10
degree’ (Xu, 2013, p. 337). At the end, the study was concluded by a statement that
illustrates that distance English teaching experiences worked successfully with
learners as the new methods of teaching English at a distance encourage improving
learners’ ‘multi-dimensional learning experiences’ (p. 342) by providing them with
an online syllabus, exercises and tests, calendar, homework, discussion groups that
have free questions and answers, announcement via E-mail, SMS and iMessage in
addition to other tools (Xu, 2013).
A different study conducted on “the impact of interactive environment and
metacognitive support on academic achievement and transactional distance in online
learning” (Yılmaz & Keser, 2017) somehow covered most of the outcomes that all
the researchers and scholars developed in their papers which emphasize that distance
learning does support the development of effective communication skills as well as
interpersonal skills where learners will start having the ability to work in teams
through T-S interaction and learn how to persuade others by negotiation in the target
language. Moreover, it was also stated that learners could also develop their conflict
resolution skills as well as report writing skills if it was not emphasized by the
instructors. On the other hand, Wake and Bunn (2015) tackle in their study the
challenges that instructors face while teaching in a virtual classroom, therefore, they
provide distance teaching methods that illustrate pedagogical best practices to
enhance the quality of the teaching and learning processes inside of class. Moreover,
they emphasize that teachers can use these challenges as a tool to improve their
online instructions and offered some fruitful recommendations for an effective online
lesson delivery to enhance learners’ ‘reading comprehension, writing skill,
professional communication, efficacy, resourcefulness, initiative and persistence,
minimalism, critical thinking as well as analysis and synthesis’ (Wake & Bunn, 2015,