english language teaching during the covid-19 pandemic: a global outlook on challenges and solutions

Following the sudden spread of the covid-19 pandemic in late 2019, the pre-planned, well-organized teaching shifted urgently to a new form of online education (emergency remote teaching, ert). accordingly, the revolutionized education brought about several challenges for learners, teachers, and authorities all around the world. the present study tried to systematically review, firstly, the challenges that the three groups faced, secondly, the way they dealt with those challenges, and finally, the possible solutions offered in the studies. the two major databases of web of science and scopus were searched for elt articles published between 2020 and july 2022. a total of 427 publications were found in the initial search. following the exclusion and inclusion criteria, 76 studies, which exclusively focused on challenges and solutions of ert, remained for the final analysis. final publications were thoroughly scrutinized regarding challenges, difficulties, and barriers as well as the given solutions, benefits, and opportunities. after rigorous coding of the data, the challenges were classified into the challenges related to technology, pedagogy, communication (interaction), and psychology (emotion). furthermore, solutions proposed in the publications were coded as solutions that facilitated during-covid education and post-covid education. pedagogical and practical implications along with recommendations for students, teachers, and authorities have been discussed in the study.