post pandemic covid 19 era through the lenses of secondary efl students: is it time for blended learning?

Being first reported in wuhan china in dec 2019 (huang et al., 2020) and expanding across the world within a short time, education as a particular aspect of life was affected by the covid-19 pandemic outbreak. the lockdown of educational establishments made by the worldwide freeze, resulted in some limitations for instructional management (khalil et al., 2020). due to this unprecedented situation, e-learning has been considered as one of the most critical components in teaching and learning (pham & ho, 2020). this study aims to investigate the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on efl learners, particularly by revealing the viewpoints of secondary school students on online english language learning classes along with face-to-face ones. thus, being designed as qualitative research; interviews were held to investigate secondary students perceptions on online efl teaching throughout pandemic. 20 interviews were conducted with secondary school students they were chosen voluntarily from different schools. the data obtained from the interviews were analyzed through qualitative content analysis by nvivo software program. results of the study indicated that in spite of students motivation and interest to study online, they encounter social distance. in addition, it was found that although students consider the online language classes useful, but they think face-to-face classes cannot be completely replaced. a plethora of research implications was provided by the present study, a number of theoretical implications would be provided by the view of delone& mclean information system (is) associated with is quality and e-learning implementation success. not only, this model would provide the lens on the acknowledged system quality, but it also measures the ease of use, response time, usefulness, availability, flexibility, and reliability (shahzad et al., 2021). additionally, the mental health among students and instructors are mentioned as a critical issue.