Schools across Canada turn to distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even during regular times, these learners face significant barriers, so today, those challenges have multiplied since going online.​

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The Covid-19 pandemic has brought extra challenges to learning the language during this past year. Additional challenges of finding other methods of practicing their English with others and lack of daily interactions with such people can slow down learning the language and eventually affect the person's self-motivation. It doesn't help that remote learning and the school curriculum have slowly shifted to some online parts, which vastly reduces social interaction, critical in learning a language. Many teachers had to adapt to the new curriculum to create new methods and make themselves available to help students during online sessions.

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To reduce these challenges, communication between the teacher and the student is vital! Teachers can regularly check in with their students and offer help if they are struggling with the language. Teachers can send updates to parents/guardians to see if they can offer some kind of personal help or stress and anxiety they're having or work together to reduce the amount of extra homework to look after their wellbeing. Supplementary online learning like interactive websites or games to continue the learning process can help which can reinforce the concepts they may have learned in class. Although the interactions are limited, they are still alternate ways to keep practicing English, like FaceTiming or video chatting with other friends in your class or someone else who speaks English. Helping these ESL students ease their nerves and finding alternative ways to teach, like watching videos or playing English-learning-based games, can make this transition to online learning smoother.