Covid-19-Prompted Emergency Distance English Language Education from EFL Students’Perspective - A Scoping Review on Challenges and Responses

Oct 15, 2026

The profound and permanent impact of the Covid-19 pandemic transformed physical classrooms into online/distance settings, producing uncertainty in educational contexts. Emergency Distance Education became the only practical way to sustain learning, with Emergency Distance English Language Education (EDELE) tailored to English language instruction. This scoping review identifies challenges experienced by EFL students and synthesizes responses implemented by teachers, students, and institutions.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages25

Reading Time1 h 3 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Literature Review

Covid-19-Prompted Emergency Distance English Language Education from EFL Students’Perspective: A Scoping Review on Challenges and Responses Tuçe ÖZTÜRK KARATAŞ1 Mersin University Hülya TUNCER2 Çukurova University Abstract The profound and permanent impact of the Covid-19 pandemic caused a global closure of universities and schools by transforming physical classrooms into online/distance settings. Such a sudden shift resulted in uncertainty in the educational context. During the pandemic, the only way to sustain education was to benefit from distance education, which is defined as Emergency Distance Education. Specifically focusing on English language education in these emergency circumstances, such a distance education might be defined as Emergency Distance English Language Education (EDELE) . In such a rush, both challenges and opportunities have been experienced in EDELE. Therefore, recent studies focus on how to respond to those challenges to improve the conditions of EDELE. Thus, this scoping review study aims to first identify (a) challenges experienced during EDELE, and then (b) responses for those challenges during EDELE from the perspectives of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students. Via NVivo 11 Plus, the scoped studies focusing on EFL students were inductively and thematically analysed. The results revealed the challenges during EDELE centred around five main actions: changed, caused, revealed, increased, and decreased. Additionally, thematic analyses of the responses were organized around the implementations or recommendations by three stakeholders: teachers, students, and institutions. The current study contributes to EFL settings in improving distance education circumstances. Keywords: Emergency Distance English Language Education (EDELE), Scoping Review, Covid-19, NVivo DOI: 10.29329/epasr.2022.478.4 Submitted: 09 September 2022 Accepted: 28 October 2022 Published: 05 December 2022 1Research Assistant Dr., Faculty of Education, Mersin University, Mersin, Türkiye, ORCID: 0000-0002-3844-3574 Correspondence: [ecut14@gmail.com](ecut14@gmail.com) 2 Instructor Dr., Faculty of Education, Çukurova University, Adana, Türkiye, ORCID: 0000-0001-8536-6471, [Email: hulyatncr@gmail.com](Email: hulyatncr@gmail.com) Introduction The unexpected Covid-19 pandemic which began at the end of 2019 impacted every territory of our world. As a response to the pandemic within educational contexts, some measures were taken quickly and numerous related phrases have been carved into our minds such as “closure of institutions, schools and colleges”, “temporary solutions”, “going into lockdowns”, “online education” and “shifting to emergency remote teaching”. Transition emerged to be the major keyword among all those, and this shifting process required a transition in the following facets: a) from face-to-face education to online/distance education, b) from learning in groups to more individualized learning, c) from slow motion to quick-paced actions, d) from old/outdated technologies to new/latest technologies, e) from lecture-based/teacher-centred lessons to interactive/student-based lessons, f) from focus on the content to more towards the implementation, and g) from teacher-student dyad to teacher-student-parent (family/immediate environment) triad. All of those transitions led to the rebuilding of the concept of education. They were somewhat necessary in such a threatening situation to enhance the educational contexts, yet how all these transitions were realized in different contexts is open to discussion, of course – depending on the conditions each country, each institution, each teacher and student has. Literature Review The Covid-19 crisis has led most schools and institutions to benefit from various computerbased education modalities as a strategy to overcome interruptions ofthe pandemic to coursework. Infact, distance education and online education are among the buzzwords d

FAQs

What is Emergency Distance English Language Education (EDELE) in this study?

EDELE refers to distance education used under emergency circumstances during the Covid-19 pandemic to sustain English language education when traditional schooling was disrupted.

What kinds of challenges did EFL students experience during EDELE?

The review reports challenges grouped around five main actions: changed, caused, revealed, increased, and decreased.

How were responses to the challenges organized in the review?

The responses were thematically analyzed as implementations or recommendations from three stakeholders: teachers, students, and institutions.

Oct 15, 2026

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