The Dawn of Digital Classroom : Experiencing the English school subject through distance education during the covid-19 pandemic

Sammanfattning: As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, peoples’ everyday lives have been affected, including the teachers and students in Swedish upper-secondary schools while teaching and learning English. Due to this, both parties have had to experience the English classroom in the shape of distance education through computer-mediated communication (CMC). A convenience sampling consisting of four teachers and four students was used to provide statements regarding the participants’ experiences of the virtual classroom, in comparison to the physical classroom. The study also examined how the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing have been affected while teaching and learning English, due to distance education. The main findings consist of teachers claiming to have experienced difficulties regarding testing the English language skills known as reading and listening. In addition, a lack of non-verbal interaction was missed, according to the teachers, resulting among other things in the linguistic phenomenon such as turn-taking, to have taken place. The students on the other hand, have experienced difficulties regarding autonomy while studying English at home during the distance education as well as a different linguistic issue known as overlap in conjunction with a lack of non-verbal interaction and several people speaking simultaneously. The reported effects due to the covid-19 pandemic in conjunction with distance education are discussed along with the consequences of the obtained results and further suggestions regarding the topic.