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and geographic separation in addition to providing the opportunity for students to
interact with their teacher more frequently and discuss the material that is being
taught in class through video conferencing which can undoubtedly influence their
language and communication skills.
Moreover, it was reported in a study that original educational technologies that are
‘computer-mediated’ (Guzley, Avanzino, & Bor, 2001, p. 6) can effectively stimulate
the environment in distance learning and that the effectiveness of a virtual classroom
and satisfaction of the learners depend on the adequacy of the lecturers’ audio, video,
and content clarity through the use of diagrams, educational tasks and activities, and
other content that will make the teaching and learning experience for both; the
instructor and learners easier and beneficial. Another article by Angiello & Steven
(2015) demonstrates that virtual classrooms can be more challenging than traditional
classrooms as the quality of the lesson depends completely on the way the material is
delivered by the instructor in class and how often an interaction between the teacher
and the learner takes place as well as collaboration, engagement of the learners,
classroom management and time management. Moreover, Steven (2015) states that
an online lesson can be more entertaining than a traditional one without any real-time
interaction and gives instructors a chance to be more specific, measurable, attainable
and not too formal with students if they are teaching one to one lessons.
The importance of technology and innovation in Teaching English as a
second/foreign language at a distance was emphasized by Xu (2013) according to his
analysis and interpretation of a study he conducted on DEL (distance English
Learning). The study displays the functions that can be used on the cloud to support
distributing and storing learning sources for instructors due to the way distance
learning influences ‘learners’ autonomy, initiative and subjectivity to the greatest