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Review article, studies of teaching and learning english-speaking skills: a review and bibliometric analysis.

• School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia

This study conducted a comprehensive historical review and bibliometric analysis of the literature on English-speaking (ES) education and mapped the current state of the field, trends, and emerging topics, as well as identified gaps where further research is needed. We retrieved 361 sample documents on ES teaching and learning in Scopus (2010–2021) under certain conditions and analyzed the extracted data using Excel and VOSviewer 1.6.17 from the perspectives of the number of yearly publications, countries, authors, citation numbers, and keywords. The findings show that the number of publications on ES education increased from 2010 to 2021, but there was a lack of sustained engagement with this topic by researchers. Countries with an ESL or EFL context focused more on the subject of ES, although studies from native ES countries were more influential. The research topics showed a multidimensional trend, covering communicative skills, language knowledge, assessment, teaching or learning methods, ICT-related applications, and cognitive factors, of which ICT-related applications (such as flipped classrooms, blended learning, and e-learning) and cognitive factors (such as motivation, anxiety, and affect) were the areas of focus. Students in higher institutions, rather than children, became the main research subject of ES education over the period studied.

Introduction

A considerable amount of time and money has been invested in English language education (ELE) around the world, especially in countries where English is a Foreign (EFL) or Second Language (ESL). For example, ELE in East Asian countries such as China, South Korea, and Japan has been identified as a necessary skill, which has motivated the development of various approaches and policies ( Song, 2011 ; Hu and McKay, 2012 ). There have been at least three phases of English curriculum reforms by the Malaysian Ministry of Education directed toward improving students’ English proficiency and teachers’ professional development (TPD) ( Rashid et al., 2017 ; Kummin et al., 2020 ).

Despite unremitting efforts in many countries, ELE is still facing the problem of low average English skills. For example, students’ English skills in Turkey are not as good as expected ( Coskun, 2016 ; Özmen et al., 2016 ; Umunĉ and Raw, 2017 ). The survey by Wei and Su (2015) clearly showed that the subjects’ ES proficiency was generally low.

Many terms have been used to refer to the speaking aspects of the English language, e.g., “oral English,” “spoken English,” or “English speaking.” “English speaking” is the term used in this article. Speaking is different from writing, although both are productive skills, in that it is “transient, unplanned, context-dependent, oral/aural, and dynamic” ( Hughes, 2017 ). English-speaking (ES) has been treated as an indivisible language skill for learners in the language education fields of TESOL, EFL, and ESL.

How to improve ES ability, including teaching and learning approaches, influencing factors, and other related issues, have always been a focus of researchers. Thus, in view of the profound changes in society, politics, economics, and technologies, this article aims to give an overview of the current situation and trends regarding ES studies based on Scopus from 2010 to 2021. Moreover, it seeks to provide useful information for further ES teaching and learning research through visualized data analysis using VOSviewer 1.6.17 and Micro Excel.

Thus, the research questions (RQs) of this article are as follows:

RQ1. What is the bibliometric information regarding publications about ES teaching and learning in Scopus (2010–2021), including the number of yearly publications, authors, citations, country contributions, and keywords?

RQ2. What is the status of ES teaching and learning?

RQ3. What are the most influential authors in the field of ES teaching and learning?

RQ4. What are the trends in ES teaching and learning?

RQ5. What are the gaps in ES teaching and learning from the bibliometric information?

Materials and Methods

Bibliometric analysis refers to the cross-science of quantitative analysis of all carriers of knowledge by means of mathematics and statistics ( Broadus, 1987 ). The development of bibliometric software such as VOSviewer, Citespace, and Gephi, and the foundation of the big databases for academic documents such as Scopus, Web of Science, and Taylor and Francis make bibliometric analysis more feasible and practical ( Donthu et al., 2021 ). Meanwhile, according to Rogers et al. (2020) , the recommended minimum sample size for a bibliometric analysis is 200 entries.

Article Selection and Identification

Scopus was chosen as the database for this historical review and bibliometric analysis of ES education. This is because Scopus, as one of the world’s largest databases, covers a wide range of academic journals, conference proceedings, books, and other related publications with relatively high citation indexes and quality, much like the Web of Science ( Pham et al., 2018 ; Baas et al., 2020 ). Scopus is user-friendly in the sense that information can be conveniently retrieved through string retrieval. This study replicated the methodologies used by Lázaro (2022) and Kaya and Erbay (2020) . This article was conducted around RQs after the identification of some keywords as conditions for data mining.

Thus, 23,633 sample documents were first strictly extracted under the condition [TITLE-ABS-KEY (“English speaking” OR “English-speaking” OR “oral English” OR “spoken English”)] AND (“TESOL” OR “EFL” OR “ESL”). Then, the conditions of time span and document type were added for filtering from 2010 to 2021. Then, the articles, conference papers, reviews, book chapters, and books were chosen as the target document types. The detailed conditions can be seen in Table 1 .

Table 1. Retrieval conditions.

Finally, 1,893 documents were obtained. These were exported in the form of an Excel document with citation information, bibliographic information, abstract and keywords, funding details, and other information.

After strict data cleaning through thematic analysis of the abstracts by three researchers for more than three times, 361 sample documents remained, which were classified into four types of documents: journal articles (256; 70.91%), conference papers (79; 21.88%), book chapters (16; 4.43%), and reviews (10; 2.77%), covering more than 10 subject areas, such as social sciences, computer sciences, medicine, engineering, and arts and humanities.

Research Framework and Instruments

In the data selection step, sample documents were screened for information about authors, titles, years, citations, author keywords, index keywords, publishers, document types, countries, and author affiliations from Scopus under strict conditions. The sample documents were then uploaded to Excel and VOSviewer 1.6.17 during the data-processing step. Excel and VOSviewer 1.6.17 were used to perform the visualized bibliometric analysis of the number of publications per year, contributions of authors and countries, and keywords ( Chen, 2016 ; Van Eck and Waltman, 2017 ). Finally, the current situation, developing trends, research gaps, and lessons we can learn about ES teaching were sorted. Thus, the research framework is divided into four main steps, as shown in Figure 1 .

Figure 1. The conceptual framework.

Compared with studies on English writing and reading, studies on ES education are relatively very small in scale. Although only 361 sample documents conforming to the screening conditions were identified, it was still feasible to conduct a bibliometric analysis from the perspectives of the number of yearly publications, countries, authors, citations, and keywords.

Number of Publications by Year

According to the linear trend line in Figure 2 , the overall trend of the ES education literature in Scopus was on the rise from 2010 to 2021. The number of publications in 2021 was six times more than that in 2010, indicating that ES education was gradually beginning to be taken seriously by researchers.

Figure 2. Yearly publications on English-speaking teaching and learning (2010–2021).

However, there were some tortuous changes. In 2010, only 10 studies were identified, but the percentage of the high citation index occupied 50%. From 2011 to 2018, the number of documents published in this area presented an up-and-down curve. The number of publications was slightly lower in 2012 than in 2021. This might be due to the decreased demand for ES education as a result of the economic downturn in many emerging economies such as China, South Korea, and Brazil ( Reid, 2013 ). Yearly publications in this field increased from 2012 to 2013, but decreased again from 2013 to 2015, which was again in line with the global economic situation ( Mau and Ulyukaev, 2015 ). In 2015, the number of publications was more or less the same as in 2010. The reasons for this might be that world trade reduced during the global crisis from 2014 to 2015 ( Baber, 2015 ; Xu and Carey, 2015 ) or that no new research directions were explored during that time. After 2015, there was a continuous increase until 2017. After a subtle decrease in 2018, there was a significant accumulation in the number of publications from 2018 to 2021, showing a new growth trend. Especially in 2020 and 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic brought disaster to the whole world, publications on ES education increased, reflecting the increasing requirement for ES communication during this time of global cooperation ( Sun and Lan, 2021 ). The influence of the date on the extraction of the sample documents was not very great, as it was 12 December 2021.

Contributions and Collaborations by Country/Region

The 361 sample records extracted in Scopus from 2010 to 2021 were associated with around 40 countries, showing the global distribution of interest by country in ES education.

Figure 3 shows the top 20 countries/regions publishing articles in this field, and they were responsible for 344 ES education publications (2010–2021) (accounting for 95.29% of the total). The countries with big and bright circles were the ones with the large number of the publications. Apart from the 75 publications contributed by the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Spain, and New Zealand, the remaining 269 publications were published by 10 Asian countries, accounting for 74.52% of the total sample documents, which implied the huge demand for the improvement of the learners’ ES skills in those countries. Mainland China contributed 128 publications, accounting for 40.44% of the total, followed by the United States, with 38 documents, accounting for 10.53%.

Figure 3. Density map of the top 10 countries.

Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, countries in South-East Asia, occupied the third, fourth, and fifth positions, with 22, 22, and 18 publications, respectively. Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Bangladesh began to participate in country collaborations in recent years, in contrast to countries such as the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Singapore where English is the native language or first language.

The citation network in Figure 4 shows only countries with more than five publications, which reflected the passive collaboration among the countries. As one of the native ES countries, home to many ELE approaches and English assessment tools such as TOFEL, the publications by the United States were cited 518 times (total link strength = 10). Meanwhile, the United Kingdom, home to IELTS, contributed 12 publications, which were cited 72 times (total link strength = 5). Malaysia, where ESL, contributed 22 publications, which were cited 90 times (total link strength = 17). Meanwhile, China, with an EFL context, ranked second with 128 publications, which were cited 395 times, and the total link strength achieved 24.

Figure 4. Country co-authorship in the field of English speaking teaching and learning.

The total citation number of the 361 sample publications was 1,828. Table 2 provides detailed information on the 15 countries that published the most cited articles. The publication and the corresponding citation rate of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore showed huge contrasts, respectively, 12.92, 19.45, 19.5, and 13.83. The high citation rate may to a certain extent represent a high reference value, although it may also be influenced by some highly cited papers ( Schubert and Braun, 1986 ; Aksnes et al., 2012 ; Brika et al., 2021 ). Thus, it was concluded that the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, where English was the official language, were the leading countries with high citation rates in the field of ES education studies. Similarly, native ES countries—the United Kingdom and Canada—showed relatively high citation rates of 5.83 and 6.14, respectively. Meanwhile, the citation rates of Asian countries such as China (4.73), Japan (6.35), South Korea (5.08), Vietnam (8.38), and Oman (6.75) indicated the progress and the relatively high reference value of publications on ES education studies in those countries. The non-ES European countries such as Spain received 4.57 in citation rates, which were much lower than those of the native ES countries.

Table 2. Description of the 15 countries that published the most cited articles in the field of English-speaking (ES) education studies in Scopus (2010–2021).

Co-authorship among the countries is shown in Figure 5 , which is a presentation of active collaborations. The co-authorship links among Malaysia, India, China, and the United States were linear. However, the collaboration in the map showed a tendency toward a partial focus. For instance, the United States was the main collaborating country for Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Canada, Australia, and Singapore. While China collaborated mainly with the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Turkey, Vietnam, and New Zealand. Thus, there was a need for an omnidirectional and multi-angle collaboration among the countries for ES teaching and learning research across the world for further studies.

Figure 5. The map of the co-authorship among the countries on English-speaking teaching and learning.

Author Contributions

Table 3 shows general information about the citations for the 361 sample documents in Scopus (2010–2021). As can be seen in Table 4 , the topics of the top 10 most frequently cited articles were concerned with the assessment of ES proficiency and fluency, teachers’ influence, lexical acquisition, and the facilitation of mobile social networks. The total citation number was 1,828. On average, each document was cited 5.06 times. An experimental study by Kang et al. (2010) that proposed suprasegmental measurement for pronunciation assessment from the perspective of accent and equipment use was the most frequently cited article, which was cited 134 times. A qualitative study by Ma (2012) was cited 66 times, ranking second among the top 10 most frequently cited. It focused on ES teaching methods and investigated the advantages and disadvantages of native and non-native ES teachers in practice. The third most frequently cited article, which analyzed the academic lexical demands and academic word list coverage for ES communications by means of corpus, was cited 61 times ( Dang and Webb, 2014 ). Obviously, most of the top 10 most frequently cited articles were published before 2016, except for the experimental studies by Sun and Lan (2021) on the application of e-learning to develop young learners’ ES competence, implying the emergence of new research topics after 2016 in ES teaching and learning studies.

Table 3. General citations of English-speaking (ES) education publications in Scopus (2010–2021).

Table 4. Top 10 frequently cited authors on English-speaking (ES) education in Scopus (2010–2021).

The top 10 authors with more than three articles in order, were Ismail, K. (6), Abdullah, M. Y. (5), Hussin, S. (5), Liu, M. (5), Habil, H. (4), Chen, Z. (3), Hasan, M. K. (3), Hwang, G. J. (3), Rao, Z. (3), and Seraj, P. M. I. (4), and the co-authorship relationships can be seen in Figure 6 . Seraj, P. M. I published four articles (one in 2020 and three in 2021) focusing on the topic of a flipped classroom. The other author with four publications was Liu M., studying the problem of Chinese EFL students’ anxiety, respectively, in 2013, 2018, 2018, and 2021. Rao Z. made three publications on the issues of native and non-native English teachers in China in 2010, 2016, and 2020.

Figure 6. Density map of the key words.

Keyword Analysis

There were 1,049 keywords among the 361 sample documents, and only 49 keywords (2.88%) appeared more than five times after merging synonyms and deleting extraneous words. This indicates that the number of high-frequency keywords was relatively small, which reflects the relatively extensive content of ES research in the field of language education. Table 5 lists the top 10 keywords ordered by the frequency of occurrence apart from the retrieval words, among which the frequency of “ES skill” was the highest, accounting for 3.43%. The remaining keywords with a frequency greater than 10 were “speech recognition” (32), “College English” (26), “e-learning” (22), “computer-aided instruction” (19), “learning system” (14), “native-English speaking teachers” (13), anxiety (13), “oral communication” (12), “virtual reality” (11), and “artificial intelligence” (10). Obviously, the gap in frequency among keywords is not very large.

Table 5. The top 10 most frequently occurring keywords on English-speaking (ES) education in Scopus (2010–2021).

The bibliometric co-occurrence analysis of keywords provided a convenient way to assess the state of the research field and spot hot issues ( Chen, 2016 ; Mutira et al., 2021 ; Sun and Lan, 2021 ). Meanwhile, importantly, keyword co-occurrence analysis can reflect the viewpoints of core academic articles and may be beneficial for researchers trying to keep up with research trends in a certain area ( Li et al., 2016 ; Shoaib et al., 2021 ). Figure 6 shows the density of keywords that appeared more than 10 times; the brightness of the color represents the heat color of the keyword studied. The more studies, the brighter the color ( Van Eck and Waltman, 2020 ). The colors of the keywords “English speaking skill,” “college English,” “computer-aided learning instruction,” and “speech recognition” were brighter than others. The other keywords, such as “speaking anxiety” and “e-learning,” were also brighter. To some extent, these brighter keywords reflected the research hotspots in the field of ES education from 2010 to 2021 in Scopus.

Keyword cluster analysis reflected the topics to some extent ( Yang et al., 2017 ). After combining synonyms (e.g., oral English and spoken English; computer-aided learning and computer-aided instruction; and native and non-native ES teacher) and the deletion of non-sense words (e.g., human, priority journal, and education), the keywords except the retrieval terms “English speaking,” “oral English,” “English-speaking,” “spoken English,” “EFL,” “TESOL,” and “ESL” were categorized into seven clusters with three main topics, as seen in Figure 7 . The keywords with red color dealt with the application of ICT in ES education, including items such as artificial intelligence, automatic speech recognition, computer-aided instruction, correlation methods, deep learning, information science, learning system, machine learning, quality control, correlation methods, corrective feedback, ES learning, oral communication, etc. Cluster 2 dealt with the cognitive factors influencing students’ ES skills or performance, such as attitude, EFL, English speaking performance, ES skill, the flipped classroom, motivation, speaking anxiety, and teaching methods, of which flipped classroom as a teaching method had the highest frequency of occurrence. Clusters 3 and 4 dealt with the application of ICT in college ES education, covering topics such as e-learning, engineering education, English speaking, learning, virtual reality, big data, college English, and educational computing. Cluster 7 dealt with the assessment of pronunciation or others.

Figure 7. The network visualization map of co-occurrence of keywords.

Keyword Changes and the Enlightenment to Research Topics

Figure 8 reveals a change in the time distribution of topics. It was obvious that most of the light-colored nodes were close to the keyword “college English,” while there were only a few around the keywords “child,” “preschool,” and “adolescent” after 2016. This shows that college students had become the main subjects of ES education studies instead of young learners.

Figure 8. The overlay visualization map of keywords according to year.

Meanwhile, studies with keywords related to the application of ICT, such as “big data,” “artificial intelligence,” “flipped classroom,” “speech recognition system,” and “virtual reality” in ES education, were emerging as a focus of research. Academic ES also began to attract researchers’ attention. Some researchers started to consider the development of twenty first-century skills during ES education. In addition, light-colored nodes of the keywords concerning teaching and learning modes (“continuous development,” “teaching method,” “EMI,” “error correction,” etc.), cognitive factors (“students’ interests,” “anxiety,” “motivation,” etc.), language skills (“ES performance,” “communicative skills,” “accuracy,” “fluency,” etc.), and language knowledge (“pronunciation,” “grammar,” etc.) remained the focus of research.

Limitations

The interpretation of the review should be very cautious due to some limitations. First, bibliometric analysis is a literature review method based on big data technology rather than synthesized thematic analysis. The data were collected and analyzed through the software. Thus, the accuracy of this analysis method is highly dependent on that of the software. The second limitation refers to the database. Though Scopus has covered the majority of the publications on ES teaching and learning worldwide, there are still some publications that were not included in the research.

This historical review and bibliometric analysis sought to better understand the current state of the research field, trends, and emerging research topics on ES education from 2010 to 2021. The results show that there was an increasing trend in the number of publications in this area from 2010 to 2021 in Scopus, indicating that ES education studies remained a necessary research topic, although the research population was not large. Countries with an ESL or EFL context, such as China, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia, paid more attention to the development of learners’ ES abilities and contributed more to ES education studies. However, the citation analysis revealed that native ES countries such as the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Canada, were the major authorities or origins of ES education studies, which can also be seen by author contributions. Country collaboration analysis showed that the United States, China, India, and Malaysia acted as hubs of contact, establishing overall relationships within the collaboration network. In addition, the analysis of author distribution and collaboration revealed that there were constantly new researchers entering this field, but the lack of authors focusing on ES education over the long term and sustained research was still a problem. Further exploration of keywords revealed that the hot research issues encompass communicative skills, language knowledge, assessment, teaching or learning methods, ICT-related applications, and cognitive factors. Rather than focusing on ES education for young and adolescent learners, researchers showed a preference for investigating ES education for college students, catering to the increasing requirements of oral international communication. Meanwhile, topics on ICT application, autonomous learning, academic ES ability, and twenty first-century learning skills are gradually becoming hot areas for the improvement of ES teaching and learning worldwide.

JW was the research designer and executor of this study, participated in and completed the data analysis, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. RA and L-ML gave suggestions when necessary. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Acknowledgments

JW would like to express their gratitude to RA and L-ML who participated in this project.

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Keywords : English-speaking skills, bibliometric analysis, research trends, enlightenment, research state

Citation: Wang J, Abdullah R and Leong L-M (2022) Studies of Teaching and Learning English-Speaking Skills: A Review and Bibliometric Analysis. Front. Educ. 7:880990. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2022.880990

Received: 22 February 2022; Accepted: 01 June 2022; Published: 06 July 2022.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Wang, Abdullah and Leong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Rohaya Abdullah, [email protected]

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• Published: 08 August 2023

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Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education volume  8 , Article number:  24 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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This study explores teachers’ perspectives with regards to teaching English in virtual classrooms, specifically with regards to teaching English as a second language within the context of emergency remote learning in Hong Kong during COVID-19. Through undertaking thematic analysis of six interviews with English language teachers at a university in Hong Kong, this study explores how teachers view the benefits, challenges and personal and professional consequences of the shift to emergency remote teaching during the pandemic. Taking a social constructivist approach to the topic, the study also seeks to uncover how teachers view such provisions as being improved under future emergencies and with respect to online English language teaching moving forwards generally. This research topic contributes both to a longstanding debate on the ways in which digital technologies can enhance education and language learning, as well as the emerging body of literature examining how teachers and students have responded to the implementation of digital learning in online classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction

This research paper explores the experiences, attitudes and perspectives of English as a second language (ESL) teachers regarding the shift to online education as brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study utilises primary qualitative research consisting of interviews with six ESL teachers from higher-education institutes in Hong Kong in order to gauge their experiences, attitudes and perspectives on the shift to online learning with a view to exploring the efficacy and sustainability of online learning moving forward. This is undertaken with a view to contributing to the longstanding debate on the ways in which digital technologies can enhance education and language learning.

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 onwards has instituted an unprecedented shift to education and language learning. At a global level, the necessity of closing schools and restricting access to face-to-face teaching in order minimise viral exposure has seen education across a number of contexts move towards online platforms and spaces (Chen et al., 2020 ). Although online education has been practised for some time and is a highly theorised and studied topic, these shifts to teaching and learning in online environments largely took place without pre-existing plans for online learning on this scale in place (Chang & Fang, 2020 ). The rapid nature of this transformation in the learning environment means that educationalists are still assessing what the consequences of online learning under these conditions have been for teachers and students alike (Pandit & Agrawal, 2022 ).

As such, there may be said to be two distinct bodies of literature covering related but distinct phenomena with respect to online teaching and learning. In terms of online teaching and learning generally, there is extensive research dating back some 30 years that has produced well-established principles and best practices regarding online teaching and learning. However, with respect to emergency remote teaching and learning, the absence of a comparable phenomenon to COVID-19 over this period means that there is much less research on emergency remote teaching prior to the outset of the pandemic. As a consequence, online teaching principles and best practices during the pandemic may not match those established on the basis of research over the past 30 years. This distinction in part motivates this research insofar as it is essential to understand the difficulties that teachers have experienced in understanding and implementing these principles and practices under the context of emergency remote teaching.

There have been a number of challenges to arriving at assessments as to what the virus has meant for learners and teachers. The highly localised nature of the response to the pandemic across national education systems means that the provisions for online education varied significantly across regions and states (Aguilera-Hermida et al., 2021 ). This means that generalisable findings have been difficult to arrive at, necessitating further research into the consequences of online education at regional, national and local levels. It is only through research carried out within these contexts that overall approaches to online education may be assessed and compared across contexts.

Fortunately, there is already a substantial body of research into online education that may be drawn upon in order to guide research in this regard. Online education has been suggested by past researchers to hold significant potential in enhancing the experiences of teachers and learners alike (Livingstone, 2012 ; Sun & Chen, 2016 ), suggesting that there may be much to gain from utilising online education further. However, researchers have also suggested that there may be limitations or obstacles to the utilisation of online learning with regards to second language acquisition (SLA) (Lin, 2014 ). There is therefore an ongoing debate within the area of ELT research regarding the suitability of online teaching for learning English as a second language, as well as with regards to best principles and practices in this area.

Beyond this, online teaching under pandemic conditions likewise engenders conditions for online learning that have not been present in prior research carried out into online learning and ELT/SLA. Understanding how these conditions have been navigated by teachers and what specific or unique challenges the rapid shift to emergency online teaching brought about requires research into teacher perspectives and experiences. For these reasons, new research on the outcomes and experiences of online learning during COVID-19 may be used to assess to what degree the approaches, methods and practices pursued in online contexts cohere with either perspective on the potential for online learning with regards to English language teaching (ELT). This research seeks to enter into the aforementioned literature on online education in ELT.

These aims and objectives are informed by the findings of the literature review below, much of which is summarised here. As much of this literature now focuses upon how online learning may be better designed and implemented (Groves, 2020 ), this research is designed to contribute towards this area of the literature on the topic. Critical to ascertaining how online teaching may be improved upon are the ways in which teachers have responded to the shift towards online education given that they are central to its implementation and to the delivery of content (Bergin & Bergin, 2009 ). Therefore, this research is motivated by gaining first-hand accounts and experiences on the advantages and challenges presented by online learning during COVID-19 to ELT. This serves as the primary aim of this research.

As the literature review below also demonstrates, however, the development of an entirely new classroom environment has brought about new demands upon teachers in terms of their pedagogical approaches, available resources and teaching practices (Rapanta et al., 2020 ). In addition, there is the prospect for the shift to online learning to compound the ongoing issues facing teachers—such as stress and burnout—through negative impacts on the work-life balance and isolation of teachers from school support networks (Mheidly et al., 2020 ). Assessing how teachers view their own experience of teaching to be impacted by online education serves as a secondary aim to this research, as is reflected in the design of the research outlined in methodology.

In brief, these research methods are designed to attain the objectives of this research in ascertaining how higher-education English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in Hong Kong have responded to the shift to teaching in online classrooms during the COVID-19 crisis. Through undertaking semi-structured, one-to-one interviews with teachers, this research utilises a phenomenological approach to thematic analysis in order to arrive at findings regarding the experiences and attitudes of teachers towards the online ESL classroom.

Literature review

This section outlines the literature relevant to the topic of investigation reflected in this study. Dealing first with a broad overview of the literature regarding online education during COVID-19 and its trends, the review then elaborates upon the relevance of this to ELT and SLA, as well as covering the impact upon teachers as well as specific research carried out within the context of higher education institutes in Hong Kong. This review identifies a gap with regards to the extant body of research that this study is designed to close.

Theoretical framework

Before delving into the literature review, it is important to provide an overview of the theoretical framework that serves as the foundation for this research. First, the study utilises a social constructivist approach to understanding learning within an educational context that is in itself related to a social constructionist approach to knowledge more broadly. Dealing with the latter first, social constructionism holds that beliefs about physical reality are established through collaborative consensus rather than reflecting individuated inferences about objective phenomena (Jung, 2019 ). In engaging with the external world, individuals make meaning out of this world not within a vacuum but against social backdrops, producing meaning through their social interactions with others (Kritt, 2018 ). As such, at an ontological level, it makes sense to speak of ‘social reality’ and to understand meaning-making from within this environmental context (Shotter & Gergen, 1994 ). Naturally, this has certain connotations with regards to how individuals interact and form opinions, views and attitudes from experience of this interaction that are relevant to the design of this study. These factors are considered in more depth at the outset of the methodology section below.

With regards to social constructivism, this is a theoretical perspective that is related to but not identical with social constructionism. Describing to some degree social constructionist assumptions within the context of educational learning and research, social constructivism is a theory about the ways in which individual learners make meaning out of social interactions. This moves beyond a solely cognitivist approach to understanding how individuals learn new information—which would be compatible with wholly individuated learning—and holds instead that these cognitive processes often require social interaction for learning to take place (Cobb, 1994 ). Based on this rationale, it is not engagement with objective natural phenomena that is key to producing mental artefacts, but rather engagement with other individuals. This renders social and cultural backdrops incredibly relevant with regards to how individuals learn and likewise what they learn.

The relevance of such a perspective to online learning and emergency remote teaching lies in the substitution of a physical and in-person social environment for one that is abstracted and virtual. Whilst there is the translation of social interactions from the physical to the virtual to consider in itself, there are also potential consequences in terms of the mechanisms of learning associated with the classroom. For example, some studies undertaken from a social constructivist perspective have highlighted the importance of oral communication to learning (Reznitskaa et al., 2007 ), raising questions regarding the extent of provision for oral communication in virtual classrooms. Other studies have highlighted the importance of group discussion to the learning process (Corden, 2001 ), again prompting questions regarding how far this may be accommodated in online classrooms. From a social constructivist perspective, there are important questions regarding how learning might take place in online classrooms given the assumptions of the theoretical approach.

There are also further questions specifically relevant to SLA prompted by the communicative of communicative learning theory (CLT) within ELT. CLT holds that second languages are acquired through using language for everyday communicative purposes rather than through overtly instructional methods (e.g., such as the grammar-translation method) (Nunan, 1991 ). At a practical level, the dominance of CLT as a perspective necessitates frequent oral communication and the use of the target language within naturalistic everyday discussions. Again, the extent to which this can be incorporated into online teaching provides a quandary that researchers may be tasked with resolving. The prospect of incorporating a CLT approach to online teaching and emergency remote teaching, in particular, is expanded upon in more detail below.

Online education

Providing justification for an emergent field of online education, McKnight et al. ( 2016 ) originally identified five primary roles of technology in developing the learning environment, including improvements to teacher and learner access to e-resources, improving communication between teachers and learners, providing flexible time arrangements, expanding learner skill sets and discipline, and creating new, innovative roles for teachers and learners. Whilst the literature on online education prior to the pandemic may be characterised by theoretical perspectives combined with smaller scale studies, it has since the pandemic become a rapidly growing area of investigation. As some have observed, however, it is also a highly asymmetrical area, with research at the level of higher education being comparably neglected compared to research into online education at the level of primary and secondary schooling (Carrillo & Flores, 2020 ).

This asymmetry is reflected in the experiences of students in many instances as well. Whilst many students have been able to utilise online education to its fullest, others may have been inhibited by family circumstances, such as a lack of suitable technology, connectivity, or study space at home (Roberts & Danechi, 2021 ). Nevertheless, online education has permitted hundreds of millions of students to continue to receive an education where otherwise this would not have been possible in conjunction with mass school closures (OECD, 2020 ). Whilst an interpretation of emergency remote learning as being ‘better than nothing’ is very likely warranted, there still remain concerns about these asymmetries in experiences among teachers and students alike.

The persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic has either enabled or forced higher learning institutions and stakeholders to adopt contemporary technological tools for education delivery. There is a significant amount of literature that has suggested the potential for improvements to SLA as a consequence of the pandemic. For one, some proponents of ‘deschooling’ education have argued that the pandemic has presented an ‘opportunity’ for maximising the benefits of moving education outside of the traditional classroom environment (Groves, 2020 ). For example, online education might make classes more inclusive by allowing students who may not attend in-person classes for whatever reason an opportunity to engage with online lessons (Campbell, 2021 ).

Conversely, there is also a significant body of literature emerging that suggests that there may be negative results to moving education online. Some, for example, have highlighted the reduced role of the teacher in online education, such as through the increased propensity to deliver pre-recorded lectures and lessons (Ambler et al., 2020 ; Konig et al., 2020 ). Others have found that English lecturers at a university level were poorly prepared for transferring classes to online platforms, with uncertainty also about how to rapidly translate their curriculum into an online lesson (La Velle et al., 2020 ). For this reason, some such as Adedoyin and Soykan ( 2020 ) have argued that ‘emergency’ online teaching may fail to carry with it many of the alleged benefits of online education noted in prior research.

From a social constructivist perspective on teaching, this is potentially problematic given the construction of knowledge taking place through social interactions themselves (Hamat & Embi, 2010 ). For instance, some research has indicated that there are barriers to teachers implementing scaffolding through emergency remote teaching, with teachers perceiving there being insufficient scope for taking such an approach in the applications used for emergency remote teaching throughout the pandemic (Donham et al., 2022 ). On the other hand, a review of the literature on emergency remote teaching conducted from a social constructivist perspective presented such challenges as ‘teething problems’ and argued that many teachers had successfully created online communities of learners throughout the pandemic (Agopian, 2022 ).

In the context of ELT, there have been concerns expressed regarding how a communicative approach to language teaching (CLT) might function in online environments (Teh, 2021 ). For instance, one study carried out in China found that college-level English courses moved to emergency remote teaching suffered from both instability of network platforms as well as a lack of sufficient teacher–student interactions (Sun, 2022 ). These perspectives may be contrasted with those of emerging pro-online education theories, such as connectivism, which conceives of learning taking place across increasingly online networks (Siemens, 2005 ). How conducive online environments are to SLA is therefore a question to some extent mediated by theoretical perspective.

Online education and EFL

With regards to EFL courses, Hazaymeh ( 2021 ) observes that there are multiple functional advantages ranging from accelerated distribution of course content to innovative learning materials to knowledge sharing and social information exchange. In an evaluation of available technologies, Lo ( 2020 ) highlights the advantages of authentic language learning using visual cues, digital audio, and artificial intelligence (AI) supported assessments to test student abilities. This supposedly corroborates pre-existing research regarding the potential for online education to enhance language teaching and learning. Whereas traditional lecture-based classrooms rely upon teacher demonstration and student exercises, digital learning supposedly has the potential to provide a more immersive experience through innovative modules, educator creativity, and interactive student experiences (Lo, 2020 ; McWilliam & Dawson, 2008 ).

Similarly, Kodrle and Savchenko ( 2021 ) suggest that the conversational and interactive advantages associated with multimedia EFL applications are conducive to ‘favourable communication’ practices that are not only integrative but are directed towards a practical translation of knowledge into meaningful real-world outcomes. Others have suggested the utility of ‘gamification’ towards L2 acquisition (Lo & Mok, 2019 ). From word association to goal execution to dialogue construction, the familiarity of digital natives with the paratextual experience in online gaming allegedly has a direct and transferrable relevance in digital L2 learning experiences (Lo & Mok, 2019 ). Similar recommendations for an emergent digital ecosystem in EFL learning proposed by Rahimi and Yadollahi ( 2017 ) suggest that digital storytelling and exchanges allow learners to ‘develop their language literacy’ by engaging in collaborative reinforcement exercises and ‘constructive dialogue with teachers and groupmates’.

However, there is also a significant amount of research that indicates potentially negative outcomes in relation to the implementation of online education with regards to SLA. The sudden shift from traditional to digital learning was surprising to many higher education students, with Rahman ( 2020 ) reporting that despite their experience with digital technologies (e.g. home computing, mobile applications), many adjustments to behaviours, awareness, and skill sets were needed during this process. In a small sample interview of students at the higher education institution, UKI Toraja, Allo ( 2020 ) observed a variety of responses to the sudden shift from traditional education to online learning. Whilst some students reported experiencing cost and resources-related challenges, the acknowledgement of the advantages of persistent digital learning despite widespread disruption during the pandemic in other industries was viewed as positive (Allo, 2020 ). Students reported a need for instructor awareness regarding technological, material, and access-based challenges in relation to the online curriculum and course scheduling; however, through social networks and peer support, many hurdles were overcome (Allo, 2020 ).

Despite positive assessment of students’ ability to adapt to the digital learning experience by Allo ( 2020 ), other evidence in this field suggests that the transition has been challenging for both students and teachers. For example, Pobegavlov ( 2021 ) reveals that due to the switch to online education, instructors have been unable to ‘provide their educational influence’ and leverage their pedagogical skill sets to instruct students via online courses in the same ways that they would have demonstrated in traditional classes. Students without the prerequisite skill sets, alternatively, have found their transition into digital learning a difficult process, one which has resulted in frustration, poor performance, and pathway uncertainties (Pobegavlov, 2021 ). Similarly, Hava ( 2019 ) has identified as frustration, discontentment, negativity, and resistance to change among students. Key concerns such as the time-consuming nature of the educational process, the difficulty of the digital ecosystem, and the meaning versus value of the digital content were suggested to lead to student frustrations and an inability to transition into more productive EFL outcomes (Hava, 2019 ). There is therefore a lack of consensus across the literature as to the suitability of online education with regards to EFT and SLA.

Teacher experiences during COVID-19

An aspect of the literature that has emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic has been the extent to which teachers and lecturers have been impacted by the move to the online classroom environment. With respect to workload, research is largely split as to whether the shift has positively or negatively impacted the workload of teachers. Some studies have indicated that teacher workload has reduced due to reduced contact time with students following school/university closures (Kaden, 2020 ). Alternatively, other studies have found that 72% of lecturers found remote working stressful, with even those with prior experience of online teaching finding it more stressful than anticipated (Fhloinn & Fitzmaurice, 2021 ).

The risk of the prolonged stress associated with periods of increased workload is the phenomenon of ‘burnout’ among teachers. Burnout refers to teachers becoming overcome with stress to the degree that it impacts their well-being and was among the most prevalent concerns of teachers prior to the onset of the pandemic (Ekinci & Acar, 2019 ). It is also a factor highly associated with teachers and lecturers leaving the profession (Bruce & Cacioppe, 1989 ), a concern given the continuing high demand for EFL teachers in Hong Kong (Copland et al., 2020 ). One study of university lecturers in Malaysia found a high degree of burnout among personnel who worked at home during the pandemic as compared with prior to the onset of the pandemic (Fitriasari et al., 2022 ), indicating that it may produce negative outcomes for teachers and lecturers.

A further cause of teacher attrition that may be relevant is the impact of teaching workload upon work-life balance (Buchanan et al., 2013 ). Some studies have found that work that ‘leaves the classroom’ is a major source of stress and worry to teachers as it reduces the time they have for activities outside of work (Ovendon-Hope et al., 2018 ) A meta-analysis of research into work-life balance throughout the pandemic found that the transition to online learning was associated with a decline in the quality of work-life balance among lecturers, resulting in poorer psychological well-being (Susilaningsih et al., 2021 ). However, other studies have indicated that experienced lecturers were far less likely to struggle in transitioning towards online education, indicating that years of experience may be a relevant factor in teacher experience of online education during COVID (Rapanta et al., 2020 ). This suggests that experiences may vary between teachers contingent upon certain variables that provide resistance or susceptibility to the stresses associated with online teaching.

The context of Hong Kong

Research within the context of Hong Kong exclusively has produced findings relevant to this study’s topic. Pre-COVID studies were largely positive regarding the potential for the outcomes for online education as compared with face-to-face lectures (Evans et al., 2020 ; Kekkonen-Moneta & Moneta, 2002 ). However, research carried out during the COVID pandemic and since has been less positive regarding its evaluations of the outcomes of online education. One survey of over 1200 university students found that a majority were dissatisfied with their online learning experiences (Mok et al., 2021 ). Others have found subject-specific problems with recreating learning experiences in online environments (Gamage et al., 2020 ). Some studies have attempted to analyse the impact and its direction with regards to ELT. One study found that an ESL teacher had fewer interactions with students (Cheung, 2021 ), though it is notable that the study only utilised interviews with one teacher. Another study of primary-level ESL teachers found that ICT self-efficacy was correlated with an intention to continue using technology in post-pandemic teaching practices (Bai et al., 2021 ), though similar studies at the level of higher education have not been carried out. This indicates a gap in the literature with regards to the challenges ESL teachers may face at a university level.

With regards to teacher experiences, some studies have noted impacted psychological well-being in the adaptation to online teaching (Cheng & Lam, 2021 ; Kong & Moorhouse, 2020 ; Yau et al., 2022 ). Others have noted burnout among teachers caused by stresses associated with the transition to online teaching (Lau et al., 2022 ). However, few primary qualitative studies appear to have investigated the impact upon English language teachers specifically at the higher-education level within Hong Kong. One study, for example, utilised in-depth interviews with teachers, but only included two teachers in the study’s actual findings (Teng & Wu, 2021 ). However, research at lower levels of school suggest there may be negative outcomes for EFL teachers (Wong et al., 2022 ). Likewise, research on EFL teachers from other states indicates that there may be negative consequences for the well-being of teachers under the conditions of online teaching during COVID-19 (Morska et al., 2022 ), implying the need for more investigation into these factors in the context of Hong Kong.

Research gap

As this study has indicated, there is a gap in the literature with regards to the perspectives of ESL teachers at the higher-education level in Hong Kong as to their experiences of online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. The literature review has revealed generally apparent challenges in translating classroom ELT into a virtual environment both generally and especially within the context of emergency remote teaching, given the apparent lack of preparedness of institutions, teachers and students for this transition. The vaunted benefits to online teaching generally and the conditions and caveats for its successful practice were not necessarily met under the conditions of remote emergency teaching as a consequence, though whether this is the case has not yet been established in the context of Hong Kong. Though some research indicates difficulties in transitioning to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic, the challenges facing teachers within other contexts have not been established on the basis of primary qualitative research into the experiences of English language teachers in Hong Kong during the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, there is the need to close the gap in this topic area in order to arrive at recommendations that might improve principles and practice in this area under similar future conditions.

Research questions

Identifying that there exists a research gap regarding the experiences of English language teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic mandates generating research questions designed to close this gap. Taking a social constructivist perspective to this also requires formulating a research question that attempts to close the gap on the types of teaching practice related to a social constructivist approach to learning. As such, the following research questions have been devised towards these ends:

What do university-level EFL teachers in Hong Kong view as the advantages and disadvantages of teaching English in an online classroom? What did teachers feel were the challenges to implementing online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly with regards to practices associated with a social constructivist approach? What was the experience of teachers of online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and how do they feel this impacted them both professionally and personally? How do teachers envisage online education being improved in order to better benefit both EFL teachers and students moving forwards beyond the pandemic?

How these questions might be answered forms the focus of the following section outlining this research study’s methodology.

Methodology

This section outlines the design behind this research study, justifying its methodological decisions in terms of the theoretical and practical motivations behind its design. This discussion is carried out through the presentation of the rationale behind the design of the study’s data collection and analysis methods, the considerations regarding ethics, reliability and validity that were factored into the study’s design, as well as describing the actual processes of data collection and analysis themselves.

Design philosophy

With regards to the theoretical framework behind this study, as stated above, this research is carried out within a social constructivist paradigm. Whilst social constructivism in education is associated with Vygotsky ( 1978 ) and learning through interaction with the social environment (1994), social constructionism describes a broader ontological and epistemological position regarding how individuals make meaning out of their environment (Gergen & Gergen, 2007 ). In either case, these theories hold that social practices shape institutions such as schools and are in turn shaped by these cultures (Witkin, 2012 ).

With regards to how individuals view the online classroom, it is important to understand that their views will be mediated by the social practices of themselves and others due to how social reality is constructed (Shotter & Gergen, 1994 ). It is worth noting that—epistemologically speaking—this process of meaning making is also a subjective process (Leeds-Hurwitz, 2009 ). Understanding why teachers might deliver content through certain practices requires understanding how they make meaning out of their interactions with the social environment and likewise how this translates into practice. At its core, then, social constructivism implies the need for an interpretivist paradigm to understand how teachers process information and make decisions on the basis of it (Pulla & Carter, 2018 ).

There are therefore both theoretical and practical reasons for taking a qualitative approach to research in order to address the research questions above. For one, empirical methods of data collection typically focus on material data such as practices themselves rather than how individuals interpret them (Given, 2008 ). Similarly, quantitative methods of data analysis are better suited to data that may be quantified and examined for correlations with other sets of data, a process by which individual voices and perspectives may be lost (Yilmaz, 2013 ). By way of comparison, qualitative methods can yield more personalised and detailed data regarding attitudes and experiences (Baxter & Jack, 2008 ). For this reason, qualitative methods of data collection and analysis ought to prove conducive to answering this study’s research questions.

Data collection

For similar reasons, interviews have been chosen as a method of data collection. Though surveys were explored in a pilot study, it was decided that interviews were able to offer more individualised experiences and perspectives (Peters & Halcomb, 2015 ). One-to-one interviews were selected due to the potential for group biases in conducting focus groups (Frey & Fontana, 1991 ) and the propensity for participants to be more forthcoming in their answers in one-to-one settings (Marvasti, 2004 ). Interview questions were designed to be open in order to allow participants freedom in answering, as closed questions can sometimes be leading or discourage detailed responses (Allen, 2017 ; Baxter & Jack, 2008 ). Questions were semi-structured so as to allow the researcher to encourage participants to offer more detail on areas of relevance without leading them in the content of their answers (Marvasti, 2004 ).

In terms of the sample size, six participants were selected for interviews. As the above literature review observed, previous studies utilised smaller samples, which may impact the validity of findings (Secor, 2010 ). Six participants have been argued to be within the recommended range for undertaking thematic analysis of interview data (Fugard & Potts, 2014 ). The participants are all ESL teachers at higher education institutes in Hong Kong with at least 4 years’ experience so as to control for this variable. There are three male and three female participants and all are Hong Kong nationals, so as to control for nationality as a variable.

Data analysis

This study utilised thematic analysis for its approach to data analysis, a process by which the themes raised across a text are identified and used to generate results and findings (Braun & Clarke, 2006 ). As Kiger and Varpio ( 2020 , p. 2) state, thematic analysis ‘is a method for analysing qualitative data that entails searching across a data set to identify, analyse, and report repeated patterns’ and involves ‘interpretation in the processes of selecting codes and constructing themes’. Coding therefore largely takes the form of generating themes themselves, especially themes that may be generalised across an entire interview or selection of interviews (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006 ).

The process of coding utilised was that of inductive coding, by which the researcher generates codes/themes as they encounter the data, rather than coding according to a predetermined set of codes for themes they expect to find (Joffe & Yardley, 2004 ). This has the advantage of reflecting accurately the themes actually raised across the text (Linneberg & Korsgaard, 2019 ), though does also involve comparably more labour than compared with deductive coding (Thomas, 2013 ). In generating themes inductively, researchers are therefore more able to identify patterns across a text, as well as to emphasise any outliers or particularly emphatic points raised by individual participants (Gibson & Brown, 2009 ).

Before undertaking the data collection, certain ethical concerns were taken into account. First, the relevant permissions were sought from the institution with regards to undertaking primary research. Central to the efficacy and reliability of the research, Wallen and Fraenkel ( 2001 ) observe that ethical responsibility is of paramount concern, directing oversight and administration to protect the rights and welfare of the sample population. Nonmaleficence, the prevention of harm to participants in a given study, is identified by Punch ( 2014 ) as a core expectation of any primary research techniques.

As undertaking primary qualitative research may be impacted by ongoing or new COVID restrictions on face-to-face interactions (Tremblay et al., 2021 ), it was resolved to use video messaging software to conduct and record interviews. Participants were informed regarding the purposes of the research and how their data would be stored and used, with informed consent being collected verbally after this (Oliver, 2010 ). Data was designed to be stored securely and anonymised at the point of transcription so as to protect the identities of the participants from any personal or professional repercussions to their participation in the research (Saunders et al., 2015 ). This also has the effect of encouraging more honest and open responses from participants (Babbie, 2015 ).

Reliability and validity

As has been discussed above, there are a number of factors that may impact the reliability and validity of such research. For one, carrying out primary qualitative research on the experiences of teachers at one institution in Hong Kong impacts the generalisability of results as compared with undertaking surveys of teachers from various institutions. Whilst triangulating results through mixed-methods research often provides a means of improving the reliability of the findings of small-scale interview studies (Ivankova et al., 2006 ), the small-scale nature of this study placed certain practical limitations on its methods, whilst prioritising the emphasis on teacher experiences and perceptions took precedence over generalisability. As such, pursuing qualitative methods in isolation was undertaken at the expense of triangulation (Mertens & Hesse-Biber, 2012 ).

A further factor that may impact reliability and validity is in terms of the influence of researcher bias on qualitative studies of this kind. In terms of data collection, there is the potential for the role of the interviewer to skew the responses of participants given their role in the research instrument (Cypress, 2017 ). Here, using open-ended questioning was selected as a means of offsetting bias through asking leading questions (Rapley, 2001 ), as open questioning allows less scope for interviewers to influence participants (Clark et al., 2019 ). Nevertheless, taking a semi-structured approach to questioning can still have this effect and interviewers therefore must be tasked with taking a reflexive and self-aware approach to the interviewing process (Chenail, 2011 ).

In terms of data analysis, the role of the researcher can contribute towards bias in findings (Mackieson et al., 2018 ). Furthermore, thematic analysis has been criticised for lacking rigour and for being more open to bias than other approaches to data analysis (Holloway & Todres, 2003 ). A potential solution to this is to use an analysis method that involves more than one researcher and that synthesises their findings (REF); however, this was not possible in this instance due to practical limitations. Instead, other approaches designed to improve reliability and validity were pursued. For instance, the process of constant comparison was used when undertaking coding so as to ensure a thoroughly rigorous approach to the identification of themes across the data (Thomas, 2013 ). As Nowell et al. ( 2017 ) remark, it is also possible to demonstrate the trustworthiness of thematic analysis through describing in detail the decision-making process underlying the analysis process itself. For this reason, the processes of data collection and analysis are described in depth below.

This research was undertaken according to the following processes. First, participants were invited through an open advertisement placed in teaching groups on social media internal to the institution where the research was to take place. The advertisement provided basic information about the study and included a brief demographic survey at the point of application. From this, potential participants were manually scoped according to the criteria set out above. Prior to the interview, all relevant information was given and verbal consent was received. Interviews took place through video messaging software and audio recording software was used to record the interviews. At the point of transcription, all personal information was anonymised.

The processes of data analysis were carried out by a sole researcher and followed the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) model set out by Smith et al. ( 1999 ). Each transcript was read twice prior to any coding, with initial thoughts being recorded in the left column of the transcript. Following this, the transcript was re-read again, with thematic codes for that participant being recorded in the opposite margin (Table 1 ). Once this process had been completed for all participants, the codes generated for each participant were sorted into themes and subthemes, recorded in a ‘cluster grid’ (Table 2 ). This cluster grid serves as the themes found through the process of thematic analysis and is used to structure the section on findings that follows.

This section presents the findings of this research as generated through the thematic analysis of interviews with six teachers. The themes generated through coding these interviews have been sorted into a thematic grid reflecting the prevalent and pronounced themes across this body of data (Table 2 ). The thematic categories for these themes form the structure to the presentation and discussion of findings that follows.

Advantages and benefits

The teachers interviewed were asked about the advantages that they felt the online classroom provided to learners and the benefits they felt they accrued from it as teachers. The teachers broadly agreed that an advantage to the shift to online learning was that it allowed for greater accessibility for students and teachers alike. One teacher stated that it cut down on her journey to work, making it easier for her to work long hours. Another felt that ‘lazy’ students were more likely to attend when they could access education online. Five of the six teachers stated that they felt that students were motivated by the opportunity to use online learning, though one argued that this motivation was in fact detrimental:

I don’t believe that they engage in the same way when utilising the online classroom because I think they’re probably watching TV or something at the same time. I’m not sure they deal well with the distraction even though they may be ‘present’. (Teacher C)

However, the majority of the teachers agreed that attendance had improved during the move to online education and cited improved accessibility and student motivation as the reason for this.

Regarding the benefits that they themselves felt online education brought, convenience was again brought up by a majority of teachers. Participant A argued that though they struggled initially to adapt to the online platform, there was a plethora of ready-made digital resources they could employ in their teaching. This, they felt, reduced their need to plan lessons so thoroughly, such as through transferring content onto multimedia platforms for delivery in the physical classroom. Two other participants (B and D) stated that they used pre-recorded lessons on a couple of occasions and found this was beneficial in that they could refer students back to timestamps in their lectures. Recording and uploading lectures was a practice they believed to be beneficial, and they felt it was worth continuing even when transitioning back to the physical classroom due to the positive impact it had on students.

Disadvantages and challenges

All six teachers cited interactivity as a potential obstacle to implementing online education successfully. Three of the teachers stated that there was difficulty in undertaking speaking and listening exercises, which they felt were essential to taking a communicative approach to teaching English. One stated that she felt the limitations of the platform were such that she was forced to resort to a ‘grammar/translation’ method in order to teach English. She elaborated on the reasons for this:

So there are problems with the platform—the online platform we used that are inherent to it. Like, we cannot actually have clear back-and-forth discussions because the audio keeps cutting out. I can’t have little groups of people chatting and I can watch and interject, the conversation cannot naturally flow, even in breakout rooms and that’s because of the technology limitations (Participant E).

Another teacher cited difficulties in conducting informal assessments of the students in his class:

I cannot judge where their English is up to because I do not hear them all talking English together. If we are trying to do something immersive, how can we do that if only one can talk? (Participant F)

All teachers were therefore broadly agreed on the communicative/interactive limitations of the technology they were being asked to use. This constitutes a finding of this research that has not previously been reported by research carried out into the emergency remote teaching of ESL in Hong Kong.

Teachers also stated that they lacked confidence in using the available technology to the utmost of its capabilities. One teacher stated that as an older teacher she wasn’t as ‘confident’ in utilising technology as other teachers. However, a relatively much younger participant also stated that they weren’t as ‘tech literate’ as their students and that this presented a barrier to using the platform:

In the first weeks, I had to rely on my students to tell me how to operate the platform and how to use breakout rooms and things. And that’s not a great look as a teacher, it’s not very professional. (Participant E)

The teachers also all stated that their lessons were disrupted by technology issues throughout. Frequent interruptions in tasks and discussions were caused by issues such as computers freezing, crashing, and internet disconnections experienced by the participants. Participant A stated that one of his classes refused to use their cameras—using technology difficulties as an ‘excuse’—making it difficult to know who was speaking or who was even present in the class. Such problems interrupted the teaching process and made the online classroom frequently disruptive.

Personal experience

The teachers interviewed were prompted as to how the shift to an online classroom had impacted their workload and work-life balance. The participants were largely split on their answer to this question. Some such as Participant A felt that their workload was initially greater due to the struggles of adapting to the online classroom but then found that the availability of digital resources reduced their workload as the weeks went by. Others such as Participant F felt that their workload had increased due to the unfamiliarity of planning classes online, as well as the absence of informal chats after lessons, requiring more correspondence via email than normal.

The participants were also split with regards to how the change had affected their work-life balance. Two felt that there was no change at all, with Participant E stating that she was ‘still busy’ regardless of teaching online or in person. Whilst participant A felt that their workload had decreased as they became accustomed to teaching in the online classroom, participants B and D stated that it had eaten into their work-life balance through removing the barrier between classroom and home environments. Participant B summarised their feelings on this topic:

I have two young children and I’ve no means for separating that home life and work life. It just compounds the stress, I’m dealing with work and home stresses at the same time. I’ve coped with it but I would rather not have to do it.

Participant D stated very strongly that they would retire if they felt the future of teaching was online education due to the amount it was impacting their work-life balance. The feelings and experiences the teacher described are akin to that of the ‘burnout’ phenomenon described in the literature review above.

However, all teachers did state that they had acquired new skills through the shift to online education. One felt that they would be better equipped for a career outside education due to improved technology literacy and three others stated that they felt they were better teachers as a consequence of having to adapt to this environment. There were therefore indications of professional development instigated by the shift to the online classroom.

Improvements

When asked about the ways in which online education could be improved, all six responded by stating that it ought to be balanced with in-person learning in future.

I feel that totally online all the time is only appropriate in such an emergency and even then only when it is actually required. The transition to and from online learning should have been smoother, it was not I believe sufficiently guided in research and planning. (Teacher C)

Whilst two went as far as to state they’d prefer never to teach online education, they were all agreed that any future for online learning required a blended approach rather than teaching solely online.

Another avenue for improvement shared among the teachers was that better training and guidance ought to be offered for teachers.

Yes, in-service training is essential. This should be part of CPD [continuous personal development] and I don’t understand how we were not given more instruction and support. It was just a sort of ‘oh, you’ll figure it out approach’. That’s not good enough. (Teacher E)

Whilst some stated they felt the resources were adequate, there was agreement that there was insufficient guidance as to how to adopt the approaches and methods to teaching expected of them to an online environment. Similarly, they felt that it was assumed that they would easily adapt to teaching online, assuming a higher level of technology literacy than actually existed among teachers. Improved training and clearer pedagogical guidance were therefore themes across the participants’ responses.

Finally, there was also broad agreement with regards to the need to improve the online platforms themselves. Two participants suggested creating brand new software tailored for teaching that included more reliable and suitable methods of communication. Participant C thought it might be useful to recreate the traditional classroom’s layout in the application, with a teacher screen and virtual whiteboard dominating the screen, so as to recreate the teacher experience. Participant A also stated that technologies such as virtual reality headsets ought to be explored to recreate the physical classroom in the virtual world. It is clear from this that the teachers broadly felt that the online classroom ought to mimic the layout and experience of the traditional classroom as far as possible and that technologies ought to be adapted to this end.

The above results from the data analysis provide some answers to the research questions of this study. For one, it is clear that the participant teachers view online education as entailing both advantages and disadvantages. For example, accessibility and student motivation to attend classes appear to be a consequence of the shift to online education. This corroborates existing research that indicates that greater accessibility may be able to offset deficits some students have in attending lectures, such as mental health problems such as depression and anxiety (AlAzzam et al., 2021 ). This study therefore corroborates the findings of extant research in this regard and establishes that they hold true within the context of ELT in Hong Kong.

However, the disadvantages are focused largely in terms of difficulties communicating utilising current information communication technologies. Indeed, communication issues have served as a focus of previous research in this regard also (Baker, 2004 ). When taking into consideration the high proportion of teachers in Hong Kong that support CLT (Miller & Aldred, 2016 ), these technological limitations may be viewed as an insuperable barrier to effective SLA through online platforms. The finding from this study that English language teachers in Hong Kong may view online teaching as insufficiently adapted to permit the implementation of CLT in the virtual English classroom is a finding unique to this study and represents a novel contribution to this area of the literature. The degree to which teacher perceptions in this regard is related to their holding social constructivist perspectives was not itself a focus of this study, however, though invites further research in this regard from future studies.

On the other hand, it is possible that the online environment is not itself perceived as a barrier to implementing CLT into English language teaching, but rather that other factors serve as barriers to this. For example, it may be that teachers’ self-reported low levels of technology literacy and proficiency may be serving as a barrier. Alternatively again, poor internet connectivity may be to blame here, as has been indicated by previous research in Hong Kong (Yeung & Yau, 2022 ). This is to say that the research corroborated previous research in this area in finding that there are many related issues perceived by teachers as providing challenges to implementing English language teaching in virtual classrooms. Differentiating between these causes and ranking them goes beyond the scope of this study, though it is clear that perceived issues in implementing CLT serves as a common complaint among ESL teachers within this context.

It is little surprise then that the teachers broadly agreed that the platforms ought to be redesigned to accommodate the communicative demands of ELT. Interestingly, the suggestion that the online classroom ought to be tailored to mimic the physical classroom suggests that teachers generally do not agree with the democratised nature of the layout and turn-based speaking format of the online meeting software generally adapted for teaching throughout the pandemic. It instead suggests that teachers prefer a teacher-centric model for the classroom and would prefer to see this structure reflected in the online classroom environment. This is supported by evidence in favour of such an approach among teachers in Hong Kong (Wong, 2015 ). The call for using virtual reality headsets in teaching may also be considered against existing research into the feasibility of this technology (Chessa & Solari, 2021 ).

There is therefore a potential avenue here for future research into the perceptions of English language teachers in Hong Kong towards both the role and status of the teacher in the classroom and the translatability of their favoured role to online teaching. It may be that criticisms of online teaching or perceived shortcomings are related to ideological or cultural perceptions of the ideal role of the teacher in the classroom. Though this study’s findings cannot themselves support such a conclusion, further research in this regard may be sparked by the revelations of the interviewed teachers’ opinions and attitudes presented above.

Finally, teachers were split as to whether their personal experience of online teaching was a positive or negative one. Some teachers viewed online teaching as freeing up more time for them due to an abundance of online resources, whereas others saw online teaching as eating into their work-life balance. This reflects a split in the literature observed in the literature review, with previous research indicating either point of view (Ozamiz-Etxebarria et al., 2021 ; Silva et al., 2021 ). It ought to be noted that one of the six respondents was particularly emphatic with regards to experiencing stress as a consequence of the move to online education and they related this to a desire to leave the profession, in-keeping with the assumed mechanisms of burnout and teacher attrition observed elsewhere (Madigan & Kim, 2021 ). However, online teaching did also provide opportunities for professional development, a touted advantage claimed by advocates of online education (Abaci et al., 2021 ). There is therefore the potential for adaptation and growth among teachers, though the barriers and sticking points that discourage teachers require understanding and addressing also to prevent losses in teachers from the profession.

This research study has explored the attitudes, experience and perspectives of in-service higher-education ESL teachers in Hong Kong towards online education during COVID-19. Using a thematic analysis of interview data, this study has found that teachers view both advantages and disadvantages to the online classroom, emphasising its accessibility for learners but also the difficulties in communicating and teaching in an interactive way. This has been attributed to shortcomings in the existing technologies available. Teachers envisage potential improvements such as developing a tailored teaching experience that can recreate the physical classroom experience in the virtual environment as far as possible, as well as through making online communication more reliable.

Teachers were split in their personal experience of online teaching, with some viewing it as reducing their workload and others seeing online education as eroding their work-life balance. How factors such as teacher experience, ICT literacy, and age factor into these experiences may serve as a focus for future research to evaluate why views varied so much over the course of this research. It is worth noting there is also the prospect for professional development as instigated by experience of adapting to online teaching. However, teachers generally view the future role for online teaching as limited to part of a blended classroom and requiring adequate resources, pedagogical guidance and training in ICT. Meeting these conditions may offset some of the challenges and stresses of teaching experienced by some participants in the study.

In terms of the study’s implications, the study corroborates past findings regarding the benefits of online learning towards promoting greater accessibility, as well as with respect to the perceived need among teachers for further support and in-person training with respect to emergency remote learning. From a personal perspective, the teachers broadly agreed that there was a need to strike a better work-life balance when undertaking remote emergency teaching and this provides insight for developing contingency plans for implementing online teaching in response to crises such as COVID-19.

In addition, novel findings include the revelation that English language teachers in Hong Kong may view online teaching platforms as not adaptable to the adequate implementation of CLT in the virtual classroom. The extent to which this reflects social constructivist principles on behalf of teachers may serve as a fruitful question for future research in this area. Additionally, how far teacher experiences, opinions and attitudes are influenced by broader cultural and personal valuations of the role of the teacher in the classroom may benefit from further research given the findings of this study.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Lo, N.Pk. Digital learning and the ESL online classroom in higher education: teachers’ perspectives. Asian. J. Second. Foreign. Lang. Educ. 8 , 24 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-023-00198-1

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Development research on an AI English learning support system to facilitate learner-generated-context-based learning

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For decades, AI applications in education (AIEd) have shown how AI can contribute to education. However, a challenge remains: how AIEd, guided by educational knowledge, can be made to meet specific needs in education, specifically in supporting learners’ autonomous learning. To address this challenge, we demonstrate the process of developing an AI-applied system that can assist learners in studying autonomously. Guided by a Learner-Generated Context (LGC) framework and development research methodology (Richey and Klein in J Comput High Educ 16(2):23–38, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02961473 , 2005), we define a form of learning called “LGC-based learning,” setting specific study objectives in the design, development, and testing of an AI-based system that can facilitate Korean students’ LGC-based English language learning experience. The new system is developed based on three design principles derived from the literature review. We then recruit three Korean secondary-school students with different educational backgrounds and illustrate and analyze their English learning experiences using the system. Following this analysis, we discuss how the AI-based system facilitates LGC-based learning and further issues to be considered for future research.

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Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) consists of “intelligent computer systems or intelligent agents with human features, such as the ability to memorize knowledge, to perceive and manipulate their environment in a similar way as humans, and to understand human natural language” (Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 , p. 10). Education researchers have studied AI applications in education (AIEd) for decades to enrich learning and teaching activities (Luckin et al., 2016 ). Given the shift from in-person to remote schooling brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic (Pantelimon et al., 2021 ), scholars have focused on creating various AIEd applications such as virtual assistants for teaching course content, automated grading and feedback, and learner-tracking systems (Dignum, 2021 ; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ).

However, studies that critically reflect on past AIEd efforts present a challenge: AI applications should be guided by pedagogical theory or learning science to induce meaningful changes in teaching and learning (Luckin & Cukurova, 2019 ; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ). Here, “ meaningful changes ” means those that incorporate not only technical but also pedagogical, sociocultural, and ethical factors. Moreover, AI applications should meet the needs of specific educational domains, goals, or activities (Zhai et al., 2021 ).

Among these challenges of AIEd, one specific need arose during the COVID-19 pandemic. Without adequate preparation, students were forced to study independently while being physically away from educational institutions and influenced by the digitization of educational processes (Wismaningrum et al., 2020 ). Students increasingly need digital assistance in studying autonomously and flexibly and in adapting themselves to complex social situations (Ariebowo, 2021 ; Hargreaves, 2021 ; Maru et al., 2021 ; Wismaningrum et al., 2020 ).

Most previous computer-aided instruction and virtual education environments have been restricted to classical classroom settings, but AI offers possibilities for new forms of educational support (Loeckx, 2016 ). Some recent studies have demonstrated how AI-informed systems help learners learn autonomously in accordance with their self-determined goals (e.g., Ahmad & Ghapar, 2019 ; Inyega & Inyega, 2020 ). However, such studies remain insufficient and are mainly conducted in higher education settings. More AIEd research efforts are needed to support students in different contexts and thus contribute meaningful changes in the field.

In an attempt to address this particular challenge of AIEd, we present a development study that examines the process of developing an AI-based system capable of assisting learners in autonomous study. This development study was guided by an educational technological framework called a Learner-Generated Context (LGC). Many elements must be considered when supporting learners’ autonomous and independent learning (Hargreaves, 2021 ). LGC as a framework helps researchers conceptually capture what form of learning and relevant elements to pursue in assisting learners to study autonomously and in designing and applying technologies accordingly. Another consideration is the recent criticism that AIEd is being used to monitor learners more than is necessary (Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ). Following the LGC framework, the design of our AI application defines the position of learners in their interactions with digital technology without being needlessly invasive. In terms of methodology, our study follows Richey and Klein ( 2005 ).

The LGC framework

Lgc-based learning.

The LGC framework was developed based on the following views of modern society and the role of education. First, the complexity of knowledge construction in modern society makes it difficult for individual learners to understand knowledge by passively following curricula and textbooks. Thus, education should help learners explore different contexts and resources and construct knowledge autonomously (Pachler et al., 2009 ). Second, with the development of technology—including mobile and social networking technologies and services (e.g., Facebook, Flickr)—people have grown accustomed to user-generated content and activities at anytime and anywhere of their choosing. If digital technologies are used appropriately, learners can become active creators who forge their own learning paths (Luckin et al., 2011 ).

Based on these views, LGC presents a form of learning through which learners become the creators of their learning contexts and construct knowledge autonomously by interacting with or creating resources (e.g., people, technology, and learning contents) with self-defined learning goals in various environments (Luckin et al., 2007 ; Sharpe, 2010 ). In this study, we use the term “LGC-based learning” to refer to this form of learning.

Facilitation of LGC-based learning

LGC as a framework also illustrates concepts, conditions, and strategies for facilitating LGC-based learning through the design of digital technology. Here, facilitating learning means using digital tools as “a catalyst” for pedagogical “change” (Kukulska‐Hulme, 2010 , p. 181). The core idea of facilitating LGC-based learning is to design and apply digital technology in a manner that assists learners to form a “learner-generated context” and learn based on this context. The application of this idea can be categorized into three: designing technology for learners’ contexts, personalized learning support, and assisting learners’ interactions with resources.

Designing technology for learners’ contexts

In designing instruction models or learning tools, designers should consider the context in which learning experiences form (Luckin et al., 2011 , 2013 ); following the LGC framework’s conceptual assumptions about learning, specifically that learning is constructed across a continuum of contexts in which learners interact with other individuals, groups, resources, and events from multiple physical spaces and times (Luckin et al., 2011 ). Depending on how a context is formed through the use of digital technologies, it encourages learners to build their knowledge and craft meaningful connections with society, providing them with deep and broad learning experiences (Brown, 2003 ).

There are two types of learning contexts defined by who controls educational activities; the first involves externally delivered resources to learners who must behave in certain ways to learn (Pachler et al., 2010 ). The second forms naturally as individual learners pursue their self-defined learning purposes and create or use learning content that fits their purposes while interacting with various resources and environments (Cochrane & Narayan, 2011 ; Luckin, 2010 ; Luckin et al., 2011 ). The latter is what Luckin et al. ( 2011 ) called a learner-generated context, which the LGC framework assumes to be the preferred context for LGC-based learning. This means giving learners the freedom to generate and control their own learning context while discouraging the unilateral presentation of organizational imperatives or contexts to direct learners' choices.

Personalized learning support

LGC addresses that learners naturally generate their own learning contexts in the process of determining or creating the elements of their learning such as goals, contents, places, and strategies. It is important to offer personalized learning support that guides learners to determine what, where, when, and with whom their learning takes place (Cochrane & Bateman, 2011 ; Narayan & Herrington, 2014 ; Narayan et al., 2019 ). First, learners should be guided to use learner-generated content so that they can explore content generated by other learners that they can then use for their goals (Lee & McLoughlin, 2007 ). Meanwhile, they should be able to create or transform their own learning content (Luckin et al., 2011 ). Through this, learners can perceive themselves as creators who create their knowledge and study opportunities and share them with other learners. Second, learners must be able to conduct their learning anytime and anywhere using mobile technology (Cochrane & Bateman, 2011 ).

Third, rather than inducing learners to do everything independently, learning aids should be provided flexibly in accordance with each individual learner’s context. Luckin et al. ( 2011 ) termed this type of personalized learning assistance the “pedagogy–andragogy–heutagogy (PAH) continuum.” Based on the learner’s context, digital assistance can be provided that helps learners understand curricular subject knowledge (pedagogy) or enables them to negotiate with instructors or experts to set their own learning path (andragogy), thereby allowing them to develop “the understanding that one is empowered to look at the learning context afresh and take decisions in that context” (heutagogy) (Luckin et al., 2011 , p. 78). For example, given various learning strategies, learners may try classic strategies such as teacher lectures or problem-solving activities to deepen their understanding of curricular subject knowledge. Alternatively, learners may prefer to interact with learning partners when deciding what to do.

Assisting learners’ interactions with resources

Digital assistance should encourage learners to not only stay within their chosen learning contexts but also make connections with other contexts (Aguayo et al., 2017 ). From the continuous interactions between learners and resources, learner-generated contexts can be continuously shaped and extended in the form of social networks (Narayan & Herrington, 2014 ). Therefore, individual learners can acknowledge the wider world and further develop their perspectives, interests, and knowledge.

For this, the LGC framework suggests using open educational resources (OERs)—ready-made learning content—and developing an open online platform where learners can explore, curate, and share various learning resources as social networking-based learner communities. On such a platform, learners can make connections with other learners, open resources, and learning contexts, thereby continuously expanding their experiences and knowledge (Blaschke & Hase, 2016 ; Luckin et al., 2011 ).

Previous LGC research and this study’s goal

Previous LGC studies have demonstrated various types of assistances that can facilitate LGC-based learning—particularly support in personalized learning activities, resource exploration, and content creation—that include applying social networking tools (e.g., blogs or Facebook) and mobile devices (see, e.g., Aguayo et al., 2017 ; Cochrane et al., 2012 ; Cook, 2010 ; McLoughlin & Lee, 2008 ; Narayan et al., 2012 ). These studies mainly focused on instruction models rather than developing a learning support system because they assumed the presence of human instructors capable of providing timely feedback and encouragement. However, current AI technology has developed to where human roles can be replaced to some extent. For example, learners can interact with AI-applied tools even in the absence of human instructors, thereby minimizing their fear of potential failure and learning with confidence. This advantage has been demonstrated in second-language education research (e.g., Fryer et al., 2020 ; Woo & Choi, 2021 ). Thus, we expect that AI-based systems can further enrich the LGC-based learning experience depending on how LGC-informed design and AI technologies are applied together.

This study’s goal is to develop an AI-based system that can facilitate LGC-based learning experiences. The results of this study present an AI-applied tool that can help meet the needs of educational fields for LGC-based learning and provide a reference for AIEd research and practice seeking similar goals. We expect that this study can help promote the understanding and practice of incorporating educational knowledge into the design of AI technology for learners’ autonomous and independent learning. In pursuit of this goal, we applied Richey and Klein ( 2005 )’s development research method because it offered a systematic and focused way to achieve our goal.

Methodology

• Development research

According to Richey and Klein ( 2005 ), development research for an educational tool entails defining the problem and context on which to focus, the literature review and procedures for designing, developing, and evaluating the new tool. The main consideration is that the researcher should not simply pursue developing the new tool itself but instead aim to solve problems through its development. First, the researcher determines the specific context that requires a new tool to solve a certain problem and, following this context, the specific research objective. Gaining insight from the relevant literature, the researcher then designs and develops the tool. After that, the researcher examines whether the developed tool produces an expected effect based on the data collected from field tests and identifies the tool’s improvement potential and research implications.

In setting our research objective, we situated this study in a specific context that requires an AI-based system that can facilitate LGC-based learning: English language education in South Korea.

Context and objective for developing the system

Korea has been reported to have the highest level of participation in distance education among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries, as well as a high proportion of youths with basic skills for technology-rich environments (OECD, 2019 ). Despite this, online English education in Korea does not provide the most suitable environment or tools for realizing LGC-based learning. First, English education in Korea is characterized by a context that emphasizes academic achievements and exams. Under this context, most Korean students—especially secondary-school students—follow desired processes defined by policymakers or experts with reference to the national curriculum and college entrance exams (Chang, 2006 ; Jeon, 2010 ; Kim & Won, 2019 ). This context reduces the range of knowledge of the English language that learners can develop and does not reflect the complexity of individual learners’ contexts. Second, the pandemic has made it apparent that Korean students are struggling with autonomous learning (Korea Education & Research Information Service, 2020 ). While the number of online courses has increased, many Korean students have reportedly failed to study English independently (Kim et al., 2020 ). However, according to Oh ( 2022 ), Korean students will likely participate in English learning more actively if provided with English study opportunities to pursue their own contexts, goals, interests, and learning strategies.

In the current literature, we found no studies that apply the LGC framework to English education in Korea. However, to assist Korean students’ autonomous learning in English speaking and writing, some scholars have investigated AI applications such as conversational AI chatbots, AI speakers, machine translations, and automated grammar checkers (e.g., Hyun & Im, 2019 ; Kim et al., 2019 ; Lee, 2020 ; Lee & Briggs, 2021 ; Park, 2019 ; Park & Yang, 2020 ). These researchers have provided ways to help learners practice speaking and writing in English without the help of lecturers, but their efforts do not provide opportunities for learners to explore or create the most effective learning strategies and content for themselves. Korean learners still need further AI support to fully experience LGC-based English language learning. Thus, this study’s objective is to design, develop, and test such a support system.

Research questions and procedures

The following questions were set to guide this development research: First, what design principles define the necessary functions of an AI-based English language learning support system that can facilitate LGC-based learning? Second, how are the design principles realized in the development process? Third, does the developed system catalyze LGC-based learning experiences?

For the first question, we developed three design principles for the new system based on the literature review and investigations of applicable AI technology. For the second question, we developed and described the new AI web-based system in accordance with the design principles. For the third question, we conducted a field test to validate the system by recruiting three Korean secondary-school students and analyzing the narratives of their experiences using the system. The narratives were analyzed following the evaluation criteria, which were consistent with our design principles and qualitative data analysis strategies.

After these procedures, we critically reviewed our process and prepared this report on outcomes and improvement points for the system and the study’s implications.

Construction of design principles

We reviewed the literature on LGC and relevant concepts, such as self-determined learning, that correspond to the characteristics of LGC-based learning. Considering the PAH continuum idea, we also reviewed the literature on second-language learning strategies applicable to LGC-informed AI technology design. Three design principles of the new system were derived from our findings.

Design principle one

In the design process, learners were regarded as creators capable of generating their own contexts and studying autonomously based on such contexts, through personalized learning assistance and continuous interactions with resources.

Design principle two

A system should provide learners with personalized support in determining or creating the elements that make up their learning context (e.g., learning content, plan, and strategies). We consider the following functionalities as specifically optimal for a new AI-based system that facilitates LGC-based English language learning:

enable learners to pursue learning anytime anywhere through mobile and web-based learning experiences (Djoub, 2016 ; Lai, 2019 ; Palalas & Wark, 2020 ; Vavoula & Sharples, 2002 ).

use learner-generated content. Rather than offering pre-selected knowledge as in traditional textbooks, learners must be allowed to explore potential learning materials, such as photos or video clips, or create learning content on their own (Cook, 2010 ; Luckin et al., 2011 ; McLoughlin & Lee, 2008 ). Particularly in language education, learner-generated content can lead to more active learning engagement than teacher-provided learning content (Lambert et al., 2017 ).

use OERs or resources from online media platforms, such as YouTube, blogs, or Internet forums, to give learners flexibility in deciding what and how to learn and create knowledge (Cronin, 2017 ; Duffy & Bruns, 2006 ; Rahimi et al., 2015 ).

assist learners in determining which learning strategies are right for them. In second-language learning, the system might provide multisensory learning strategies, allowing learners to choose the best learning strategy for them: through sight (e.g., highlighting keywords, repeatedly seeing vocabulary on flashcards), auditory stimuli (e.g., reading aloud, listening to audio online), or kinesthetic activities (e.g., physical movement, such as typing) (Juřičková, 2013 ).

apply mobile, multimedia, and natural language processing (analyzing and representing human language) technologies that enable learners to use learning content from different types of resources and use diverse senses in learning activities (Cook, 2010 ; Smrz, 2004 ; Zhang & Nunamaker, 2004 ). Multimedia and natural language processing technologies can express knowledge in various modes or metaphors, thereby supporting individuals in cognitively processing their sense experiences and effectively building knowledge from those experiences (Ox & Van Der Elst, 2011 ).

utilize an intelligent agent (i.e., an autonomous entity that acts on an environment or user input) (Conati, 2009 ) to facilitate learning with no human instructors. For instance, a system can offer learners guidance for solving problems through techniques like questions, feedback, and explanations of issues (Fernández et al., 2015 ). An autonomous agent equipped with speech recognition can also understand a learner’s speech and give immediate feedback when the learner is practicing English speaking alone (Hyun & Im, 2019 ; Kim et al., 2019 ).

Design principle three

To encourage learners to interact with resources and expand their contexts, an open platform of learning resources should be provided. Following previous LGC studies, we sought to make it possible to use OERs within the new system. We also tried to incorporate an open platform of resources into the system which can be accessed through a content curation tool. According to Ponerulappan ( 2015 ), this curation tool organizes and curatorially presents a broad range of e-resources so that learners can easily search, explore, and select them. It allows users to explore and share resources and interact with other users easily.

Development of the new system

Overall system architecture.

With reference to the design principles, we created an AI web-based English learning support system that can be used in web and mobile environments. The system has four functional modules: (1) learning content management, (2) learning management, (3) personalized English language learning, and (4) content curation. Figure  1 shows the system architecture.

System architecture

Learning content management module

The learning content management module is an automated system for creating or editing digital learning content in two forms: an English vocabulary list and a sentences and quotes list. Two editors support the function of this module: a passage wizard and a video wizard.

Passage wizard

The passage wizard analyzes the sentence components of English texts included in various digital and analog data—such as paper books, Internet articles, and news articles—and creates English vocabulary or sentence lists based on this analysis. The lists are used as learning content within the system.

When learners upload English textual material relevant to their current interests or needs to the passage wizard or enter text directly into the wizard’s text box (Fig.  2 ), the wizard analyzes and extracts text from the material and organizes it into a list of English vocabulary words or sentences. Sequentially, it adds translations and voice data to the list. These functions serve three purposes: (1) notifying learners of the meaning of vocabulary words; (2) using the voice data to provide auditory stimulation to help learners acquire the correct pronunciation in subsequent learning; and (3) saving all text and relevant data as learning content.

User interface for processing text-based materials into a list of vocabulary and sentences. Note When a learner copies and pastes English text into a text box, the wizard organizes it into a list of English vocabulary words or sentences with a Korean translation

To implement the wizard’s functions, we used application programming interfaces (APIs) that are widely adopted in open source AI communities. First, we used the natural language syntactic analysis provided by the Google Cloud Natural Language API in our text extraction algorithms. This API enables the wizard to recognize the structure and meaning of English texts that learners enter into the wizard by identifying English sentences and their components, analyzing the relationships between them, and creating a parse tree of each sentence. Based on this analysis’ results, the wizard categorizes the sentences, or the words and idioms comprising each sentence, and presents them to the learner in the form of a list of English sentences or vocabulary words.

Second, to generate translation and voice data for each vocabulary or sentence item in the list, we used Twinword’s Word Dictionary API and Amazon Polly, a text-to-speech converter. In addition, Google and Microsoft’s optical character recognition (OCR) APIs were built into the passage wizard to assist learners in creating learning content based on analog material. For example, when a learner takes a picture of paper material with English text and uploads it to the passage wizard via a mobile device, the OCR API recognizes text in the image, thereby enabling the natural language syntactic analysis function to work (for an example, see Fig.  3 ).

Learner interface for processing image-based materials. Note When a learner uploads image material containing English passages, the OCR API recognizes and extracts text in the image. The learner can check the extracted text to correct errors or remove unwanted text. Finally, the passage wizard organizes the text into a list of English vocabulary words or sentences with a Korean translation. The sample image is a copyright-free image released by the British Library on Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix, and repurpose

Video wizard

The video wizard was designed to analyze and repeat specific parts of a YouTube video, thereby helping students study English dialogue with the video. The expected scenario for a learner’s use of this wizard is as follows: First, the learner opens the wizard and inserts the embedded URL of a specific YouTube video clip containing English dialogue and captions. Anything that a learner likes can serve as learning content—for example, official YouTube videos that are relevant to his or her favorite movies, games, and music videos. When the video is embedded on the wizard, the wizard identifies scenes with dialogue. It then syncs dialogue with captions, time-stamps the scenes, and presents the captions and corresponding audio with time stamps (Fig.  4 ).

List of captions and time stamps presented by video wizard. Note The video wizard was designed to prevent copyright infringement, not to reproduce copies of video works. Using the video embedded code from YouTube, the wizard solely provides a caption and time selection and segment repeatability functions for learners while preserving original works. The video in the figure was from TED Edu YouTube channel (see https://youtu.be/vNDYUlxNIAA )

Next, the learner marks the times of the sections of the video that contain specific English sentences that they wish to study. Then, the wizard stores the marked sections of the video, the corresponding caption, and video data as a set with the embedded video. This set of data is named as video-based learning content in the system.

After generating learning content

Learning content created through the passage wizard or video wizard is uploaded to the system’s learning content repository as well as the user’s personal database and is stored as data that can be shared with other users.

Learning management module

Once learning content is available, learners can arrange their learning schedules through the calendar-shaped user interface (UI) of the learning management module (Fig.  5 ).

UI for scheduling

When a user selects a certain date on the calendar-shaped UI, a window opens to choose a mode of learning: (1) words and phrases learning mode or (2) sentences learning mode. When the learner chooses a mode, the system opens a new window and loads the stored learning content from the system repository or the user’s personal portfolio database. The learner then chooses one piece of learning content and provides details regarding how to use the selected learning content in his or her learning. For example, the learner can determine the period of studying and testing, the degree of rigor of the test, and the name of the scheduled learning.

After the learning schedule is set, the management module displays information about the learner’s learning status, such as learning goals, duration, and achievements (Fig.  6 ), with a calendar interface. The information is automatically updated based on the learner’s activities.

Screenshot of learning status

Simultaneously, the personalized English language learning module scrapes the data generated in the learning management module and creates a page that allows the learner to carry out learning activities based on the data (Fig.  7 ). This function could strengthen LGC-based learning experiences because it does not use practice problems or tests from question banks pre-built by system developers or instructors. By clicking on a designated name in the learning schedule in the calendar-shaped user interface (UI), the learner moves to a page where he or she can conduct personalized practice or tests.

Screenshot of a page generated based on the data of the learning management module

Personalized English language learning module

The personalized English language learning module allows a learner to study English vocabulary or sentences using learning content selected by the learner. This module offers a “practice mode” and a “test mode,” in which the learner reviews and memorizes English vocabulary and sentences in a selected learning content and self-tests, respectively. The module operates in these two modes with a built-in intelligent agent that automatically generates sets of practice questions or tests by recognizing and analyzing the content that a learner selected. Table 1 summarizes the types of multi-sensory learning strategies and tasks a learner can perform in practice and test mode.

Figure  8 shows an example screen in test mode. Test scoring is done such that the module analyzes the answer that the learner inputs in the form of voice or text data and informs the learner of the accuracy of their answer between 0 and 100%.

Test mode screen created by the personalized English language learning module based on the registered learning content

The personalized English language learning module applies natural language processing APIs including text-to-speech and speech-to-text APIs, speech synthesis technologies. Our intention for this module was to immediately provide learners with the necessary information, stimulation, and feedback when performing multi-sensory activities such as speaking, listening, and writing according to individual learning style (scaffolding function). For example, by applying these APIs, the module generates data on the pronunciation of English text in the selected learning content and informs the learner how to pronounce the text. In addition, it can instantly measure and show the accuracy of the learner’s English pronunciation by recognizing the learner’s voice data when he or she records English-speaking activities using a microphone.

Content curation module

The content curation module curates learner-generated content on the main page of the system (Fig.  9 ). With this module, the system’s main page can function as an open platform of content in which curated learning content in various subject areas and formats is exposed to multiple learners. Learners can continue learning by browsing or sharing content on the main page. The content curation module is connected to the learning content management module. Thus, the learners can import any curated content into the learning content management module and use them.

Learning content curation on the main page

The functionality of the content curation module is limited because there was not enough data generated in the system for the module to learn its users' preferences. The curation module only has the function of automatically arranging content and displaying it on the main page. It sorts learning content firstly based on whether the content is text-based or video-based, and secondly, whether the content is for studying English words or sentences. Other meticulous work for curating content should be done by users by setting each content item.

This module does not have a content recommendation function. Instead, it allows the learner to view the profiles of learners who have created eye-catching content and to explore their other content.

Evaluation of the system

Field testing.

To validate the developed system, we performed a field test of the system with actual English learners in Korea. This field test drew on our analyses of learners’ experiences. Learners form experiences through their interactions with the components of the digital learning environment (Kokoç & Altun, 2019 ), and it is possible to analyze those experiences by using data regarding their interactions with systems, interfaces, technologies, and content (Bouhnik & Marcus, 2006 ; Hillman et al., 1994 ; Wanstreet, 2006 ) or by collecting their own perceptions using digital learning tools and programs (Shi, 2014 ). Our field test examined whether the experiences learners formed by using our developed system reflected the characteristics of LGC-based learning.

Recruitment of participants

The field test was approved by the Public Institutional Bioethics Committee designated by the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Korea. Participant recruitment and data collection and analysis were conducted between October and December 2020.

Three criteria were set for participant recruitment: resident of Seoul; secondary (middle or high) school student; and access to a digital device with Internet access. These criteria were chosen for the following three reasons. First, as mentioned earlier, Korean secondary school students have fewer opportunities to learn English with their own goals. Hence, they were identified as the top priority for the developed system. Second, because the system was only accessible online, the participants were required to have access to a device with Internet access, but we could not provide this. Finally, we attempted to prevent unnecessary long-distance travel by researchers and participants due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The research participants were recruited online, and a field test was conducted with three secondary school students: Haru, Bada, and Sunny (pseudonyms). These students had varying educational backgrounds, and we believed that these participants would demonstrate different forms of learning experiences using the system.

Data collection and analysis

After receiving signed consent forms from the participants and their legal guardians, data were collected through various activities to build an in-depth understanding of participants’ learning experiences using the system. The first activity was a tutorial lecture, an event presented to introduce the developed system and obtain preliminary survey information from the participants. Due to the possibility of COVID-19 resurgence, the participants were required to attend tutorial lectures on different dates (October 16, 17, and 21, 2020), and the tutorial was conducted in a large classroom in a building in Seoul. To ensure that all participants received consistent information on the system, the tutorial lectures were presenting following a pre-made manual. However, the special elements of each tutorial, such as student questions and opinions and researcher-student interactions, were recorded as textual observational data.

During the tutorial, participants were asked to complete a preliminary survey. This survey gathered demographic data as well as their perceptions of their previous English learning experiences and digitally supported English learning. The quantitative questions in this survey were scored on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 ( strongly disagree ) to 5 ( strongly agree ). After completing the survey, the students were provided with information on the functions of the system and introduced to sites offering OERs (e.g., open-access digital English textbooks and novels) and official YouTube channels related to movies and music so that they could reference when creating learning content. Approximately 30 samples of textual and video-based learning content created and curated by researchers were also introduced, and the students were advised to reuse the samples if they found it difficult to create learning content.

After the tutorial, the study participants were asked to freely perform English learning using the system over a seven-day trial period. To avoid influencing participants’ learning decisions, we did not intervene during this period. The participants were instructed to initiate contact with a researcher themselves if they required assistance.

Throughout the trial period, observational data were collected that included students’ learning content, information on their learning schedules and progress as recorded and displayed by the learning management module, and text data that recorded students’ actions, thoughts, and interactions.

After the trial period, student responses to online surveys and transcribed audio recordings of phone interviews were collected. The online survey included quantitative and qualitative items. The quantitative items covered topics such as use of and satisfaction with the developed system according to its function and the overall satisfaction with the system. These questions were scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 ( strongly disagree ) to 5 ( strongly agree ). The qualitative items addressed the digital devices used to access the system, the learning locations, the person responsible for making decisions about the participants’ English language learning, the descriptions of participant behavior when using the system, the learning strategies applied, and opinions or identified problems regarding learning how to use the system. From the telephone interviews, students’ specific statements in response to questions raised from their survey responses or the researcher’s observational records were collected.

Table 2 summarizes the data collection procedure.

The data were analyzed in four stages using qualitative analysis strategies. First, by reading the data repeatedly, a holistic understanding of the English learning experience of each participant as it formed through the interactions with the system was constructed. Subsequently, specific or meaningful statements on participants’ activities and thoughts were extracted from the data (Ayres et al., 2003 ; Daher et al., 2017 ). Quantitative data that were collected through the survey were analyzed not for statistical verification but for the purpose of describing participants’ experiences (e.g., perceived satisfaction with the system, degree of use by function). All data were reviewed by cross-checking and identifying contradictory content, thereby building a coherent understanding of the learners’ experiences.

Second, based on the understanding of learners’ experiences, a narrative structure was constructed to describe individual learners’ experiences. The statements extracted in the previous stage were cited within the narrative structure.

Third, referring to the narrative descriptions of learners’ experiences, we examined whether their experiences implied the characteristics of LGC-based learning experiences, and if so, how, by associating them with the learning auxiliary elements (or the four modules) of the system. This work was guided by the three criteria of the main characteristics of LGC-based learning experience, consistent with our design principles, as well as one criterion for seeking problems with the system that would undermine the quality of the learner’s experience (see Table 3 for details).

The analyses of the narrative descriptions were compared and discussed together. The unique properties of each experience were identified, along with the properties that were shared with other experiences (Miles et al., 2020 ). The following sections present the results of the field test.

Introduction of participants

We first present an overview of the profiles of the student participants, including demographic information and their scores for their past English learning experiences and digital learning familiarity (Table 4 ), as well as their scores for the degree to which they used the system and their satisfaction during the 7-day trial period (Tables 5 , 6 ).

Haru’s experience

Haru is a male student at a general middle school located in the northern part of Gyeonggi-do who was staying in the Seoul area to attend classes at a private educational institute. According to his answers on the preliminary survey, he had the least English learning experience among the three participants (less than a year) and showed the lowest confidence in his English proficiency (1 point). He had studied alone at home while his parents decided on the general aspects of his English learning, such as the method of learning English and the selection of learning materials. However, he responded that his interests and opinions had been sufficiently reflected when studying English because his parents respected them.

He expressed low confidence in the management of information and content related to English learning on the Internet (2 points), but he answered that he was able to use the Internet to learn English (4 points) and that he was able to use various digital devices or online services to find content (5 points).

During the tutorial

He quietly listened to the tutorial lecture for an hour. A researcher asked him what his interests were. He responded, “For now, I don’t remember what I really want to use when I study.” He then added that he had been studying English by memorizing English vocabulary. During the tutorial, he did not show any noticeable reaction. However, he familiarized himself with the features of the system one by one.

During the seven-day trial period

It became apparent that Haru had clear ideas about learning English with the developed system. According to the interview, he thought that “this [the system] is definitely for studying English vocabulary.” Accordingly, he created several English vocabulary lists using the passage wizard and studied them for seven days.

When creating the English vocabulary lists, he first took some pictures of parts of the English textbooks or workbooks used in his school and uploaded them to the passage wizard, then sorted the English words he wanted to learn. Regarding this activity, he commented that the process was sometimes slightly inconvenient because the performance of the passage wizard’s OCR depends on the picture quality. Nevertheless, he said he was able to create vocabulary lists and study them without further difficulties: “I just did it because I set the learning goal and the study schedule without any special effort” (his answer to the online survey).

Interestingly, when studying the English vocabulary list, he found the practice mode to be more effective for memorizing content than the test mode and, therefore, rarely used the test mode (2 points for utility and 3 points for satisfaction with the test mode), instead mainly using the practice mode (5 points for utility and 5 points for satisfaction with the practice mode).

In the online survey and telephone interview, he pointed out three aspects he particularly liked about learning English using the system. First, he could have more English vocabulary lists than the school gave him. Second, he was able to study English vocabulary anytime and anywhere by accessing the system with his smartphone. Third, he stated that “[it] was good to be able to test your own knowledge by yourself.” In his view, the self-testing was convenient with this system because the module created and provided the test questions based on his learning content and instantly measured his answers’ accuracy.

However, as was previously mentioned, he had less than a year of experience learning English and had relied on one learning strategy, which was focused on memorizing English words. Even during the seven-day trial period, he used the system in a manner that made it easier to memorize English words. He had once attempted to generate video-based learning content but did not obtain satisfactory results.

Even if he relied on a single learning strategy, according to our assumptions, Haru should be able to take note of other possible learning activities by exploring the content and other learners’ activities through the content curation module. However, the module did not contribute to his exploratory activities. According to the online survey, Haru thought that the content curation function itself was good (4 points for satisfaction with the content curation module), but he did not share his own content or use other learners’ content curated on the main page (1 point for utility of content sharing; 3 points for utility of content exploration).

Several factors were revealed that influenced this low utility score for content curation. First, in contrast to the other two participants who delayed the seven-day trial period due to school exams, Haru began using the system as soon as the tutorial was over. Hence, he had little opportunity to explore content created by the other two participants.

Second, the content curation module was not able to function as a medium to spark his interest in video-based learning content or other learning strategies except memorizing English vocabulary because the volume and diversity of learning content curated by the module were insufficient.

Third, utilization of the content curation module may be low depending on the learner’s personal disposition. An incident occurred during Haru’s trial period in which he deleted all of his learning schedules and content registered in the system. In the interview, he stated, “I have finished studying all the English vocabulary [planned]” and “I deleted all the content. […] There was a desire to do something new with a new feeling.” That is, after completing his learning plans, he saw that the content (i.e., his English vocabulary lists) was no longer useful and eventually deleted the content he had made up to that point. In the process, it did not occur to him that there was a possibility of sharing his vocabulary lists with other learners.

This event revealed the possibility of a conflict between the personal tendencies of the original creator of the content and the content-sharing activity. If learners want to delete their own content or block the possibility of sharing based on their ownership of their content, how should this be handled? Active content sharing is important for LGC-based learning experiences, but it is also necessary to recognize the right to delete their own content to some extent. Haru’s experience suggests that additional measures are required to balance the guarantee of creators’ rights over their learning contents with the encouragement to share content within the system.

Bada’s experience

Bada is a male student attending a public middle school located in Seoul. In the preliminary survey and on-site conversation during the tutorial lecture, he stated that he had been studying English for more than five years and studied three times a week (three hours per session), mainly in private institute classes or private tutoring using the materials and assignments presented by the teacher. He had used various kinds of materials to study English, but primarily school textbooks, school exam preparation reference books, and news articles. Thanks to this long-term English learning experience, he stated that he was confident in his English skills. However, he also commented that his interests or opinions were hardly reflected in his learning experiences to date and that he mainly followed the opinions of academy instructors or private tutors. In the survey, he stated that he possessed skills related to web-based English learning and had “high expectations” for learning English using digital technology.

In the tutorial lecture, he quietly listened to an introductory presentation of the developed system. Because he stated that he mainly studied English with an English problem book or textbook, the researcher expected that he would be interested in the OCR function of the passage wizard. However, he was considerably more interested in the video wizard. He mentioned his favorite fantasy movie and stated that he wanted to make learning material out of movie clips. At the end of the tutorial, Bada said that he was not sure what he expected from the system and added, “I think I can use the system for seven days and just figure it out” and “If I find anything difficult while trying it, I will seek help from a researcher or my college student sister.”

During the trial period, Bada accessed the system using a PC and studied English by establishing one to two learning schedules every two days. Notably, he never used the passage wizard at all. Instead, Bada pursued the interests he revealed in the tutorial: He created English learning content with YouTube videos and used them for his learning. He developed six video-based pieces of learning content over the course of seven days and learned 161 English sentences and 81 English words using them. Three of his learning materials were made from videos he found himself, and the other three were made by editing the sample content curated on the main page that the researchers uploaded during the tutorial (see Table 7 for details).

According to the interview, the process of creating video-based learning content was not smooth from the beginning. When he first attempted to create learning content using the video provided by his school teacher, he failed. However, he commented that the memory of such a failure was the most memorable activity: After the failure, he created video-based learning content with the help of his sister. Next, he successfully created video-based learning content by himself using movies, animations, and music videos and became proficient in content creation and independent learning using the content.

In the interview, two reasons were also suggested regarding how he was able to consistently create and study content using videos. First, he found the learning content management and learning management modules easy to use. Second, studying with the videos he liked became a motivation for learning, and he was thus able to study English alone “without much special effort” (his answer to the online survey). His answers in the online survey consistently reflected his thoughts. He gave 4–5 points for his utilization and satisfaction scores for the video wizard in the learning content management module.

However, his thoughts on the personalized English language learning module were varied. In the survey, he gave 2 points and 5 points for his utilization scores of the practice mode and test mode, respectively. This score resulted from his learning strategy: He found that taking the test multiple times was more effective for learning English vocabulary because scoring and feedback came quickly in test mode. It could therefore be used as a personalized workbook, which was sufficient to substitute for the practice mode. Therefore, after creating a piece of English learning content, Bada immediately took the test based on that content multiple times. When he judged that he had acquired enough knowledge from that content, he moved on, creating more learning content and a new learning schedule.

Regarding the content curation module, Bada gave a utilization score of 5 points. For seven days, he explored other content curated on the main page and selected three items of video-based content, with some adjustments, as his new learning content. He was also able to curate the content he created on the main page and thought positively about sharing his content: “I am proud of the idea that other students are studying with my learning content” (his answer to the online survey).

Bada rated his overall satisfaction with his English learning experience using the system as 5 points. He even recommended his own English learning strategy, which can be used in combination with the system: “Analyzing the lyrics of the English pop songs separately, applying the analysis results to the English learning content creation, and studying them” (his response in the interview).

Overall, Bada knew to seek others’ help when necessary, and once he became accustomed to a difficult task, he could control the overall learning process, including creating desired learning content, planning, acquiring knowledge from learning content, and engaging in self-assessment. He also invented his own learning strategy. Bada’s experience showed an outcome related to the personalized learning activity based on his LGC and an expansion of his learning context, which meets the criteria for LGC-based learning.

Sunny’s experience

Sunny is a high school student with a strong interest in attending university. Sunny’s school is an autonomous private high school that has been actively encouraging its students to attend excellent universities in Korea and abroad. Sunny intended to enter college with a computer science major. Through some programs offered by her school, she participated in various extracurricular activities related to the IT field. In the preliminary survey, she stated that she had sufficient ability to learn English using digital devices and software.

In the preliminary survey, she rated her English skills as 3 points. Although she had more than five years’ English learning experience, she thought that her interests and opinions had not been reflected in her learning process so far. Based on her perceptions of her previous English learning experiences, she described her expectations for the system as follows: “I hope that a ‘personalized’ learning curriculum that fits my level rather than a generalized class like a school is provided” (her statement during the tutorial).

Sunny actively expressed her opinion during the tutorial lecture. Whenever she learned about one of the system’s functions, she immediately expressed agreement, liking the function, and other opinions. For example, she conveyed interest in the practice and test modes offering multi-sensory learning activities and requested an improvement of the UIs linking the learning content management and learning management modules because, in her view, it looked difficult to immediately find a page to schedule learning after making learning content.

During the 7-day trial period

During the 7 days of the trial period, Sunny stated that she used the system when she had 20 to 30 min of free time, such as during lunch breaks at school. At first, she tried the system with a variety of digital devices, but after finding that some functions of the system were excessively complex to use with a smartphone (e.g., the video and passage wizards), she decided to use the system with a laptop.

Sunny used both the passage and video wizards (5 points for her utilization of both the passage and video wizards). She first uploaded an A4 three-page English essay handout provided by the school to the passage wizard and then extracted the English text using OCR to create 37 English vocabulary lists. Each vocabulary list had a minimum of three and a maximum of 20 English vocabulary words, and by using them, she learned a total of 729 English words (see Fig.  10 ). Using the video wizard, she sorted the caption and voice data from the embedded official YouTube music videos and created video-based learning content with 40 English words and 45 English sentences.

Records of Sunny’s learning content generated by the passage wizard

According to the online survey and interview, using the learning content she created with the assistance of the system, Sunny developed a clear picture of what and how to learn from which pieces of content. After creating various pieces of learning content, she established learning schedules using the functions of the learning management module (5 points for her utilization of the function to set a learning schedule; 4 points for her utilization of the function to begin learning from the schedule) and performed learning activities with the created content using the functions of the personalized English language learning module (2 points for her utilization of the practice mode; 5 points for her utilization of the test mode). Here, similarly to Bada, Sunny studied the content by taking multiple tests and, therefore, gave a low score for her utilization of the practice mode. She also curated her content and explored other content (5 points for her utilization of the content-sharing and exploring activities) using the content curation module.

Throughout this process of studying the English language with the system, she conceived ideas for how to learn English using the system and delivered them to a researcher:

I felt that [this system] was a convenient learning aid when I was studying alone. […] I was able to learn words without searching for [the] meaning of the words one by one and even take a test by myself. Also, through various practice activities, I was able to read [English text] in a more interesting way than simply reading the printed text. […] I also felt that it was an advantage to be able to learn using new mediums that are not classic, such as English drama and TED-Ed videos. […] In terms of inducing individual interest, YouTube materials were good. (Her response in the interview)

Based on this experience, she recommended a strategy to study a single long English article (e.g., essay, passage from a novel, news article) to the researcher. This approach involved making some lists of English sentences from the article and doing the activities to peruse and learn the sentences, such as typing the words constituting each English sentence, shadowing the pronunciation of the sentences, or solving the test problems offered by the test mode. She said that this strategy would allow learners to carefully review the content of a single English article without missing its individual parts. She also added that this strategy was optimized for school exam preparation because most English tests in Korean schools use long English articles to develop test questions.

Meanwhile, based on her experience, she found that the current system had some problems, including a technical issue and a lack of curated content, which limited the personalized learning aids. During the trial period, she used a variety of the system’s features, such as creating content, setting a schedule for learning content, engaging in learning activities, and exploring curated content. However, what she wanted most during the period was to use TV news videos as learning content rather than music videos or movie clips, and the system failed to satisfy this interest. Video-based learning content creation using the video wizard was only easy when the video had caption data, and in contrast to music videos and movie clips, it was difficult for students to find news videos that provide captions. Using YouTube’s auto-captioning function, she attempted to create caption data by herself, but because the automated captions were not accurate, she could not make news-video–based learning content. This issue revealed the technical limitations of the developed system, suggesting the necessity of technical supplementation of the video wizard.

Because Sunny was concerned with university entrance examinations, she also wanted learning content that would help improve her academic grades, but she was disappointed to learn that the content curated on the main page was not helpful for this purpose. To complement the content curation module, she suggested that peer groups, particularly “peers from same school,” needed to use the system together and share content with each other.

As demonstrated by Sunny’s case, in order for the learner’s LGC-based learning experience to be sustainable, it is not only important to help learners study on their own from start to finish but also to facilitate active interactions with other learners or the exploration and sharing of varied content within the system. The issue that Sunny raised of facilitating learners’ active interactions and learner-generated content needs to be approached comprehensively, considering the issue of the “right of the original content creator” revealed in Haru’s case.

Facilitation of LGC-based learning experience

In the field test, we found that the three learners’ experiences met the first two criteria for an LGC-based learning experience, and some met criterion 3 as well (criteria are listed in Table 4 ). Regarding criteria 1 and 2, although the learning context was not specifically defined, all three students were able to study English using the system. They pursued their own purposes and interests, created content, and conducted various learning activities to study English with that content. In this way, the students used the system to pursue novel interests (Bada) or existing interests in a more convenient way (Haru and Sunny). They also used the four system modules according to their own judgment and managed the overall aspects that constituted their learning experience, such as learning time, place, content, plan, and strategy. From criterion 3, some students devised new learning strategies with the system (Bada and Sunny).

Interestingly, the students occasionally used the system differently from our original purpose for it; for example, some used the test mode as a personal workbook rather than using the practice mode for this. Such selective uses did not hinder the formation of an LGC-based learning experience, as in both cases, the learner chooses how he or she will interact with the system. Altogether, all Korean participants experienced LGC-based learning while using the system to learn English.

However, what was less clear here was the influence of social conditions (or constraints) on learners’ context generation using the system. Sunny's experience showed that her self-determined learning goals were related to college entrance and school exams. According to Choi ( 2017 ), in Korean society, exams and test-rank competition are part of learners’ lives from an early age; accordingly, learners make choices to increase their chances of success on the exams. This indicates, even in the absence of specific instructions directing the participants’ choices, that some of the participants might have set the exam-focused goals preferred in the society as their own goals rather than exploring what they wanted to pursue by studying English. This issue may be a result of the extension of the learner-generated contexts being less supported by the developed system, which will be discussed in the next section. In addition, further research, including long-term field tests, will be required to assess this.

Expanding learner-generated contexts

We developed a content curation module to assist learners in developing their learning contexts, but we found in field testing that participants did not substantially benefit from the module. Hence, additional measures are required to facilitate active interactions within the system.

First, we need to reinforce a supportive atmosphere for active content sharing and interaction among learners, and here, we consider two measures: adjusting the system’s content-sharing rule and developing individual communities of learners. Haru’s case offers an example of the need for the first change, adjusting the content-sharing rule: Students may be unfamiliar with sharing their learning content, and thus, we could allow content creators to delete their content at any time if the content has not yet been shared. Regarding the second idea, students with the same interests or educational background could be grouped within the content curation module function: learners could interact according to their common interests and help each other generate and share content.

Some measures that go beyond technical improvements are also required. In particular, we found that OERs could be useful for promoting active content sharing because there is not yet sufficient learner-generated content to meet learners’ diverse interests, OERs are ready made for education purposes, and they carry a lower risk of copyright infringement in relation to content use.

However, OERs have limited applicability to the current Korean context, namely, that it is difficult for secondary students to take advantage of these tools because OER-related sites in Korea are designed for use by higher education and secondary school instructors (Jung et al., 2011 ; Lim et al., 2019 ). We indirectly encountered this issue, where the participants created learning content with the resources were the most familiar to them and did not use the OER sites introduced in the tutorial at all. Optimizing OER use among students will therefore require increasing students’ familiarity with OERs and possibly developing more accommodating sites for young students.

Need for human assistants

The field test revealed the importance of a human assistant who can support the interaction between students and the system, particularly managing the quality of content and encouraging learners to overcome their challenges. We observed this in the experience of Bada, who solved his difficulties creating learning content and materials with a sibling’s help and then performed English learning without difficulty. Incorporating a peer review mechanism into the system would allow learners to interact with other learners and be each other’s human assistants.

Technological problems

We identified the following technological issues of the system: optimization and convenience problems with the passage and video wizards; difficulty operating some modules on a smart phone; and a nonintuitive UI for creating content and then a learning plan. To solve these issues, it is necessary to improve the performance of the wizards, develop a more mobile-friendly UI, and enhance the interface design of the learning management module.

In addition, YouTube's auto-captioning function did not accurately transcribe the English conversation in the video, which restricted students’ use of video-based learning content. It also seems again that the system can benefit from a human assistant who can help correct errors in automatically generated caption or text translation.

Limitations of the research

This study had a limitation related to the characteristics of the field test participants, who, while they came from different backgrounds, all lived in urban areas in Seoul, were in secondary school, and had extensive knowledge of digital devices and services. This was partly because the conduct of the study was affected by the pandemic. In future research, it will be necessary to analyze the experiences of student participants representing a more diverse group to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the experience of Korean students using an LGC-informed, AI-based English learning support system.

To borrow from Aiken and Epstein ( 2000 ), the challenge of AIEd research is to present how the philosophical premises of AI can respond to education needs, thereby not “limit[ing] the scope, effectiveness and positive contributions that AI can bring to learning” (p. 164). To address this challenge, we drew on the LGC framework and development research methodology, developed an AI-based English learning support system for Korean learners and examined whether and how the system could catalyze forming LGC-based learning experiences among the learners we studied. From our findings, we argue that an AI-applied learning assistance system based on sound educational technological design frameworks (specifically, in this study, the LGC framework) can catalyze learners’ autonomous learning experiences, even without a specified instructor, curriculum, or location, and help them become creators of their learning contexts. This study also provides a reference for AIEd researchers and practitioners pursuing similar goals.

We identified some issues regarding the developed system that we will need to address to enrich the LGC-based learning experience. These included the understanding of influence of social conditions and technical improvements, as well as enhancements in the educational environment and human assistants, as well as studies involving more diverse groups of learners. Our findings indicate that one AI learning support system alone cannot be the ultimate solution to LGC-based learning. However, according to Brandt ( 2013 ), tasting the freedom of learning itself can transform students’ thoughts on learning and encourages them to build ideas about their own learning paths. In this sense, we believe, by enabling such a tasting, one AI-applied tool could meaningfully contribute to education, “unleashing the innovative potential of students” (Ball, 2018 , p. 235).

Data Availability

The data of this study are not publicly available due to human subjects research protection agreed to in the informed consent process, under institutional review.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the students who participated in the research and the journal reviewers who provided helpful feedback. During the research period (Aug 2016–Mar 2022), this study did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies. In 2017, author Hong-hyeon Kim founded the start-up ZEROxFLOW, which provides language and IT programming courses and develops software. Some of the profits from those courses and software partially supported this research. Authors Hong-hyeon Kim and Seok-Hyun Sung mainly developed the system introduced in this research and provided technical explanations. Author Donghwa Lee mainly designed the research, conducted the field test, and analyzed the data. Any findings and conclusions in this paper do not necessarily reflect the start-up organizations’ interests.

The system presented in this research was developed only to serve the research goal. Author Hong-hyeon Kim owns a start-up organization called ZEROxFLOW and the intellectual property rights of specific technologies used in this system, and author Seok-Hyun Sung receives a salary from ZEROxFLOW. Some of the UI design elements or code data of this system may be reused in commercial items of this start-up organization. Hong-hyeon Kim and Seok-Hyun Sung were not involved in data collection, analysis and interpretation, and report that this manuscript will not be cited to promote or prove the effectiveness of ZEROxFLOW’s commercial items. In August 2020, author Donghwa Lee received financial support from ZEROxFLOW to conduct the field test. She reports that she has no affiliations with any organization including this start-up organization with any financial or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

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Lee, D., Kim, Hh. & Sung, SH. Development research on an AI English learning support system to facilitate learner-generated-context-based learning. Education Tech Research Dev 71 , 629–666 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-022-10172-2

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A review of the ESL/EFL learners’ gains from online peer feedback on English writing

1 School of Foreign Languages, Southeast University, Nanjing, China

2 School of Foreign Studies, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China

3 School of Foreign Languages, Beijing Institute of Technology, Zhuhai, China

4 School of Psychology, Qufu Normal University, Qufu, China

Tongquan Zhou

5 College of Foreign Languages, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China

Associated Data

Peer feedback is essential in writing English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL). Traditionally, offline PF was more widely favored but nowadays online peer feedback (OPF) has become frequent in ESL/EFL learners’ daily writing. This study is undertaken to probe into the gains of using OPF in ESL/EFL writing on the basis of 37 research articles published in core journals from 2012 till 2022. In order to accurately cover the previous researches, we capitalize on three methods to evaluate and analyze the data, i.e., database search, citation search and manual search. Results show that from the perspective of the ESL/EFL learners’ gains, the OPF is basically divided into two categories (cognitive OPF and affective OPF), involving eight aspects in all: face-based strategies, revision-based comments, writing performance, learning environment, reflection/critical thinking/responsibility, writing emotion, motivation, and attitudes; and OPF can be well supported by a set of theories like Process-oriented Writing Theory, Collaborative Learning Theory, Interactionist Theory of L2 Acquisition and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. By comparison, the gains from OPF outperform those from offline PF in many dimensions (e.g., face-based strategies), despite some overlaps (e.g., the shift of the role) that were revealed in several investigations. Based on the past studies, we propose some pedagogical implications on OPF from ESL/EFL writing, including accenting the “student-centered” teaching strategy, providing students with OPF on the basis of incremental knowledge, adopting OPF regularly in ESL/EFL writing activities to shape personalities and outlooks and putting OPF into its full play with recourse to abundant internet-based vehicles. This review is desired to provide a guideline for both the peer feedback practice and the upcoming scholarly researches with respect to EFL/ESL writing.

Introduction

Peer Feedback (also known as peer review, peer response, peer editing, peer evaluation or peer revision) refers to the activities in which students work together to provide comments on their own written or oral drafts by active communications in an academic subject ( Liu and Edwards, 2018 ). Since 1970s, peer feedback has been widely used in L1 writing classes to encourage students to evaluate their peer’s drafts and solve diversified issues via text modifications ( Bruffee, 1984 ; Gere, 1987 ; Spear, 1988 ). Gradually, this type of modernized pedagogy has also been intensively introduced as an instructional means in ESL/EFL (English as a second/foreign language) writing classes since 1990 ( Henfernik, 1983 ; Bell, 1991 ; Carson and Nelson, 1996 ; Min, 2006 ; Chen, 2016 ). A review of previous studies shows that peer feedback brings students a set of benefits or gains in many ways. Specifically, peer feedback enables students to experience and enhance collaborative writing ( Nunan, 1993 ) and increases learners’ autonomy. Besides, it also fosters the sense of multiple readers and raises writer’s awareness ( Stanley, 1992 ; Zhu, 1995 ; Berg, 1999 ; Min, 2005 ; Chen, 2016 ).

Peer feedback in ESL/EFL writing is subdivided into two types, offline and online types in terms of modality ( Peeters, 2018 ; Ahmed and Abdu, 2021 ). Offline peer feedback refers to the traditional modes like face-to-face peer feedback (FFPF). FFPF allows students placed into groups to assess and evaluate their peers’ drafts, requiring them to provide comments in a face-to-face classroom ( Mendonca and Johnson, 1994 ; De Guerrero and Villamil, 2000 ; Chen, 2016 ; Saeed et al., 2018 ). Previous researches related to FFPF in ESL/EFL writing focused on many aspects, such as language functions of feedback patterns (e.g., exploratory function), potential benefits (e.g., improve linguistic details) and factors affecting FFPF (e.g., instructions prior to FFPF) ( Stanley, 1992 ; Mendonca and Johnson, 1994 ; Zhu, 1995 ; Min, 2005 ; Liou and Peng, 2009 ; Hanjani and Li, 2014 ; Saeed et al., 2018 ).

Online peer feedback (OPF) arises from the development of electronic media around the end of 20 th century. These media, which are mainly network-based or web-based discussion boards, made OPF prevail in ESL/EFL writing classrooms since 1990 ( Braine, 2001 ), mounting to its peak in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic ( Rimmer, 2020 ). Against the coronavirus background, online courses became the primary means of delivering instruction for all classes ( Alsuwaida, 2022 ); hence, computer-mediated peer feedback in place of the traditional mode served as the dominant tool in L2 writing classes. However, the debate has been open about whether OPF works better than the traditional peer feedback in EFL/ESL writing. For instance, Song and Usaha (2009) and Pham (2020) found the OPF-group students showed more revision-oriented comments and global revisions than the FFPF-group students. According to Ebadi and Rahimi (2017) , OPF using Google Docs outperformed FFPF in four aspects of academic writing skills (i.e., task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexicon and grammatical range and accuracy). Some other studies show that traditional FFPF is superior to OPF. In the study by Guardado and Shi (2007) , ESL students did not address a higher percentage of important comments in OPF because they felt unconfident and quite shy in negotiating and clarifying the meanings with peers. Liu and Sadler (2003) discovered that students in FFPF group made more subsequent revisions. However, OPF group produced more revision-oriented comments. Given that the writing scores were highly improved in FFPF group than in the networked group, Braine (2001) accented the cautious use of technology for peer feedback in writing classes.

Online peer feedback (OPF) and FFPF are often adopted combinatorically so as to compare their effects on L2 English writing class practice. Warschauer (1996) made a comparison on the equality of students’ participation either in FFPF discussion or in OPF discussion. The author found that the students showed more equal participation in computer mode, for they felt comfortable using more complex sentences in OPF. In DiGiovanni and Nagaswami (2001) , students put more focus on tasks in electronic mode when engaging in combined modes of OPF and FFPF. In particular, teachers participated more in learners’ communication and helped them discuss in an appropriate direction during this process. Chang (2012) demonstrated that the incorporation of OPF and FFPF was favorable for peer response, but individuals differed in mode preference. Tai et al. (2015) combined the teacher-led feedback and OPF, revealing that students in combination group improved a lot in writing skills (e.g., content, organization and grammar). Accordingly, the authors suggested that more OPF discussions should be encouraged than the FFPF discussions to give students equal opportunities to express themselves.

Although mixed findings concerning the effects of OPF have been found in early studies, the gains of using OPF in ESL/EFL writing account for the absolutely largest proportion. For instance, Chen (2016) concluded the characteristics, pros and cons of OPF on the basis of 20 articles from 1990 to 2010. Saeed et al. (2018) reviewed 37 articles and categorized different patterns (i.e., language functions, factors affecting OPF and FFPF) of learners’ interactional feedback exchanges into two classes, FFPF and OPF. Based on 17 primary studies, Lv et al. (2021) conducted a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of different online feedback, including peer, teacher and automated feedback, revealing that the peers’ online feedback had larger effect size ( g = 0.777) than the online automated feedback ( g = 0.696).

The studies mentioned above indeed proved OPF had a lot of gains, but left the following issues unsettled: (1) although numerous studies in the past decade have shown the benefits of OPF from ESL/EFL writing, their majority just focus on special aspects (e.g., language functions), ignoring other gains students may obtain from writing peer feedback; (2) although there have been a few studies on OPF from 2012 till 2022, all of them (including reviewing articles) focused on other aspects instead of gains of OPF from ESL/EFL writing; (3) although the positive impacts of OPF are multi-faceted yet heterogeneous in nature, there has not been a systematic classification of the gains to date; (4) although a couple of theories were introduced to account for the availability of the gains from ESL/EFL writing, their explanatory power was not compared and hence may not be sufficiently convincible, particularly from the perspective of educational psychology. As a consequence, the current study aims to describe and generalize the gains of using OPF in ESL/EFL writing from different perspectives (e.g., face-based strategies) by exhaustively reviewing all the research articles published in the core journals from 2012 till 2022. In addition to solving the above issues, this study highlights our contribution mainly from two aspects, the wider coverage of literature concerned and the more aspects regarding the gains of OPF.

Specifically, this paper is dedicated to answering the following three questions:

(1) How many types of gains from OPF in ESL/EFL writing can be identified in the researches from 2012 to 2022?

(2) What theories can be adopted to account for the different gains from the OPF in ESF/EFL settings?

(3) What implications can be acquired from the current review, from the perspective of educational psychology in particular?

The present study used three methods to review the literature systematically, including database search, citation search and manual search. In order to target at the articles for review accurately, we adopted the following inclusion and exclusion criteria throughout the searching process.

• Inclusion criteria:
• (1) The articles were related to ESL/EFL writing activities and published between 2012 and 2022.
• (2) The articles were targeted to study at least one type of peer feedback (i.e., OPF) in ESL/EFL writing activities.
• (3) All articles applied qualitative or quantitative methods or mixed methods.
• Exclusion criteria:
• (1) The articles were published before 2012 and their topics were not related to OPF, such as special needs, corrective feedback etc.
• (2) The OPF studies selected the participants from ESL/EFL learners other than English natives.
• (3) The articles used anonymous participants to explore OPF from English writing activities.

For database search, the authors first employed the databases of ERIC, SCOPUS, Web of Science and CNKI to explore all the articles related to the benefits of OPF from 2012 to 2022. Only peer-reviewed studies were selected as the target articles for analysis by the keywords OPF, second language learning, foreign language learning and writing contexts. Papers dealing with special needs, corrective feedback, self-correction and automated feedback were excluded from the search. As a result, 74 records were identified, i.e., 23 articles from ERIC, 6 articles from CNKI, 22 articles from SCOPUS and 23 articles form Web of Science database. After removing 37 duplicated articles, the database search led to a total of 37 peer-reviewed papers pooled for analysis.

At the screening period were adopted citation search and manual search. For citation search, re-read the 37 papers via database search to discover more related articles by their references. For manual search, use Google scholar to search for other papers of the same topic. In all, citation and manual search led to another 6 relevant papers. Taken together, a total of 43 full-text articles were selected and assessed for eligibility.

To guarantee the research focus of studies, 6 articles irrelevant to the benefits of OPF (e.g., those using OPF anonymously) were excluded after a re-examination and a primitive analysis. Eventually, 37 articles (i.e., 34 empirical and 3 theoretical studies) were selected as the most relevant ones to look into the gains from OPF (the other detailed information like education background is listed in Appendix 1). The screening process of the reviewed articles was shown in Figure 1 . In order to display a systematic overview of the OPF, all the articles were sorted out in an excel file according to feature maps ( Hart, 2001 ) in terms of title, author/date, research questions, methods, materials, results, abstract and given a final category for further classification.

Screening process of the reviewed papers.

According to the results obtained from the above methods, this section discusses two issues relating to the gains from a variety of OPF in EFL/ESL writing. One describes how these potential gains are realized in EFL/ESL writing activities, and the other introduces theories approaching OPF from other perspectives, particularly the educational psychology.

A panorama of the gains from the online peer feedback on ESL/EFL writing

Based on the 37 articles selected, the beneficial patterns of OPF in EFL/ESL writing contexts are roughly categorized into two classes, cognitive OPF and affective OPF. Cognition deals with mental processes such as memory, learning, problem-solving, attention and decision making, employing concrete and manageable strategies while affect deals with emotional areas, such as motivation, attitudes, and feelings ( Sfard and Kieran, 2001 ; Jones and Issroff, 2005 ; Immordino-Yang and Damasio, 2007 ). In terms of this distinction, cognitive OPF and affective OPF can be further divided into four sub-aspects, respectively (as shown in Figure 2 ): cognitive OPF involving face-based strategies, revision-based comments, writing performance and learning environment; and affective OPF involving reflection/critical thinking/responsibility, writing emotion, motivation, and attitudes. Here, critical thinking is classified into affective OPF due to its involvement of willingness, desire, and disposition to base one’s actions and beliefs (p. 23) ( Siegel, 1989 ). Reflection captures the conceptualization of knowledge, thoughts and feelings of students, which were used to detect affective outcomes ( YuekMing and Abd Manaf, 2014 ). According to the affective experiences described, the students deemed that they had the responsibility to participate in learning apart from their perceptions of learning itself ( Galloway et al., 2016 ). The three aspects are discussed altogether just because they have some shared points, like desire, motivation, belief, and feeling among other internalized emotions. The eight types of OPF in turn yield the corresponding eight gains, specifically. The following is to elaborate on all the aspects to illustrate how the OPF gains are realized in ESL/EFL writing activities, with the gains from cognitive OPF followed by the gains from affective OPF.

Classification of online peer feedback (OPF).

Gains from cognitive online peer feedback

Gains from face-based strategies.

Among the 37 articles, 4 papers are involved in the gains from face-based strategies, demonstrating that the students in OPF could overcome face embarrassment, and provide or receive praise and critique from their peers ( Daweli, 2018 ; Saeed et al., 2018 ; Ma, 2020 ; Pham et al., 2020 ).

For example, Pham et al. (2020) explored the perception of students from the impacts of Confucian values by virtue of OPF, showing that the students’ negative feelings at the beginning shifted significantly to a positive level after OPF. This indicates that learners broke through the face-based cultural barriers by resorting to OPF. Such a change of face-based strategy was also found in Ma (2020) that the students were willing to give more praises than suggestions (685 vs. 394) and tried to be less face-threatening when providing online comments.

When interviewed about whether or not preferring to receive comments from peers via Google Docs, the participants responded that “Your best friend’s comments are preferred because he is closer to you than the teacher.” ( Daweli, 2018 : p8), suggesting that using Google Docs-mediated peer feedback can aid all participants to avoid face embarrassment, for hierarchical power and students’ beliefs and experiences of peer feedback were supposed to be the key to this face culture ( Ma, 2020 ). Based on the literature review of OPF’s language functions, Saeed et al. (2018) concluded that students gave more social interactional comments, such as thanking peers, praising peers and surprise, to adjust the face-based strategy in order to maintain good relationships with peers, which were not yet found in offline peer feedback like FFPF.

With regard to face culture, OPF evidently outdoes FFPF from their gains from English writing, for the students engaged in FFPF tend to strongly avoid assessing and commenting on their peers’ drafts due to face threatening ( Chiu, 2009 ), particularly in Confucian contexts ( Pham et al., 2020 ). Confucian values involve two core principles, the concept of face and power distance. It is reported that the students in the Confucian context evade providing comments and giving critiques to their peers, for they fear destroying the harmonious relationship and causing conflict or even hurting their classmates ( Chiu, 2009 ). Similarly, Chinese students are reluctant to voice criticism and express disagreements due to face culture ( Luo and Liu, 2017 ). That is, they more like and respect teacher feedback which is endowed with reliable knowledge and absolute authority ( Li et al., 2010 ).

Gains from revision-based comments

Two papers in the current review showed that OPF could generate more revision-based comments than FFPF in actual writing practice ( Ho, 2012 ; Pham, 2020 ). According to Pham (2020) , OPF using Google Doc was better than traditional oral FFPF in this regard. The results suggested that more revision-oriented comments were triggered by the OPF group (MO = 1.14) than by the FFPF group (MF = 0.53) for Vietnamese EFL students. Nevertheless, there occasionally came up a bit different situation in which both OPF and FFPF produced a similar proportion of revision-oriented comments (53% vs. 52%) ( Ho, 2012 ).

Another 6 articles explored revision-oriented comments from OPF in two types, i.e., global and local comments. Our statistics showed that the two types of comments do not come up symmetrically in students’ writing peer feedback. While some studies indicate that more local comments (e.g., referencing, supporting details and language) were made than global comments (e.g., content, organization and argumentative genre) in OPF (e.g., Chang, 2012 ; Saeed et al., 2018 ), others prove the opposite view (e.g., Bradley, 2014 ; Pham and Usaha, 2016 ; Saeed and Ghazali, 2017 ; Ma, 2020 ). To illustrate, Chang (2012) reported that 87% of local comments but 13% of global comments appeared in OPF. By contrast, Ma (2020) found that peer suggestions were more about layout and organization (125) than about language details (43).

Gains from writing performance

A critical concern in ESL/EFL writing OPF is whether students can make evident progress on writing performance under OPF. In our reviewed literature, there are 7 papers investigating this issue centered on the students’ improvement in the writing scores. For instance, Usaha (2020) discovered that 32 Vietnamese EFL students’ writing scores were significantly enhanced after OPF. Similarly, Kitchakarn (2013) and Huang H. Y. C. (2016) reported that the writing scores were elevated significantly after blog-mediated peer feedback and Wechat-mediated peer feedback, respectively, indicating that OPF played an important role in improving students’ writing skill.

Other studies focus on comparing OPF with other types of feedback in terms of writing scores. For instance, Ciftci and Kocoglu (2012) compared the writing scores of two modes, i.e., blog-mediated peer feedback and FFPF. They found that both groups improved their writing scores after peer feedback but the average writing scores were significantly higher from blog-mediated feedback ( M = 69.19) than from FFPF ( M = 65.17). The same circumstance exists in Wahyudin (2018) and Awada and Diab (2021) that the writing scores improved significantly in the OPF group than in the FFPF group. Likewise, the comparison among the writing scores of three groups (i.e., self-correction, paper-pencil peer feedback, and electronic peer feedback) reveals that although all the types of feedback could increase learners’ writing achievements, the electronic peer feedback group performed the best ( M = 73.74) among the three ( Wanchid, 2013 ).

In addition to the writing scores, the 7 papers have shown that after OPF, both local and global aspects of writing were all improved. For example, OPF is shown to improve error correction (i.e., grammatical errors, spelling errors and sentence correction) and text revisions (e.g., global features of text), particularly for less-proficient students ( Yang and Meng, 2013 ). Pham et al. (2020) also obtained a similar result from students’ perspective in the Confusion context in Vietnam. In Pham et al.’s (2020) questionnaire survey to test students’ perceptions toward global and local aspects of writing, global aspects were more favored by the students, as “E-peer feedback will help (helped) to improve the flow, organization, and transitions of the essays.” Besides, students focused more on local aspects like grammar, sentence structure, and vocabulary after OPF ( Li, 2012 ; Saeed and Ghazali, 2016 ).

Relative to other types of peer feedback (e.g., paper-based peer feedback, FFPF and automated corrective feedback), OPF also facilitates the improvement of local and global areas of writing performance. OPF group made more local (i.e., word and sentence) and global (i.e., substitution, reordering and consolidation) revisions whereas paper-based peer feedback group made no such revisions ( Yang, 2016 ). OPF using the Google Docs group can make significantly more writing enhancements than the FFPF group ( Ebadi and Rahimi, 2017 ). In Shang’s (2022) study of local features by OPF and automated corrective feedback, the grammatical errors by OPF ( via Moodle) were proven to be significantly fewer (M = 10.85) than the errors by automated corrective feedback ( via the Coll Sentence Corrective Network) ( M = 13.79). For lexical density, the students adopting OPF produced more tokens ( M = 245.50) and types of words ( M = 132.91) than the students adopting automated corrective feedback. Similar findings were also unveiled in other studies ( Cai, 2012 ), indicating that OPF offers students more gains than other types of feedback from evaluating writing performance.

Gains from learning environment

Of the 37 targeted articles, 5 studies displayed that OPF was easy to help build up a better learning environment and the corresponding gains were classified from two aspects, the use of the target language and the atmosphere during the feedback ( Daweli, 2018 ; Saeed et al., 2018 ; Ma, 2020 ; Elboshi, 2021 ; Sun and Zhang, 2022 ).

With respect to the target language used on online platforms, students tend to apply English as the communicational language when providing comments orally on each other’s assignments on a web-based platform (where the teacher is monitoring, and the first language is not allowed) ( Elboshi, 2021 ). In addition, L2 learners are required to write suggestions for their peers in English; hence, the OPF-targeted English practice forces them to write more and create a more active learning atmosphere during the class. Sun and Zhang’s (2022) translanguaging study showed that students using translanguaging ( M = 12.15) through OPF outperformed those in English-only OPF ( M = 11.23). Yet the students claimed that both conditions were conducive to improving learning efficiency, implying that either the use of English or translanguaging as the target language in OPF helps offer an academic learning environment and enhance L2 learners’ understanding.

Online peer feedback (OPF) generates a more open and friendly atmosphere, encouraging students to express more opinions freely. According to Saeed et al. (2018) , compared with offline peer feedback, students added more social interactional comments (e.g., thanking, welcoming, praising and even social talks or chatting) to establish a more positive atmosphere in OPF. Similar evidence was also revealed by Ma (2020) , in which the praises by students doubled peer suggestions (685 vs. 394) in a wiki writing assignment, suggesting that OPF situation relative to FFPF is more comfortable so that peers try to be more friendly and supportive in providing comments. Another study about OPF employing Google Docs suggests the gains from the comments students made, as exemplified by “I really like how it saves my time instead of meeting in class and work wherever I want.” ( Daweli, 2018 : p9). This indicates that the Google Docs-mediated peer feedback was just like working outside a classroom, creating for the peers a free social and open environment.

Gains from affective online peer feedback

Gains from reflection/critical thinking/responsibility.

Reflective thinking, as the synonym of critical thinking emphasizes on how students express their thoughts and feelings about what has occurred when making decisions ( Schön, 2017 ). More importantly, responsibility was also considered as an important trait for developing the habit of thinking critically ( Djoub, 2021 ). That is why the three items are interrelated and therefore combined together for discussion here.

According to the 4 articles in the reviewed literature, OPF accelerates students’ reflection, critical thinking and responsibility to some extent. In Zhang et al.’s (2014) study, an interviewed student claimed that “…My peers’ feedback in blogs gives me an opportunity of knowing where I am wrong and why I am wrong. That encourages my self-reflection of my writing.” This suggests that OPF helps to facilitate critical self-reflection and learners can gain a rewarding experience of L2 writing through a self-reflection process. As mentioned above, Pham et al.’s (2020) investigation of Vietnamese learners’ attitudes toward the reflective and critical effects after OPF showed that OPF significantly improved their reflective thinking in correcting mistakes and minimizing weaknesses.

Critical thinking makes students take the initiative in taking responsibility for their learning in OPF. When interviewed about their feelings in the process of OPF using Google Docs, Saudi EFL students responded, “It is a positive feeling because I feel I am a critical editor” ( Daweli, 2018 : p8). Similar gains of OPF were supported by a study using Facebook ( Wahyudin, 2018 ), suggesting that Facebook-based OPF on English writing made students more aware of errors or mistakes and improved students’ critical thinking in writing, resulting in the significant increase of their writing ability. According to Ma (2020) , the critical comments from peers’ OPF could also predict the L2 writing scores of writing assignments by correlation analysis (r = –0.559). This implies that L2 learners likely enjoy the responsibility of providing OPF and improving their peers’ writing ( Cassidy and Bailey, 2018 ).

Gains from writing emotion

In the present review, 2 articles dealt with writing emotions, demonstrating that OPF is a valid method to mitigate the effects of writing anxiety for L2 learners. With recourse to Second Language Writing Anxiety Instrument (SLWAI), 1 Iksan and Halim (2018) compared the degree of writing anxiety for Malaysian L2 learners after OPF between OPF group (using wiki) and FFPF group. The results showed that both groups could low L2 writing anxiety and OPF was more effective than FFPF. Similarly, with 41 South Korean English majors, Bailey and Cassidy (2019) also adopted SLWAI to explore the same research question and found that OPF could reduce or eliminate writing anxiety.

As an important component of writing emotions, writing anxiety refers to the fear of the writing process that surpasses the possible benefits of the capacity to write ( Thompson, 1980 ). In general, all writers (either native speakers or second-language learners) have experienced writing anxiety during the writing process ( Cheng et al., 1999 ; Woodrow, 2011 ). The two articles justified the point that OPF provides an effective way to reduce or low writing anxiety for L2 learners. However, few studies dealt with this topic in the past, requiring more its investigations in the future.

Gains from motivation

Motivation is the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-directed behaviors and plays a very important role in ESL/EFL learners’ writing. The 4 articles of the reviewed literature demonstrate that students greatly enhance motivation via OPF when learning English writing.

Huang J. (2016) adopted a questionnaire to survey Taiwan students’ perceptions of learning motivation, such as “I feel writing blog assignments is easier and more motivating than doing other writing assignments.” The results showed that this item had the highest mean score in three classes ( M = 4.62) because the assignment via OPF did not have defined topics, so students enjoyed more latitude to choose what they wanted to write about.

The other three studies ( Cai, 2012 ; Zhang et al., 2014 ; Qiu and Li, 2022 ) relating to OPF motivation were all conducted in China. By interviewing students about why they were all motivated by OPF, Cai (2012) thought that the students tended to be afraid of losing face in the Confucian culture context; meanwhile, every student could gain praise from peers, bringing them a sense of achievement. Zhang et al. (2014) employed a 36 student-based questionnaire to study the relationship between blog-mediated peer feedback and learner motivation from two aspects: self-efficacy (e.g., “I can do the hardest work in my WRITING class if I try.”) and task value scale (e.g., “I find WRITING interesting”). Their result showed that OPF was correlated to learner motivation ( r = 0.450) and three factors seemed to explain the motivation: (1) immediacy and availability of OPF; (2) attention from the intended readers; and (3) protecting one’s face, indicating that students increased confidence by using OPF.

Qiu and Li (2022) compared the motivational effects of OPF and teacher feedback on English writing. In their research, motivation was divided into two parts, intrinsic writing motivation and extrinsic writing motivation. The statistical analysis showed that higher scores in achievement motivation (a subtype of intrinsic writing motivation) occurred in OPF than in teacher feedback (MO = 3.986; MT = 3.681), suggesting that OPF was more effective than teacher feedback in terms of generating intrinsic writing motivation.

These results are in line with Aljumah (2012) , which demonstrated that incorporating web tasks (e.g., blog) into writing courses could enhance ESL/EFL students’ writing motivation and effectiveness because they felt that all the people in the world (their teachers and peers in particular) were reading their writing. In this regard, OPF acts as an incorporating tasks using online platforms, indeed boosting L2 students’ writing motivation.

Gains from attitudes

A total of 10 articles ( Ciftci and Kocoglu, 2012 ; quantitative study: Chen, 2012 ; Kitchakarn, 2013 ; Wanchid, 2013 ; Huang J., 2016 ; Cassidy and Bailey, 2018 ; Xu and Yu, 2018 ; Putra et al., 2021 ; qualitative study: Kitchakarn, 2013 ; Ebadi and Rahimi, 2017 ) have unanimously demonstrated that ESL/EFL students had positive attitudes toward the OPF practice.

In a survey to explore students’ perceptions of OPF, Ciftci and Kocoglu (2012) found that 86.7% of students strongly agreed upon the assistance of blogs-mediated peer feedback in improving their English and 80.01% would recommend to other students the online writing course using blogs. Additionally, 73.30% of students thought that the features of blog websites could help writers a lot. Similarly, in the study by Cassidy and Bailey (2018) , 89% students believed that OPF helped them enhance their writing ability and 60% admitted that they made improvements according to their peers’ comments.

The questionnaire-based studies have acquired similar results. For instance, Chen (2012) and Wanchid (2013) designed a different number of statements to test students’ attitudes toward three types of feedback, including self-correction, paper-pencil peer feedback and electronic peer feedback, and the results pointed to the same conclusion that electronic peer feedback received the highest scores from most of the participants. Responses like “The peer feedback activity was a useful learning tool to improve my writing ability” ( Kitchakarn, 2013 ) conveyed the similar gain obtained from the student’s experiences in using OPF. In the same fashion, Huang J. (2016) reported that the participating students adopted a supportive attitude toward the blog-mediated peer feedback. Putra et al. (2021) showed that 73% of the students ( M = 3.77) were willing to provide peer feedback by Ozone.

Interview is another approach to examine ESL/EFL learners’ attitudes toward OPF. According to Kitchakarn (2013) , 24 out of 34 participants reported that peer feedback via blogs was useful for learning from mistakes and gaining more vocabularies and writing skills. ESL/EFL students in the research ( Ebadi and Rahimi, 2017 ) liked peer-editing using Google Docs because they could learn from peers by comparing the writings to put focus on the key features, such as core ideas in feedback.

Opposite to the above were the studies by Choi (2007) and Guardado and Shi (2007) . In Choi (2007) Hong Kong L2 l earners reserved attitudes toward OPF while Canadian ESL/EFL students showed mixed attitudes in Guardado and Shi (2007) . These diversified findings may result from the situation in which some students considered online communication more challenging than face-to-face communication, easily leading to misunderstanding in writing classrooms.

To summarize, among the 37 articles divided into the two categories, more studies dealt with cognitive OPF (31) and relatively few with affective OPF (20), despite some overlapping articles for different issues. This asymmetrical distribution may result from the easy access to cognitive OPF test in data collection, e.g., the data regarding whether the writing performance was improved during OPF. By contrast, the data relating to affective OPF are hard to obtain and lead to few studies as a consequence. For instance, the conclusion that OPF could enhance responsibility of ESL/EFL students was drawn solely from the interview ( Cassidy and Bailey, 2018 ). In addition, 7 articles dealt with the comparison between OPF and FFTP, 5 articles between OPF and teacher feedback, automatic feedback or other types, further intensifying the important role of OPF in ESL/EFL writing activities.

Major theories on the gains from online peer feedback

Ideally, specific theories had better be proposed to directly target at motivating why and how students can obtain gains from OPF on English writing. But according to the 37 reviewed articles, the theories adopted were basically lent from more general domains like educational psychology, social psychology and language acquisition. In practice, these theories do provide the rationales for the feedback and the corresponding gains related to ESL/EFL writing activities. In another way, students’ gains from the OPF can be well-explained by the hypotheses both theoretically and expirically. On this account, the following introduces 4 representative theories on the OPF gains, i.e., Process-oriented Writing Theory, Collaborative Learning Theory, Interactionist Theory of L2 Acquisition and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory.

Process-oriented Writing Theory from educational psychology is considered a dynamic, non-linear and recursive process in which the writing takes place ( Hayes, 2012 ). As one of the three steps constituting the process ( Keh, 1990 ), the third step stresses that the text should be revised several times according to the feedback provided before completing the final assignment. In this regard, ESL/EFL students undoubtedly enhance their reflection/critical thinking/responsibility through some rounds of text revisions and improve their general writing ability by offering different feedback, including OPF.

Collaborative Learning Theory from social psychology argues that learning and knowledge can be constructed implicitly under social communications among peers, which can be regarded as a process wherein knowledge like language skills can be acquired through collaboration ( Bruffee, 1984 ). In light of the theory, OPF provides a facilitative and learning environment so that the English learners are willing to offer revision-based comments wherein L2 learners can effectively complete the assignment (rather than do it individually), with the help of peers’ interaction and collaboration ( Hu and Lam, 2010 ).

Interactionist Theory of L2 Acquisition from language acquisition stresses the important role of explicit and implicit feedback in second language learning, which creates opportunities for students to negotiate the meaning actively and discuss it with peers ( Long and Porter, 1985 ). In line with this theory, students with recourse to online peer response offer adequate positive and negative feedback and then make modifications according to these inputs and bridge the gaps in their interlanguage system ( Hyland and Hyland, 2006 ). Compared with the Collaborative Learning Theory, this theory appears to emphasize the mutual exchange of ideas when the participants serve as a text writer or a reviewer. The common point of the two theories is to highlight the mutual interaction or collaboration among language learners, in which peer feedback (the OPF in particular) fulfills the function directly, i.e., to improve writing ability via recurrent revisions and modifications of writing manuscripts.

The gains of reflection/critical thinking/responsibility of OPF draw support from Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory in the view of educational psychology, which accents the significance of social interaction among peers in learning and cognitive development ( Vygotsky, 1987 ). In Vygotsky’s (1978 : 86) view, students can develop from a novice level to a higher level with the assistance and scaffolding of an expert learner by improving reflection and critical thinking in the “zone of proximal development (ZPD)”.

Activity Theory, as the extension of Vygotsky’s theory, serves as another important theoretical framework for the gains of the learning environment, writing efficiency and overall writing quality of OPF in L2 writing ( Jin and Zhu, 2010 ; Zhu and Mitchell, 2012 ; Yu and Lee, 2016 ). This theory, developed from the construct of mediation, holds the view that human beings mediate the relationships with others and the world through artifacts like physical tools (e.g., books and computers) and symbolic/psychological tools (e.g., language and signs) ( Jin and Zhu, 2010 ). In this theory, mediated activities, which are socially organized and goal-directed, play an essential role in human development. Associated with ESL/EFL writing, OPF mediates students and the world through computers and offers them a more academic and friendly learning environment, facilitating collaborative learning among peers ( Yu and Lee, 2016 ).

To conclude, among the current 37 reviewed articles, 17 papers considered Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory as their theoretical framework while 8 papers adopted Process-oriented writing theory to introduce OPF. Both Collaborative learning theory and Interactionist theory of L2 acquisition was used in 4 studies, respectively (but the left 8 articles were centered on the report of emperimental data, without resorting to any theory at all). This distribution may result from that Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory is one of the most significant theories in educational psychology. By contrast, Collaborative learning theory and Interactionist theory of L2 acquisition are from other fields.

Comments and implications

Positive aspects favoring online peer feedback studies from esl/efl writing.

The current review combines the studies on online peer feedback from ESL/EFL writing in the past ten years, illustrating the feedback’s specific gains from students’ writing activities. As known to ESL/EFL learners, peer feedback acts as a helpful vehicle for improving their writing ability. The literature review shows that OPF overlaps with FFPF (face-to-face peer feedback) but differs in some aspects from the perspective of facilitating English writing.

To start with, both OPF and FFPF offer a chance for students to undergo a shift in role that they become more careful in providing revision comments to their peers ( Ho, 2012 ). It is well acknowledged that teacher feedback as a component of teacher-centered activity tends to ignore the needs of students themselves, who act as a passive role in various class assignments ( Bredo, 2012 ). By contrast, OPF and FFPF are student-dominated activities, in which the students temporarily experience the shift of role from “student” to “teacher” in the writing tasks and therefore become more reflective and responsible so that more revision-based comments are generated in these activities.

Next, the complementarity of different students’ English knowledge via OPF and FFPF improves their comprehensive writing ability. As claimed by Collaborative Learning Theory ( Bruffee, 1984 ), English knowledge and meanings could be implicitly and explicitly acquired and constructed through social communications among peers because different people hold different perspectives according to their various cultural backgrounds and previous experiences. OPF and FFPF create a social learning environment where students can convey their knowledge, enrich their horizons through peers’ cooperation and then put their comprehensive thinking into their writing ( Saeed et al., 2018 ).

In addition, peer feedback helps students to establish good habits, and a strict teacher’s eyes toward writing practice. Due to the shift from a “student” to a “teacher” in OPF and FFPF, students act in a more active role in making peer feedback, more attentive and more responsible ( Cassidy and Bailey, 2018 ). As a result, they will become more critical of peers’ writing and offer as many suggestions and advice as they can for the peers.

Nevertheless, OPF is superior to FFPF in ESL/EFL writing practice. First, OPF assists in hindering face-to-face embarrassment so that peer feedback writing becomes more relaxed. It can be observed that students are reluctant to voice criticism and express disagreements because they fear destroying the harmonious relationship and causing conflict, even hurting their classmates, particularly in the Confucian context ( Pham et al., 2020 ). OPF enables students to be involved in a more comfortable environment where they are willing and bold to face critique ( Ma, 2020 ). For example, some modifications or mistakes can be pointed out directly by OPF.

Second, more time and more ready preparations are available for the participants when they are instructed to provide OPF instead of FFPF. As it is, FFPF requires instant assessments and comments by students, which is a great challenge, particularly for those who are intermediate or elementary in English proficiency ( Yang and Meng, 2013 ). Opposite to FFPF, OPF does not compel students to give opinions about their peers’ writing drafts right now. Rather, it allows them to have enough time to think about how to produce appropriate comments on the papers to be evaluated. This is consistent with what has been discussed in the Gains from Environment above.

Third, OPF breaks through the space restriction between the writer(s) and the reviewer(s), therefore overcoming potential cultural barriers. More often not, spacial immediacy does not work (e.g., Cov-19 pandemic), and students are forced to stay far away from each other to listen to the class and participate in relevant learning activities ( Rimmer, 2020 ). Under this situation, FFPF fails to come onto the stage, and OPF becomes the only way to fulfill learning exchange including ESL/EFL writing assessments. In addition to it, OPF offers another opportunity to co-participate in activities for people with various cultural backgrounds in remote places ( Bada and Olusegun, 2015 ), breaking through the potential cultural barriers related to space restriction.

Some aspects to be improved for future online peer feedback studies of ESL/EFL writing

Apart from the above positive achievements in past studies, this review reveals some aspects to be improved for further OPF explorations.

Firstly, most of the studies (i.e., 34 articles) were empirical. However, the fewest are theoretical (i.e., 3 articles), showing that researchers prefer to use statistical data to explore OPF issues ( Saeed et al., 2018 ). At first glance, the data are very objective and reliable, for they are rigidly collected and measured. Nevertheless, what the figures mean/imply is reliant on creative thinking and philosophical speculation based on language acquisition and educational psychology. On this account, OPF’s theoretical studies ask for more space in both width and depth to explain the potential benefits or gains from the peer feedback of ESL/EFL writing activities.

Secondly, all the reviewed studies are uniformly based on students’ experience, i.e., what they do as OPF(e.g., in terms of questionnaires and interviews) ( Pham, 2020 ). Little evidence was reported about the direction by teachers when students were making diversified feedback. Although OPF is a student-centered activity in ESL/EFL learning, teachers still play a fundamental role in guiding and monitoring students in the process of OPF ( Zhan et al., 2022 ). However, no study of this kind has come up to date.

Thirdly, ESL/EFL learners’ OPF is affected by their culture they are in. Evidently, this is an important aspect in revealing the diversity and discrepancy of OPF between learners of different cultural backgrounds. Nevertheless, in the past ten years, only one study (i.e., Pham et al., 2020 ) has dealt with the topic. How is Asian culture (e.g., Confucian culture) different from European culture (e.g., Bible-based culture) as students provide feedback from ESL/EFL writing? How is non-English culture transferred into English culture? Such questions merit further exploration to reveal the similarity and diversity of OPF by ESL/EFL learners across cultures.

Fourthly, the reviewed literature is restricted in methodology. Specifically, all the studies used questionnaires and interviews to collect data ( Ma, 2020 ). What if other methods (e.g., text analysis and OPF comparison) were adopted in OPF studies on ESL/EFL writing? More room is needed in this regard to increase the validity and reliability of OPF research.

Fifthly, some gains from OPF were mentioned by previous researches but not involved in this decade. However, these gains from OPF mentioned in our study are very common in the ESL/EFL writing activities. For example, the gains that OPF could bring more revision-based comments was also found by Liu and Sadler (2003) and Song and Usaha (2009) . However, only two articles in this decade explored this topic.

Pedagogical implications on online peer feedback on ESL/EFL writing

Online peer feedback (OPF) is not confined to English writing but functions as a regular practice in various pedagogical activities. What follows focuses on the potential implications of OPF from ESL/EFL writing.

First, the “student-centered” teaching strategy is to be more accented. As shown in this review, OPF is to have students enjoy more latitude in offering comments on the task(s) they are given. That is, OPF instantiates the student-centered pedagogical rationale, which contrasts with the traditional teacher-dominated pedagogy, easily leading to the depressive atmosphere in the classroom and the disharmonious tutor-student relationship. Accordingly, teachers should attempt to reduce the direct infusion of knowledge and offer students more freedom by shifting their role from good listeners to active participants in probing problems. In this regard, OPF is a good choice, the efficient strategy increasing their activity to learning, which as a pedagogical practice is supported by Choice theory ( Glasser, 1998 ; Irvine, 2015 ), claiming that human has some basic needs to satisfy, such as freedom and fun.

Second, students are encouraged to provide OPF based on incremental knowledge. As known to all, acquiring knowledge is a step-by-step process, in which students can only give feedback on the given tasks in light of what they have already known. As a consequence, an English teacher should instruct the students to learn how to give comments on ESL/EFL writing according to their competence. As mentioned above, their feedback can start with local features (e.g., diction and grammar) and move to global features (e.g., discourse coherence and organization) as they progress in English proficiency and general English ability ( Li, 2012 ). This is consistent with the review literature that well-prepared and effective guidance prior to the peer-feedback activities contributes to improving students’ attitudes and increasing the quality of students’ communication ( Chen, 2016 ). This gradual feedback helps develop students’ confidence and self-esteem, the very important psychology in education.

Third, OPF should be adopted regularly in ESL/EFL study to help shaping their personalities and outlooks. As stated above, OPF is an effective way to enhance critical thinking and generate self-esteem through group collaboration, so students can unconsciously strengthen their sense of cooperation and increase their sense of achievement. This collaboration-based pedagogy is favored by Group dynamics theory ( Dörnyei, 1997 ) and Constructive learning theory ( Bada and Olusegun, 2015 ), stating that members in a community are complementary in the levels of intelligence, ways of thinking and even cognitive styles. Besides, group collaboration is conducive to members’ self-esteem ( Bankston and Zhou, 2002 ). In brief, ELS/EFL learners are able to appeal to OPF to achieve comprehensive understanding and generate ideas through mutual inspiration and complement.

Fourth, OPF’s potential function is to be put into full play with recourse to abundant internet-based vehicles. To date, there has come up several learning tools based on the internet, among which are Moodle ( Shang, 2022 ), Facebook, and blog ( Chen, 2012 ; Wahyudin, 2018 ). However, these vehicles are not used as satisfactorily as anticipated in the pedagogue aspect. Therefore, what to do next is that teachers should reflect on how to choose the vehicles and associate them with different assignments or tasks in order to maximize the effects of student-centered approaches like the OPF by peers.

Author contributions

SC and SZ collated and analyzed the data and drafted the first manuscript. TZ and YX revised the manuscript. YL and TW evaluated the theories and provided comments on the manuscript. All authors contributed to the study conception and design, edited the final version of the manuscript, and approved it for publication.

1 In view of lacking an L2 writing anxiety scale for long, Cheng (2004) coined SLWAI, which was broken down into three subcomponents: cognitive (i.e., feelings that they could not understand), somatic (i.e., physical responses due to such feelings) and behavioral (i.e., avoidance because of feelings and physical effects).

This work was supported with grants from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2022061402546) and Humanities and Social Science Research Projects by the Ministry of Education (No. 19YJA740068). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1035803/full#supplementary-material

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This research paper conducted a review of philosophical and scholarly literature which displayed evidence that vocabulary development is a major section that educators should consider focusing for better achievement with English as Second Language students. Implementing educational practices that promote high-frequency vocabulary learning were found to be effective strategies. The paper includes recommendations for administrators and education professionals in various learning environments.

The Effectiveness of Reading Interventions for English Learners: A Research Synthesis (2016)

This article reviews published experimental studies from 2000 to 2012 that evaluated the effects of providing reading interventions to English learners who were at risk for experiencing academic difficulties, including students with learning disabilities. The interventions in these studies included explicit instruction and 10 used published intervention programs. Moderator variables, such as group size, minutes of intervention and type of personnel delivering the intervention, were not significant predictors of outcomes.

Developing Literacy in English Language Learners: Findings From a Review of the Experimental Research (2014)

This commentary reviews the available data on optimal approaches to reading instruction for ELL students, covering the components of literacy (decoding, oral reading fluency, vocabulary and writing) as well as key issues such as differentiating instruction, repetition and reinforcement, scaffolding and capitalizing on a student's first language strengths. We conclude with implications for school psychologists, who are often among the first professionals to be consulted as schools attempt to identify and provide appropriate educational services for these students.

Effective Practices for Developing Literacy Skills of English Language Learners in the English Language (2012)

This literature review presents instructional strategies that have proven to be effective in envisioning what "all" teachers need to know and be able to do to teach English language arts to English learners. Three areas of effective practice are emphasized. The first area is that teachers should recognize that literacy skills in English learners' native languages might influence the ways in which they process linguistic information in English. The second area highlights the argument that teachers should find ways to facilitate English learners' mastery of academic vocabulary. The third area covers the significance of enhancing English learners metacognitive reading skills. The review also discusses two broad pedagogical skills that emerge from both the normative and empirical studies reviewed and are closely related: (a) the teachers' ability to help ELLs construct meaning from the texts or speech represented in the language arts classroom and (b) the teachers' ability to engage English learners in actively learning to read and write.

For Teaching Math, Science and Social Studies

Sheltered instruction observation protocol - what works clearinghouse intervention report (2013).

The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol is a framework for planning and delivering instruction in content areas such as science, history and mathematics to English learners as well as other students. This review focuses on research that examines its impact on the learning of English language learners in grades K-8.

Instruction for English Language Learners in the Social Studies Classroom: A Meta-synthesis (2016)

This paper reviews the extant literature on English learners in the social studies classroom. Discussion of the findings provides three primary implications: (1) the need for linguistically and culturally responsive instruction for English learners in social studies classes, (2) the need for increased training for inservice and preservice social studies teachers in preparation for teaching English learners and (3) the need for future research among English learners in the social studies context.

Language Challenges in Mathematics Education: A literature Review (2016)

It is now accepted that language and mathematics are connected in mathematics learning and teaching and, the potential challenges of language in mathematics have been investigated by a number of researchers. This paper reviews research by applied linguists and mathematics educators to highlight the linguistic challenges of mathematics and suggests pedagogical strategies to help learners in mathematics classrooms. Research on pedagogical practices supports developing mathematics knowledge through attention to the way language is used, suggesting strategies for moving students from informal, everyday ways of talking about mathematics into the registers that construe more technical and precise meanings.

Teacher Education That Works: Preparing Secondary-Level Math and Science Teachers for Success with English Language Learners through Content-Based Instruction (2014)

This article reports on the effects of a program restructuring that implemented coursework specifically designed to prepare pre-service and in-service mathematics, science and ESL teachers to work with English learners in their content and ESL classrooms through collaboration between mainstream STEM and ESL teachers, as well as effective content and language integration. The article presents findings on teachers' attitudes and current practices related to the inclusion of English learners in the secondary-level content classroom and their current level of knowledge and skills in collaborative practice.

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Outreach Packet: English Learner Family Toolkit and App

The Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) has launched a new resource designed specifically to help educators and stakeholders better assist families of English learners (ELs). This resource comes in the form of an outreach packet that includes a guide for effectively promoting the EL Family Toolkit to all EL stakeholders. To learn more about the outreach packet or to download the resource, check out this blog. 

The EL Family Toolkit was recently updated and expanded to support parents, caregivers, and families of EL students. Alongside the toolkit is a user-friendly app accessible on both the App Store and Google Play . The six chapters of the toolkit contain information to help families and caregivers learn about and choose the education services that meet their children’s needs. U.S educators, principals, and other school staff can share the toolkit as a resource for ELs and their families.  

In the outreach packet you will find marketing materials tailored to assist with your various outreach needs. These materials encompass messaging that aligns with the goals of the EL Family Toolkit, sample text to promote the toolkit in newsletters and on social media, webinar slides and recordings to learn more about the toolkit, sample graphics, and more. Whether you're an educator, guidance counselor, family liaison, or part of a community organization, this resource is for you! By sharing the contents of the outreach packet, you actively advocate for EL students and their families. 

Ready to begin your outreach efforts? Download the outreach packet here: https://ncela.ed.gov/educator-support/toolkits/family-toolkit 

For questions, please reach out to [email protected] .  

Windows 11, version 23H2

April 9, 2024—kb5036893 (os builds 22621.3447 and 22631.3447).

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Release Date:

OS Builds 22621.3447 and 22631.3447

2/27/24 IMPORTANT: New dates for the end of non-security updates for Windows 11, version 22H2

The new end date is June 24, 2025 for Windows 11, version 22H2 Enterprise and Education editions. Home and Pro editions of version 22H2 will receive non-security preview updates until June, 26, 2024. 

After these dates, only cumulative monthly security updates will continue for the supported editions of Windows 11, version 22H2. The initial date communicated for this change was February 27, 2024. Based on user feedback, this date has been changed so more customers can take advantage of our continuous innovations . 

For information about Windows update terminology, see the article about the  types of Windows updates  and the  monthly quality update types . For an overview of Windows 11, version 23H2, see its update history page . 

Note  Follow  @WindowsUpdate  to find out when new content is published to the Windows release health dashboard.         

Tip:  The content is within collapsible sections. Click or tap the category name to expand the section.

Voice access

New! You can now use voice access with the following languages:

French (France, Canada)

Spanish (Spain, Mexico)

When you turn on voice access for the first time, Windows will ask you to download a speech model. You might not find a speech model that matches your display language. You can still use voice access in English (US). You can always choose a different language from Settings > Language on the voice access bar.

New! You can now use all voice access features on multiple displays. These include number and grid overlays that, in the past, you could only use on the primary display. While you are using the grid overlay on a screen, you can quickly switch to another display. To do that, use the alphabet or NATO phonetic in your command. For example, “B” or “Bravo” are both valid for the display that is assigned that letter.

New! This update introducesvoice shortcuts or custom commands. You can use them to create your own commands in the supported English dialects. To start, say “what can I say” and click the “Voice shortcuts” tab on the left panel. You can also use the command “show voice shortcuts” to open the Voice shortcuts page. Click Create new shortcut . Use your voice or other input to create a command. Give it a name and select one or more actions. After you fill in the necessary information, click Create . Your command is now ready to use. To view all the voice shortcuts you have created, go to the command help page or use the voice command, “show voice shortcuts.”

New! You can now listen to a preview of the ten natural voices before you download them. See the Narrator section of the September 2023 update for the list. These voices use modern , on-device text-to-speech. Once you download them, they work without an internet connection. However, to listen to a preview, you need an internet connection. To add and use one of the natural voices, follow the steps below.

To open Narrator settings, press the WIN+CTRL+N hotkey.

Under Narrator’s voice, select Add , which is next to Add natural voices .

Select the voice you want to install. You can install all voices, but you must install them one at a time.

The preview will play automatically as you browse the list.

If you like the preview, click Download and Install . The new voice downloads and is ready for use in a few minutes, depending on your internet download speed.

In Narrator settings, select your preferred voice from the menu in Narrator’s voice > Choose a voice .

New! This update adds a new keyboard command to move between the images on a screen. Now, you can use the keys G or Shift+G to move forward or backward between images in Scan mode (Narrator key+space bar).

New! This update improves Narrator’s detection of text in images, which includes handwriting. It also improves the descriptions of images. To use this feature, you must have an active internet connection. You must also turn on the setting to get image descriptions in Narrator settings. To try this experience, select an image and press the Narrator key+CTRL+D.

New! In Microsoft Word, Narrator will announce the presence of bookmarks and draft or resolved comments. It also tells you if accessibility suggestions exist when it reads text in the file.

New! You can now use voice access to open applications, dictate text, and interact with elements on the screen. You can also use your voice to command Narrator. For example, you can tell it to, “speak faster,” “read next line,” and so on. To get started, search for “voice access” in Windows search and set it up.

Windows share

New! This update changes the apps that appear in the Windows share window. The account you use to sign in affects the apps that are in “Share using.” For example, if you use a Microsoft account (MSA) to sign in, you will see Microsoft Teams (free). When you use a Microsoft Entra ID account (formerly Azure Active Directory) to sign in, your Microsoft Teams (work or school) contacts show instead.

New! The Windows share window now supports sharing with WhatsApp in the “Share using” section. If you do not have WhatsApp installed, you can install it from the Windows share window.

Nearby Share

New! This update affects how Nearby Share turns on and off. You can use quick settings or the Settings app to turn on Nearby Share. If you do and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are off, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will turn on to make Nearby Share work as you expect. If you turn off Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, Nearby Share turns off as well.

New! This update improves Nearby Share transfer speed for users on the same network. Before, users had to be on the same private network. Now, users must be on the same public or private network. You can use quick settings to turn on Nearby Share. Right-click a local file in File Explorer and choose “Share.” Then choose to share to a device listed in Nearby Share in the Windows share window.

New! You can now give your device a more friendly name to identify it when sharing. Go to Settings > System > Nearby sharing . There, you can rename your device.

New! This update helps you to learn about the Cast feature and discover when it is available; see the examples in the list below. To cast means to send content that is on your device’s screen to a nearby PC, TV, or other external displays. This happens wirelessly.

You might often switch between windows to complete a task or use Snap Assist to organize your screen space. When you multitask like this, a notification will suggest that you use Cast.

The Cast flyout menu in quick settings gives you more help to find nearby displays, fix connections, and more.

Snap Layouts

New! This update adds suggestions to   Snap Layouts .  They help you to instantly snap multiple app windows together.

New! You can hover over the minimize or maximize button of an app (WIN+Z) to open the layout box. When you do, app icons will display various layout options. Use them to help you to choose the best layout option.

Windows 365 Boot

New! This update adds dedicated mode for Windows 365 Boot . When you sign in on your company-owned device, doing that also signs you in to your Windows 365 Cloud PC. This occurs using passwordless authentication, like Windows Hello for Business.

New! This new dedicated mode also provides the fast account switcher experience. With it, you can quickly switch profiles and sign in. You can also personalize the experience for your username and password. This includes choosing a custom display picture for the lock screen, storing your username, and more.

New! A company can customize what users see on the screen when they sign in to Windows 365 Boot. In shared mode, you can add company branding from Microsoft Intune.

New! This update adds a fail fast mechanism for Windows 365 Boot. It helps while you are signing in to your Cloud PC. Thesmart logic tells you to address network issues or complete app setup so that Windows 365 Boot does not fail.

New! You can now manage the settings of your physical (local) PC from your Cloud PC. Windows 365 Boot makes it easy to directly access and manage sound, display, and other device settings.

Windows 365 Switch

New! It is now easier for Windows 365 Switch to disconnect. You can use your local PC to disconnect from your Cloud PC. Go to Local PC > Task view . Right-click the Cloud PC button and select Disconnect . This update also adds tooltips to the Cloud PC Start menu. They appear on the options for disconnecting and signing out and help you to learn how each one works.

New! This update adds desktop indicators for Windows 365 Switch.You will see the term “Cloud PC” and “Local PC” on the desktop indicator when you switch between them.

New! The time to connect to Windows 365 Frontline Cloud PC from Windows 365 Switch might be long. While you wait, the screen will show you the connection status and the timeout indicator for the Cloud PC. If there is an error, use the new copy button on the error screen to copy the correlation ID. This helps to address the issue faster.

 Improvements

Note:  To view the list of addressed issues, click or tap the OS name to expand the collapsible section.

Important:  Use EKB  KB5027397  to update to Windows 11, version 23H2.

This security update includes quality improvements. Key changes include: 

This build includes all the improvements in Windows 11, version 22H2.

No additional issues are documented for this release.

This security update includes improvements that were a part of update KB5035942  (released March 26, 2024). When you install this KB:  

This update makes miscellaneous security improvements to internal OS functionality. No additional issues were documented for this release.

If you installed earlier updates, only the new updates contained in this package will be downloaded and installed on your device.

For more information about security vulnerabilities, please refer to the Security Update Guide website and the April 2024 Security Updates .

Windows 11 servicing stack update - 22621.3447 and 22631.3447

This update makes quality improvements to the servicing stack, which is the component that installs Windows updates. Servicing stack updates (SSU) ensure that you have a robust and reliable servicing stack so that your devices can receive and install Microsoft updates.

Known issues in this update

Microsoft is not currently aware of any issues with this update.

How to get this update

Before installing this update

Microsoft combines the latest servicing stack update (SSU) for your operating system with the latest cumulative update (LCU). For general information about SSUs, see Servicing stack updates  and  Servicing Stack Updates (SSU): Frequently Asked Questions . 

Install this update

If you want to remove the LCU

To remove the LCU after installing the combined SSU and LCU package, use the DISM/Remove-Package command line option with the LCU package name as the argument. You can find the package name by using this command: DISM /online /get-packages .

Running Windows Update Standalone Installer ( wusa.exe ) with the /uninstall switch on the combined package will not work because the combined package contains the SSU. You cannot remove the SSU from the system after installation.

File information

For a list of the files that are provided in this update, download the  file information for cumulative update 5036893 . 

For a list of the files that are provided in the servicing stack update, download the  file information for the SSU - versions 22621.3447 and 22631.3447 .  

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