Abstract:

In the wake of COVID-19, and to counter this horrible pandemic, the government of Pakistan introduced the policy of strict lockdown and to continue teaching/learning activities, online teaching/learning system was introduced in the higher educational institutes, especially in the public and private sector universities which were already devoid of cybernetic milieus. The aim of this was to explore the impact of online learning on learners� self-reported satisfaction in L2 during COVID-19 in the universities of the Punjab. This research uses mixed method type and in this context a students� questionnaire was circulated online among students and around 500 out of 800 students responded. Most of the respondents indicated that they find complications and problems about the course contents projected for online learning in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic as these contents are suited in face to face classroom settings and if, unfortunately this pandemic situation lasts for a long period of time the revision of the L2 course contents is inevitable otherwise the performance of the students will decrease rapidly. Similarly, a number of challenges were reported from the research population about the second question of research, as the major part of the population lives in villages, desserts, and hilly areas by which their socio-economic condition usually remains very low by which the students of these areas are devoid of economic and social resources to provide themselves internet facilities, smartphones and laptops that are inevitable to their online learning. Most of the foreign language learners during their online classes remained absent and the have different reasons in this context and their reported proficiency in various segments i.e. in assignments, presentations and quizzes program remained lesser as they were showing in traditional classroom environment. The outcomes from the research will be of great importance to the federal and provincial ministries of education, universities administrators, teachers and students in taking future emergency decisions relating to the execution of online learning programs for students in general and L2 learners in particular.

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