Opportunities and challenges of EFL teachers and students in the Gegharkunik region

Abstract

Action research has been widely used in various educational settings for a range of purposes. It is used in EFL classrooms to promote the level of education and bring educational changes and developments. The current study aims at finding out the English language teaching and learning needs of the teachers and the students and to address them with the help of creating a teacher community in the Gegharkunik region. Being one of the teachers in the same region and noticing the poor teaching and learning styles gave me the motivation to do this action research. Under the circumstances of Covid-19 almost all the universities went online which brought hardships and obstacles for both the teachers and the students. After several months of online teaching and learning, some parts of Armenia went face to face meetings and this study was conducted in a face-to-face setting. The participants of this study were 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students and three English teachers studying and teaching at a high school in the Gegharkunik region. This study is action research. The project is cyclical and not linear, including a researcher, three teachers and students. Both quantitative and qualitative data are incorporated in this study. The qualitative data was collected through pre and post interviews with the teachers and classroom observations. At the same time, quantitative data was gathered through pre and post-surveys with the students. The results of the study showed that the teacher community played an efficient role in teacher professional development and the students language learning proficiency development.