Rethinking the Design of English Language Teaching Online Using the Flipped Classroom Approach

Online teaching has been in use for a while, but not many people cared to embrace it as a method of teaching until the COVID-19 pandemic literally forced them into giving it a consideration. The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led to the shutting down of schools across the country and several parts of the world. Consequently, many state governments and educational institutions turned to media broadcasts as well as online teaching to keep learners engaged. For the first time in decades, teleconferencing applications and Internet services such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Skype witnessed a surge in their use for teaching and learning as well as for conducting meetings in different spheres of life such as governance and business. Thus, many English language instructors began to teach online without any appreciable time to understand the specialized techniques for the design of online teaching for maximum benefit to learners. Many English language instructors arranged for synchronous online classes that lasted between one to three hours. From personal experiences, the researchers observed that many learners in such classes experienced boredom and disengaged from the live online classes. This prompted the researchers to rethink how online English language teaching can be designed for maximum engagement of learners. This paper proposes the incorporation of the flipped classroom approach into the design of online English language teaching and presents steps that English language instructors need to take to be able to incorporate the flipped classroom approach into online English Language teaching for maximum benefits and learners' engagement.