COVID-19: Challenges of Online Teaching among ESL Educators of Private Higher Learning Institutions in Malaysia

The serious consequences of COVID-19 have resulted in a temporary slowdown in different sectors of daily activities including the education sector. In Malaysia, the impact of the pandemic has caused all the classes to be conducted online. The present study aims to investigate the challenges faced by English Second Language (ESL) educators in online teaching. Using a qualitative approach, in-depth phone interviews were conducted with 20 ESL educators of Private Higher Learning Institutions. The findings indicated that they encountered problems such as isolation, lack of motivation in online teaching, technical difficulties with online teaching tools, time-consuming resources and work-life imbalance. The findings further revealed that ESL educators’ work-life imbalance had emotionally impacted their families and social relations, which in turn had affected their professional lives. Thus, by understanding the problems, educational institutions can come up with short and long-term strategies to ensure that ESL educators can be productive regardless of the mode of teaching activities. Among them would be introducing pertinent courses in online teaching, Internet training, and the integration of multimedia resources that could improve online teaching.