New Challenges Of Adapting To Teaching English In The Online Academic Environment

March 2019 will definitely be remembered as the trigger of a historic event worldwide. Needless to say that the Romanian society as well had to learn almost overnight how to adapt and face such a dramatic situation in an already weakened and unstable social and political context. The pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus brought along not only fear for individual health and social security, but also an urgent need to switch to an almost exclusively online environment. The main focus of this paper is to highlight the empirical observations connected to teaching foreign languages in the online Romanian academic environment. These observations are based on personal experience and informal interviews and discussions with students and other teachers, as well as conclusions drawn from listening, watching and attending other online events, webinars and conferences on this topic. The short period of time we have had since the beginning of this regrettable situation has forced teachers worldwide to learn how to adapt, how to face and how to find solutions to the challenges raised by this swift shift to digitalisation and online teaching and learning. The interest, the solutions and the adaptations found so far emphasise the desire to improve and to balance the many concerns and shortcomings connected to this type of teaching and learning process. This, in turn, will lead to new ones in the future and even if, sooner or later, people happily manage to return to the traditional teaching system, many of them will most likely be further considered and integrated in new teaching and learning methods and techniques, as part of a natural technological and scientific process.