75 university level English language teachers who had engaged in synchronous online teaching due to COVID-19, to explore the competencies that teachers need to use interaction as a tool to mediate and assist language learning in synchronous online lessons. Teachers were found to require three competencies, in addition to their CIC – technological competencies, online environment management competencies, and online teacher interactional competencies – which together constitute e-CIC. The findings provide greater insights into the needs of teachers required to teach synchronously online and will be of interest to teachers and teacher educators.
Keywords
Introduction
With the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic which began in early 2020 forcing the suspension of face-to-face (F2F) classes at every level of education in most countries around the world (Bozhert et al., 2020), English language teachers, like colleagues in other disciplines, are having to find alternative modes of teaching and interacting with their learners. Technological advancements in recent years have meant that teachers have more options, and synchronous online lessons (SOLs) delivered through video-conference software (VCS) are now a real possibility (Peachey, 2017). However, teaching synchronously requires specific skills, including the ability to: teach and communicate content across a screen; engage learners using two-dimensional (2-D) images; facilitate interaction in a digital classroom; attend to students’ emotional needs across distance; maintain a sense of presence despite not being physically together; and troubleshoot technical difficulties (Rehn et al., 2018).
For tertiary English language teachers, teaching synchronously online can bring additional challenges; in particular, language is both the medium of instruction and subject matter, while, at the same time, multimodal actions (gesture, facial expression, etc.) that aid teaching and interaction in F2F classrooms can operate in a very different way in SOLs depending on the access and position of cameras and participants’ screen size ratio. It is important to note, that in this article we refer to lessons conducted in a physical classroom as F2F as this is a commonly recognised term. However, often it is not the lack of ‘faces’ that differentiates the synchronous online classroom from the physical classroom, but the physical proximity and sense of presence of the teachers and learners.
Researchers have been studying the complex relationship between language, interaction and learning for many years now (see, for example, Walsh, 2006; Seedhouse, 2004; Tsui, 1985) This relationship can be found in any classroom, in any subject, at all levels and in all parts of the world. It is an especially complex relationship in a language classroom where language is both the ‘object and vehicle of study’ (Allwright, 1984). In more recent times, researchers have studied classroom interactional competence (CIC) (Walsh, 2013) as a means of understanding the importance of interaction to learning. A fuller discussion of CIC is presented in the next section.
In the absence of the kind of F2F interaction, which is typically found in any classroom, the extent to which interaction can mediate and assist learning is only partially understood in the synchronous online classroom. In particular, there has, to date, been little light cast on the competencies that teachers need in order to maximise learning and learning opportunity in this context. Put simply, what does CIC look like in an online English language teaching and learning environment? What challenges are presented by synchronous online teaching and how might these challenges be overcome?
Classroom Interactional Competence
Classroom interactional competence is defined as, ‘teachers’ and learners’ ability to use interaction as a tool for mediating and assisting learning’ (Walsh, 2013: 65). It puts interaction at the centre of teaching and learning and argues that by improving their CIC, both teachers and learners will immediately improve learning and opportunities for learning. The central argument of a focus on CIC is that by helping teachers better understand classroom interaction, there will be a corresponding impact on learning, especially where learning is regarded as a social activity which is strongly influenced by involvement, engagement and participation.
While it is true to say that CIC is highly context-specific, there are a number of features which are common to all contexts. First, pedagogic goals and the language used to achieve them are convergent: they work together. For example, if the aim of a teacher is to elicit personal opinions from students, the use of ‘yes/no’ questions will not be convergent with their pedagogic goal of the moment. Instead, ‘wh-questions’ (when, where, who, etc.) would need to be asked which are more likely to produce longer, more elaborated responses. This position assumes that pedagogic goals and the language used to achieve them are inextricably intertwined and constantly being re-adjusted (Walsh, 2006; Seedhouse, 2004). Any evidence of CIC must therefore demonstrate that interlocutors are using discourse which is both appropriate to specific pedagogic goals and to the agenda of the moment.
Secondly, CIC facilitates interactional space: students need space – time purposefully deployed by the teacher – so that students can participate in the discourse, contribute and receive feedback on their contributions. In short, CIC creates ‘space for learning’ (Walsh, 2012). There are a number of ways in which space for learning can be maximised. These include increasing wait-time, promoting extended learner turns and allowing planning time. By affording learners space, they are better able to contribute to the process of co-constructing meanings.
Thirdly, CIC entails understanding feedback more fully. Of particular value is the ability of a teacher to shape learner contributions (Walsh, 2013). Shaping involves taking a learner response and doing something with it rather than simply accepting it. For example, a response may be paraphrased, using more technical language or a particular code or metalanguage; it may be summarised or extended in some way, or linked to a specific reference; a response may require scaffolding so that learners are assisted in saying what they really mean. By shaping learner contributions and by helping learners to articulate what they mean, teachers are performing a more central role in the interaction, while, at the same time, maintaining a student-centred, decentralised approach to teaching. Shaping is most effective when students are aware of its purpose. Teachers can therefore guide students to notice their shaping and other feedback strategies.
The relevance of CIC is clear. If our aim as language teachers is to promote dialogic, engaged and ‘safe’ classroom environments where students are actively involved and feel free to contribute and take risks, we need to study the interactions which take place and learn from them. The proposal here is that we need to acquire a fine-grained understanding of what constitutes CIC and how it might be achieved in an online setting. This can be accomplished by using data from our own context; the starting point has to be evidence from our classroom in the form of a video-recording or audio-recording, self-observation or peer-observation. Only by starting to describe interactional processes can we begin to understand in some detail our local context. Not only will such an understanding result in more engaged and dynamic interactions in classrooms, it will also enhance learning (see, for example, Walsh, 2019; Mercer et al., 2009 ).
Synchronous Online English Language Teaching
The online synchronous language classroom environment is distinctly different from the F2F classroom. Teachers and learners are in different physical locations and can even be in different countries and time zones. They cannot easily ‘see’ each other, as computer or device screens are often too small. There can be environmental distractors making it harder for students to engage, and there is a myriad of technical issues (Peachey, 2017). These differences can limit a teacher’s ability to maintain a classroom environment conducive to language learning and engage in meaningful interaction. For example, teachers and learners may not be able to see who wants to take a speaking turn. Lessons and interaction can therefore look very different in the synchronous online classroom. Moorhouse described his experience, ‘The VCS sessions are still more “bumpy” and more teacher-centred than face-to-face sessions. Group and whole-class discussions are characterised by longer silences and shorter student responses’ (Moorhouse, 2020: 2). Payne argues that the limitations evident when teaching synchronously online mean that ‘it is difficult to have an interactive L2 conversation with more than about four to six individuals’ and ‘conversational turn-taking in a video conference is challenging enough when everyone is speaking their first language (L1), let alone a L2’ (Payne, 2020: 246).
To address the limitations evident in synchronous online teaching and enhance opportunities for interaction, scholars have proposed the utilisation of ‘breakout rooms’, a feature of certain VCS platforms (e.g., Zoom), to conduct tasks with small groups of learners (González-Lloret, 2020), providing different modes for students to interact, such as using written ‘chats,’ and ‘drawing’ (Kohnke and Moorhouse, 2020), and combining synchronous and asynchronous technologies so students and teachers can interact between classes (Moorhouse, 2020). However, there is limited empirical research supporting these proposals. We still do not have a clear understanding of the additional competencies English language teachers may need for teaching online and, more specifically, for making effective use of interaction to mediate and assist language learning in SOLs.
The Study
The current study uses a mixed-method online survey (Braun et al., 2020) to explore the experiences and perceptions of tertiary English language teachers who have conducted SOLs. Specifically, the study focuses on interaction during online language instruction with the aim to identify: (a) the affordance of CIC in SOLs; and (b) the skills and knowledge that teachers require to use interaction to mediate and assist learning in SOLs. To address these aims, the study is guided by the following research question:
What competencies do teachers need in order to use interaction as a tool to mediate and assist language learning in synchronous online lessons?
The survey was purposefully developed for the study and piloted with 10 teachers to ensure content and face validity. After piloting, the number of items was reduced and language in the items was clarified to ensure greater reliability. The final survey includes three sections: biographical information; experiences of SOLs; and interaction during SOLs. It included 17 items: eight closed items (quantitative); four short answer items (quantitative); and five open long answer items (qualitative). The number of items was kept to a minimum to give respondents an opportunity to provide fuller responses to the qualitative items (Braun et al., 2020). The quantitative items were primarily designed to collect biographical information, while the qualitative items were designed to collect participants’ experiences and perceptions of online synchronous teaching and interaction (e.g., ‘What knowledge and/or skills do teachers need to successfully use interaction ‘as a tool for mediating and assisting learning’ when teaching in synchronous online lessons?’). The use of qualitative items allows for ‘rich and complex accounts of the type of sense-making’ of participants (Braun et al., 2020: 1). This makes open-ended items particularly useful for this study due to its exploratory nature. The survey was administered online through the use of Google Forms to 75 territory level language teachers in July 2020.
Participant Recruitment and Biographical Information
To address the aims of the study, it was important to recruit participants with experience of teaching synchronously online. To ensure this, convenience and snowball sampling were adopted. The researchers invited tertiary level teachers with relevant experience to complete the survey by disseminating a link to the survey through email, instant messaging platforms and social media. The final dataset consisted of 25 English for academic purposes (EAP) teachers (33%), 30 English language educators (40%), 14 English foundation course teachers (19%) and 6 other types of English teacher (e.g., English for specific purposes teachers and English as a second language teachers) (8%). The majority teach in Asia (55%) and Europe (41%), with two participants from the Middle East, two from America and one from Africa. This distribution is understandable, as Asia and Europe were the first contexts affected by COVID-19. Both regions suspended in-person teaching earlier than other contexts requiring teachers to find alternative methods to F2F instruction (Bozhert et al., 2020). The dataset includes teachers with a range of teaching experiences – 0–5 years (16%), 6–10 years (24%), 11–15 years (19%), 16–20 years (23%), and >20 years (20%) – who teach learners with different English proficiencies: beginner/intermediate (30%); intermediate (25%); and intermediate/advanced (45%). Overall, the dataset represents a diversity of countries, English language content areas, teaching experiences and teachers of students with a range of English proficiencies.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had a diversity of impact on different contexts, with higher education institutions suspending F2F classes at various times during the spring of 2020 (Bozhert et al., 2020). In addition, the teaching contexts in each country and institution can be different. To better understand these differences, items related to the participants’ teaching context were included (see Tables, 1, 2, 3 and 4). It can be seen that the majority of participants started teaching synchronously online in March or April 2020, with most lessons lasting from less than one hour to two hours in length, while teachers have a range of contact time with their learners. Zoom is the most used VSC platform, with Blackboard Collaborate, Google Meets and Microsoft Teams also utilised.
Month participants started teaching synchronously online.
Hours spent teaching synchronously online per week.
Hours spent teaching synchronously online per class.
Software used to conduct synchronous online lessons.
Data Analysis
Quantitative data were analysed following standard statistical procedures to generate descriptive statistics appropriate to the data type, including percentages and frequencies (Cohen et al., 2011). Qualitative data from the survey were analysed through an iterative thematic analysis through a six-stage reflexive and discursive process (Braun et al., 2020) – the dataset was read and re-read to familiarise the researchers with its content. Initial codes were subsequently generated and compared systematically with categories identified. Categories were organised into themes and sub-themes identified. The themes were reviewed and organised, with the final three themes established. The dataset was treated as one cohesive dataset, meaning that themes were identified across multiple items. The researchers kept in communication – checking understandings, asking for clarification, and discussing differences in interpretations – throughout the data analysis.
Findings
It is well-known in the literature that teachers perceive interaction to be an important aspect of F2F language classrooms (Walsh, 2013). The data analysis shows teachers feel that interaction is also important in the synchronous online classroom, with 97% (n = 73) of respondents agreeing that interaction is important or very important when teaching SOLs compared to 100% (n = 75) for teaching F2F. However, the data analysis reveals that for teachers to use interaction effectively in SOLs, teachers need three key competencies: technological competencies; online environment management competencies; and online teacher interactional competencies.
Technological Competencies
Teachers faced a number of technical challenges when teaching synchronously online. They complained about internet stability issues, such as, video lag, delays in muting, and speakers talking over each other. These were particularly evident when students were in different countries from the teacher. An EAP teacher from Ireland wrote:
[The main challenge is] connectivity! Our students online in China don’t all have VPNs [virtual private networks] so they will lose connectivity during the lessons which is especially challenging when they are presenting PowerPoint presentations.
To overcome these challenges required a number of technical ‘work arounds’ and flexibility on the part of both students and teachers. Teachers tried different synchronous platforms, used instant messaging platforms, such as WeChat as ‘back-up’ communication channels, developed ‘emergency’ resources in case there were computer glitches and provided tutorials to students on new technologies. They were also flexible in allowing students to turn on or off their camera so as to reduce bandwidth demands. An English language educator from Spain, explained the support she provided:
Regarding technical problems, I tried to give students some advice on the use of the new technologies employed in my classes, I shared tutorials written by me, I gave them the link to some tutorials provided by my university and I shared the tips that I learned myself through the actual use of those tools.
While the knowledge required to overcome these challenges and implement technical solutions could be considered prerequisites for synchronous online teaching, there were also specific skills identified that pertain to the use of interaction. These include familiarity with the tools and features of the platform adopted and how they can be used to facilitate interaction, and also knowledge about the variety of web-based tools that teachers can use to boost interaction. For example, teachers talked about the need to use features of the VCS that allowed for multiple communication channels, such as ‘icons,’ ‘chat box,’ ‘interactive whiteboard’ and ‘breakout rooms.’ These make it possible for students and teachers to interact in different modes, written versus oral, and group sizes, and whole class versus small groups. In addition, teachers wrote about other platforms they used in parallel with their VCS, such as game-based platforms (e.g., Kahoot!), learning management systems (e.g., Edmodo), collaborative tools (e.g., Google Docs) and instant messaging platforms (e.g., WhatsApp and WeChat), providing different modes of interaction both during and between lessons. A teacher from Austria described how a variety of tools can be used to maximise interaction:
I have been using an [instant messaging platform] in which students could communicate with me and with each other. Group work was organised in breakout rooms. Panel discussions were done in a written form on an interactive blackboard. Presentations were held online with the student presenting speaking and other students posting questions in a chat. Feedback was given via e-mail and also in BigBlueButton (a VCS) sessions.
Teachers acknowledged that it is important to ‘keep updated with new sources’ and technologies that could be potentially beneficial in the language classroom. It is important to note that not all respondents expressed confidence in their technological abilities and that relevant professional development was needed.
Online Environment Management Competencies
Teachers found the online environment distinctly different from the F2F classroom. They reported that it was harder to maintain students’ interest and the mode restricted the kinds of activities that could be conducted. In addition, respondents commented on difficulties associated with students turning cameras off and restrictions on the number of students visible on the screen at any one time; in particular, these actions made it difficult for teachers to create a positive classroom atmosphere, monitor students’ behaviour and engagement, and build rapport with students. In addition, respondents mentioned that activities took longer online than in F2F classrooms. For example, setting up group work, moving students in and out of breakout rooms, and classroom discussions all took more time.
Therefore, teachers require specific online environment management competencies, including designing language lessons and materials that account for the environment, and its limitations, and building rapport with and between learners who are in different physical spaces. To design lessons for the environment, teachers suggested keeping the lesson content simple, and ensuring instructions, questions and explanations are explicit. This can be done by ‘minimis[ing] the number of [presentation] slides,’ planning ‘shorter activities’ and adopting the ‘virtual flipped classroom’ approach. An EAP teacher from India talked about the ways in which he managed the online environment:
[I] minimised the numbers of presentation slides and the content on each slide,]. I adopted a dialogic mode of talking, asked students to interact via the chat box and occasionally invited quick comments on some point in the session. I kept first and last few minutes for some interaction about general matters.
In a similar vein, an English language educator from Indonesia explained how they made videos to support students’ understanding of session content:
For me, teaching and learning from face-to-face to synchronous online lessons need creativity in how to explain and deliver the materials to the students such as I made a voice recording so the students can easily understand the materials provided in the PowerPoint presentations.
The virtual flipped classroom approach, where teachers provide materials and videos asynchronously regarding the lesson content for students to watch before SOLs (Ismail and Abdulla, 2019), was seen as a particularly good way to account for the limitations of online teaching. It allowed teachers to ‘free synchronous class time for more interactions.’ The effective use of online and off-line time seems important to maximise interaction in SOLs and avoid ‘lecturing’.
To build rapport with and between language learners, teachers deployed various strategies. One of the most frequently mentioned strategies is to manage expectations. The novel environment necessitates clear explanations of how teachers expect students to participate. For example, a teacher from Austria explained explicitly to her students that ‘interrupting teacher talk to ask questions will not be considered as being rude at all as teachers cannot see them’. To make students feel comfortable to learn as a group, teachers believed that students should be ‘given time and space during the session to get to know more about each other,’ this could be done through ‘1 to 5 minutes of free chatting with classmates in breakout rooms,’ or time given at the beginning and end of class for ‘general chat.’ Some teachers developed icebreakers activities at the beginning of courses. Outside of the SOLs, teachers mentioned they had regular virtual office hours, met students in smaller groups and responded to emails more frequently as some students were unwilling to ask questions in class.
To manage online environments, the data suggest that teachers need the skills and knowledge to consider ways to utilise learners’ class time and out of class time, so class time can be more effectively used for engaging students in interaction. Teachers need explicit strategies to help build and maintain rapport, as the normal social setting an F2F classroom provides, can only be replicated through concrete actions, such as providing assigned times for free chats and unstructured interactions. Acknowledging the differences between the physical and online classroom and setting context-specific expectations and routines are also important.
Online Teacher Interactional Competencies
As mentioned above, teachers viewed interaction as almost equally important to language learning in the online synchronous classroom as they do in the F2F classroom. However, the lack of physical proximity and the limitations afforded in teaching on a 2-D screen, means there are inevitable challenges to facilitating and utilising interaction. A common issue raised was an increase in the amount of ‘teacher talking time’. As a teacher stated ‘It is easy for the teacher to fall into the trap of too much teacher talking time. Lessons can become very teacher-centred.’ This was partly explained by the difficulty in eliciting responses from students. Teachers described finding themselves talking to an ‘empty room’, or in a ‘dark cave’, which felt like ‘a one-sided experience’ or ‘monologue’. One teacher wrote that ‘it’s harder to make jokes or make students laugh’, while another stated that a lack of F2F contact made interaction rather ‘awkward, difficult to follow, slow and cumbersome’. These issues were conflated by some of the technical limitations, with teachers only allocating specific learners to speak at one time using the ‘mute’ feature, and also social norms, such as fear of interrupting teacher talk leading students to respond through the chat box rather than orally. This is exacerbated by the various modes of interactions the teacher is required to monitor and engage in, as this EAP teacher from India detailed:
[The main challenges of synchronous online teaching include] the need to toggle between muting and unmuting, being direct and brief, being aware of other speakers, noticing/giving cues for taking turns, knowledge of the options/facilities for written interaction (like chat boxes) and their features, ability to deal with the isolation and ‘singularity’ of online classes, ability to frequently shift between or mix oral and written interaction, ability to multitask between listening to the speaker, watching the presentation, keeping an eye on the chat box, using the keyboard, interacting at multiple levels (private chat, public chat, oral responses, . . .).
To overcome these challenges, teachers require specific online interactional competencies. These include setting specific interaction expectations, using the multiple modes of communication afforded by the VCS and other platforms effectively, providing longer wait time, and developing specific questioning techniques to elicit responses.
Teachers talked about setting interaction expectations in the first course session, as this EAP teacher from the United Kingdom explained:
The first challenge, I think, is establishing clear modes for interacting or a set of agreed ‘rules’ for interacting in the online classroom. So, things like which buttons or signals are used for showing you want to speak or showing agreement/disagreement with what someone else is saying, or asking for repetition, clarification etc. Otherwise, it’s just babble. Basically, it’s about establishing a set of ‘cues’ to replace the non-verbal ones we use in a physical classroom.
These ‘rules’, can help the teacher and students to navigate the unfamiliar online environment and establish new ways of interacting. Teachers then need to consider the kinds of interaction they want, and how the features and platforms can support these kinds of interaction. For example, using, ‘breakout rooms’ was seen as essential for students to interact in small groups. One teacher noted that it was not just the use of breakout rooms, but also the need for the teacher to set ‘challenging tasks/questions for students to discuss.’ If not, the students may struggle to communicate. Wait time, an important tool in any classroom (Walsh, 2013), needs to be consciously considered in the online synchronous classroom. Teachers reported needing to give more wait time. In addition, teachers suggested that they needed to use a greater variety of nomination strategies. Teachers needed to directly invite students to respond more frequently than they would in the F2F classroom.
Finally, developing specific questioning techniques was seen as important, to reduce the risk that the teacher’s questions go unanswered. This can mean the teacher asking a closed question to the whole class through a survey tool or using the chat box, followed by an open question to elicit a few students’ longer oral responses. It can also mean accepting both written and oral responses. For example, a teacher from Malaysia, when asking the students if they have questions, would invite students to share orally, and then ‘after each question’, she ‘would ask the rest of the students to think about [the question] and share their answers.’ She wrote that ‘most of the time’ she ‘received responses on the chat column.’
Due to the radically different online classroom environment, teachers need to consciously consider how they use and manage interaction. Even though teachers reported a variety of strategies they feel teachers can use, overall, the data analysis suggests that facilitating interaction online is more challenging than in the F2F classroom and requires competencies that many of the surveyed teachers felt they did not yet possess.
Discussion
The present study has found that teachers believe interaction is nearly as important in SOLs as it is in F2F lessons. However, for teachers to be able to successfully use interaction as a tool to mediate and assist language learning when teaching synchronously online, the findings of this study suggest they need three additional competencies to those required in the F2F classroom, namely: technological competencies; online environment management competencies; and online teacher interactional competencies.
Technological Competencies
Although advancements in technology have made synchronous online teaching possible, this study has shown that teachers need specific technological competencies so that they can utilise them successfully. Platforms and tools, such as Zoom, provide multiple modes of interaction (e.g., written chat, annotation, drawing, and oral) (Konhke and Moorhouse, 2020), and opportunities for smaller group activities and tasks (González-Lloret, 2020). Teachers need to feel competent in using them in their classrooms. In addition, teachers need to feel comfortable combining these with other tools, such as game-based platforms, learning management platforms, collaborative tools and instant management platforms, to ensure that classroom activities provide opportunities for various forms of interaction that contribute to their pedagogical goals. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges going forward is to understand how ‘best practice’ from F2F teaching contexts should be modified when teaching online. In particular, we need to understand how new technologies can be integrated with existing practices – or, indeed, with new practices – to ensure that learning is mediated in a successful and appropriate way.
Online Management Competencies
Teachers and learners are physically distant in the synchronous online classroom. Therefore, teachers need new competencies to manage learning without the physical proximity the F2F classroom provides. These competencies include the awareness and effective utilisation of learners ‘in class’ and ‘out-of-class’ time, through approaches such as the ‘virtual flipped classroom’ (Ismail and Abdulla, 2019) – with videos provided before live sessions providing input for dialogue and discussion during SOLs. Teachers need to be aware of the differences in the environment and help learners adjust and become familiar with it. Teachers need to be able to provide clear expectations and instructions and communicate these effectively to students across a screen. Classroom management has been found to be of enormous importance in teacher efficacy in F2F settings (see, for example, Buchanan and Timmis, 2019). In an online teaching context, the management of learning is perhaps even more crucial given the lack of physical and human props and the need to manage a virtual environment. So, for example, using the ‘chat’ function as a virtual whiteboard and sharing a screen which outlines each teaching session as a ‘running order’ are the kinds of practice which will guide and support learning in an online classroom.
Online Teacher Interactional Competencies
Interaction can look very different in the synchronous online classroom from the F2F classroom (Payne, 2020). Often teachers cannot ‘see’ students, as they have not turned on their camera or the VCS limits how many participants can be viewed at once. There can also be other distractors on the screen, such as PowerPoint presentations. Combined, these can limit the use of paralinguistic features used to communicate the desire to talk, nominate speaking turns non-verbally and gather information about students’ understanding. Teachers need to be aware of these differences and develop strategies to account for the different interactional environment. For example, utilising the different modes afforded by the VCS, providing longer wait time, and developing specific questioning techniques. Data suggest that the use of a closed question to the whole class, with students responding in the written chat, followed by an open question to a few specific students can increase interaction and the chance of learners responding. And increasing use of practices such as ‘rehearsal’ – where students are given time to prepare a response in small groups before going public – are certainly needed when working online.
While this study focused on the teacher within SOLs, it is also important to consider the role of the learners. As has been stated previously, CIC is essentially a two-ways interaction and the teacher can only express this with the collaboration of their students (Walsh, 2006). Teachers should therefore consider how and when students may already be engaging in technological mediated interaction, such as participating in online gaming and social media (Hafner, 2019), and leverage these existing uses to create a collaborative space in which both parties take responsibility for working towards CIC. Teachers can invite students to share their online interactional experiences and make suggestions for how they can mutually create an online space for learning. To do this, teachers can spend time fostering learner understanding of and providing explicit scaffolding for being interactive in the learning space. For example, teachers and learners could collaboratively negotiate expectations and online etiquette, such as, encouraging interruptions, or turning on cameras when taking a speaking turn. It is likely that students, as with teachers, see the importance of cultivating opportunities for interaction in SOLs and will be motivated to create a more effective language learning environment.
What is emerging from this study is an initial conceptualisation of what we are calling e-CIC: classroom interactional competence in online contexts. It is too early at this stage to offer a clear definition of this phenomenon, but it is obvious from this exploratory study that e-CIC brings together the additional three sets of competencies discussed in this section and in our findings with the existing features of F2F CIC. Although scholars have identified some potential strategies that teachers can use during SOLs to assist language learning and interaction (e.g., Kohnke and Moorhouse, 2020; González-Lloret, 2020; Payne, 2020), this study, by drawing on the experiences of front-line teachers who have used synchronous online teaching due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, has provided empirical support for the competencies which teachers need to manage interaction during SOLs. It is important to note that the data suggest that many teachers are still struggling with this mode of teaching and, as yet, lack some of the required competencies.
Conclusion
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has likely accelerated the development of online modes of English language teaching, and specifically the use of synchronous technologies to provide real time English language lessons. Such technologies have the potential to connect learners and teachers in different contexts around the world and provide flexibility that traditional F2F teaching cannot (Peachey, 2017). However, due to the rapid shift, the teaching competencies required for the radically different teaching environment have not been fully conceptualised. This study has found that teachers need technological competencies, online environment management competencies, and online teacher interactional competencies, combined with the CIC required for the F2F classroom, or e-CIC, in order for them to effectively use interaction to mediate and assist language learning in online synchronous lessons. The study has important implications for both teachers and teacher educators. For teachers, it is important they recognise the additional competencies they need to mediate and facilitate interaction during SOLs, identified in this study, and actively explore them in relation to their own context and practices. Teachers can do this by collecting and analysing evidence from their own SOLs in the form of a video-recording or audio-recording, self-observation or peer-observation (Walsh, 2019). For teacher educators, it is imperative that they utilise the findings of this study and others (e.g., Cheung, 2021; Moorhouse and Beaumont, 2020), to support teachers who either by choice or by circumstance, find themselves teaching synchronously online to adapt and adjust to this different environment.
While this study has provided some important findings, providing an initial understanding of the competencies that teachers’ need to utilise interaction in SOLs, it has methodological limitations. The study used a self-reporting online mixed-method survey. This is appropriate for the exploratory nature of the study; however, it cannot accurately report on teachers’ actual practices. As interaction is conducted within unique classroom contexts and involves a complex combination of factors (Walsh, 2013), it is important that future studies collect data of teachers’ actual SOLs through observations of lessons and conducting conversation analysis (Seedhouse, 2004). This will allow for a more detailed understanding of e-CIC.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
