Discrepancy between language learners and teachers concerns about emergency remote teaching

Emergency remote teaching refers to the unanticipated, involuntary shift to a virtual learning environment due to, for example, a natural disaster or political instability. The sudden nature of this transition creates additional challenges to effective learning. In this article, we investigate one such challenge, namely the potential for teacher–student miscommunication. We report on a study involving 674 language learners and 61 language teachers. The participants were asked to rate a number of education-related ١problems that could potentially arise in the context of emergency remote teaching. Learners rated these concerns in terms of the extent to which they had actually experienced them, while teachers were asked to rate the extent to which they perceived these to be concerns for their students. The results showed that teachers believed that students required additional training on using learning management systems, that students did not take online teaching seriously, and that emergency remote teaching would encourage students to cheat. Students disagreed with these statements (ds = 0.53–0.65). We discuss the implications of these teacher–learner discrepancies in light of the need for explicit guidelines and clearer expectations of students during online learning and assessment.