Abstract:

This research focused on TESL trainee teachers’ level of knowledge, attitude and readiness towards online teaching during their practicum. The trainees were required to implement online teaching with their target group of students (a minimum of 5 students) via an online platform such as Google classroom, Whatsapp Video, Microsoft Teams,EasyClass, and they were evaluated by their supervising lecturers in real time. An online questionnaire was administered to a sample of 80 TESL trainee teachers from Universiti Selangor (UNISEL), Malaysia. The results showed that the trainee teachers’ knowledge of online teaching was at a moderately high level with an average value of mean = 3.11, s.d = 0.78. This is hardly surprising as the TESL teachers trainees, like many young adults, are part of the new IT-literate community called‘digital natives’.This Based on the findings, we can conclude that the level of knowledge, attitude and readiness of UNISEL’s TESL teacher trainees were at moderately high levels. This can be attributed to their background, ability and confidence as digital natives who are able to adapt to changes and make the most of technology even though they were not fully prepared to implement online teaching.

Keywords:

COVID-19, online teaching, teacher training, e-learning, TESL.