Online Vocabulary Tasks for Engaging and Motivating EFL College Students in Distance Learning During the Pandemic and Post-pandemic

Vocabulary teaching and learning constitute a major problem for EFL instructors students. freshman students have difficulty in pronouncing, recognizing the meaning of, using spelling new English words. Due to Covid-19 Pandemic, all college courses shifted online distance since March 2020. Surveys with samples of Saudi Arabia showed lack interest among instruction, participation, giving oral presentations, doing homework-assignments, attending classes, low engagement, interaction, communication self-efficacy. No adaptations been made curricula. Since environment requires modes learning, present study proposes variety vocabulary tasks technologies that can choose from, such as mobile-based applications viz Vocup, Quizlet, Quizizz, game-based mobile apps, Saving Alice, Duolingo, Kahoot, flashcards, audiobooks, collaborative ebook reading; podcasts; dictionaries; concordance-based glosses; picture viewing drawing on tablets; videos; e-portfolios; idioms via graphic novels; multimedia annotations; social networks; project-based mind-maps. To engage, motivate encourage student-student student-instructor interaction environment, following: WhatsApp, ConnectYard, creating community inquiry, partnership, writing exchange projects, student collaboration, integrating text-chat webcam, utilizing technology-mediated task-based language teaching. Online be performed individually, pairs or small groups; interactively collaboratively; synchronously asynchronously. Instructional phases teacher students’ roles are also described.