understanding the impact and challenges of covid-19 pandemic on education system in iran: a review

Coronavirus has affected education systems around the world. schools, colleges, and universities had been closed to control the spread of the coronavirus. school closure has brought difficulties for students, teachers, and parents. during the covid-19 pandemic, faculty members and students had to leave their face-to-face (ftf) classes, and choose online teaching and virtual class infrastructures and move into emergency distance education (ede) contexts. due to this drastic change in the system of education, investigating the probable effects of ede on the quality of education seems essential. in short, it has trapped every spectrum of our life. this study is an attempt to probe the effect of ede on the language skills of iranian efl students. so, distance learning is a solution to continue the education system. in order to draw on the maximum variation due to sampling, the present study embarked on a qualitative descriptive research method, triangulating data through written open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to collect data from 170 efl students from different iranian efl students. thematic analysis (ta)was used to transcribe, codify, and interpret students’ responses. the findings of ta revealed that along with several advantages/disadvantages and challenges that iranian efl students experienced in ede with regard to learning english language skills, ede provided some opportunities and benefits for their learning. the analysis of students’ responses also indicated that they deemed speaking skill as the most negatively influenced language skill and listening skill as the most positively affected skill. furthermore, the findings represented that most of the students held teachers and administrators responsible for the problems and challenges they experienced in ede contexts.