English Language Teaching During the Times of COVID-19- Challenges and Opportunities: A Brief Study of GFP Students in Muscat College

This article presents the results of a study on the effects of COVID-19 and the changes that crept into English Language Teaching of EFL learners of GFP program in Muscat College, Oman. The study illustrates that Language Teaching as we know underwent a dramatic change due to the unforeseen and unpredictable situation that presented in the form of COVID-19 and the changes that had to be made to curriculum, pedagogy, evaluation of students’ performance while at the same time maintaining the quality of teaching and sustained enthusiasm of the learners. The analysis of students’ summative evaluation results clearly show that a majority of students showed remarkable affinity to learning through the methods employed by teachers using online applications such as Microsoft Teams, Moodle, etc. However, the task at hand for both the teachers and students was not easy. Many students did not have a good WiFi connection, some had difficulty in accessing the network, while some did not have necessary equipment at home, so they were forced to adapt to a varied ways of learning and so on. Though it seems like problems galore, nevertheless almost all the students were able to take their final evaluation online, which proves that if implemented rightly and with little flexibility on the part of both the learner and the instructor, online learning of English Language during the initial part of lockdown proved to be a success in Muscat College.