Reflections on pre-service English Language teacher’s experiences and practices during the COVID 19 pandemic teaching practice: Highlights and challenges from the lessons taught

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the challenges and highlights of teaching practice during the COVID 19 pandemic. Teaching practice is an indispensable part of the training of pre-service teachers. In light of this, teaching practice assumes particular immediacy and primacy given the opportunity it can afford for theory to blend in with practice. In a normal situation, student teachers are usually confronted by inexperience but to make matter worse, COVID 19 came with more challenges. In most circumstances, teachers were expected to use technology in their teaching to lessen direct contact and to reach a wider number of students. The data for this qualitative study was collected through an engagement with some English language student teachers who were asked to voluntarily write reflections on the highlights and challenges during their lessons within the teaching practice exercise. The findings portrayed that student came up with innovative ways of handling classes by themselves since it was not feasible for their lecturers to supervise them and give them the much-needed feedback that could improve their teaching. Secondly, the article upholds a view of language teaching as a social practice which we believe is well placed to reduce anxiety and build self-esteem. The study concludes that since learning during the COVID 19 appears to be more individualistic, it is important to promote student teachers’ voice and agency in learner’s learning to be able to build self-learning skills and learner’s identity. © 2022, Editorial Board English Scholarship Beyond Borders. All rights reserved.