Abstract : Online and blended teaching has been implemented in many higher education institutions for several decades now. However, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many institutions to change their face-to-face and blended teaching into exclusively online teaching. This resulted in a more frequent and different use of tools and teaching genres (i.e., digital genres) that could eventually lead teachers to the exploration of different teaching approaches. Some research has already focused on digital genres and their characteristics. However, the pandemic has disclosed new practices and applications, which have received limited attention up to now. The aim of the present research is to find out the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on English language teaching concerning the use of multimodal digital genres and tools. English language lecturers in 18 countries were surveyed in April 2020, in the early stages of the pandemic, and then 1 year later, in April 2021. Their answers show that, although most institutions moved to online teaching, it was in the frame of ‘emergency remote teaching’, as there was no real change in methodology. Indeed, teachers reported having learnt and used new tools for their online teaching. Some of them also mentioned the pedagogical advantages and specificities of digital genres for online teaching. Yet, results from the present study show that such expansion of emergent technologies has not led teachers to a further reflection on their teaching practices and ultimately to the adoption of a different pedagogy.
