Innovation in Language Learning

The COVID-19 outbreak and the following social distancing measures called for an emergency response in all walks of daily life and education. The World Universities Response to COVID-19: remote online language teaching  is a collection of 23 case studies that brings together the experience of colleagues from 21 world universities, 18 countries and five continents. These studies focus on the articulation and delivery of such a response during the period from February to August 2020. The collection documents the efforts and innovative ideas that language teaching professionals deployed to bridge the sudden physical detachment between themselves and their students. The financial capabilities, the resources, the availability of the relevant hardware and software as well as experience and expertise might differ from institution to institution but what the collection brings to the fore is the shared enthusiasm, creative drive, passion and stamina of colleagues worldwide. Based on the success of this volume, the editorial team decided to embark on the next project that will be looking at the 2020-2021 academic year. The call for abstracts comes out at the end of June and the frost draft of the papers are expected in October 2021. This second volume is expected to be published in February 2022. In this presentation, I will analyse some of the salient themes that emerge from both of these publications and will conclude by suggesting that we are currently witnessing a significant and unprecedented change in our  communication patterns that leads to a paradigmatic shift in the ways we teach and learn languages.