Vieraiden kielten opetus ja opiskelu: Opettajien kokemuksia kevään 2020 etäopetusjaksolta

Remote teaching that started in spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic has raised worries but also practices that support learning. We interviewed 15 foreign language teachers in Finland from basic to adult education to examine what they had learned during the remote teaching period and how they had diversified their teaching through remote teaching experiences. We analyzed the data with a thematic approach and identified four main themes that depict how digital tools, materials, and practices that were adopted or became more common in remote teaching can develop foreign language teaching and learning: enriching the teaching-studying-learning process; individualizing the teaching-studying-learning process; versatile demonstration of language skills; and flexible access to language learning. We discuss the main themes with examples of how students can benefit from the new ways of working and material adopted during the remote teaching (also in contact teaching), as well as ways to harness these practices in order to make foreign language learning in Finland more versatile and more available.