France’s economy, like those of many countries, almost came to a complete standstill during the Covid-19 lockdown. For France, it was for two months from 17th March to 11th May. 











In these two months, only establishments such as pharmacies, hospitals, supermarkets, bakeries and weirdly enough, tobacco stores (“bureau de tabac”) that were deemed indispensable to the daily lives were authorised to be opened. All other premises had to be shut down, including education institutions. After the 11th of May, while some commerce was allowed to resume operations albeit with certain sanitation protocols, most schools were basically closed till end of August.












So, what are the irregular verbs in English?





For those who are new to my podcast, I am a freelance English teacher in France. I spend most of my time teaching English to students in universities and also nursing and midwifery schools. Occasionally, I teach corporate executives too.











During the lockdown period in March, April and May, most of my scheduled lessons were cancelled. Many schools were not well-equipped in terms of digital infrastructure and also not prepared psychologically to step out of the traditional classrooms. Only a handful of schools were willing to step out of their comfort zones and scrambled into the bandwagon of digitalization of learning. Overnight, for better or worse, education institutions around the world had to rely heavily on video conferencing services to conduct virtual classes, and also learning management systems (LMS) such as Moodle to manage the delivery of educational content.











Before the pandemic, hardly any schools would entertain the idea of having their scholars spending 1.5h to 2.0h in front of a computer screen, learning English from a teacher who was not physically with them in a four-wall classroom. Even the adult corporate students were comforted by the physical presence of a teacher in their journey of language acquisition. The Covid-19 pandemic has turned everything topsy turvy. 











Distance learning is not new. It pioneered with the correspondence study using books. It was then followed by learning through video tapes and cassettes, and then finally online classes through MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) which started around 2007. Now, the social distancing restrictions have obliged people to adopt videoconferencing if they would like to continue their education.












I could better make use of the unpaid time spent on commute.





As a freelance teacher, I do not have a regular 9 to 5 job. I have to travel extensively to reach the various schools and the offices of the professional executives. It’s not an exaggeration when I say that at times, the total time I spend on commute, may be same or more than my actual teaching time.