OPPORTUNITIES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING IN TIMES OF CRISIS: DBE TV, ONLINE CLUBS, AND WWW.JUVENTUDE.LIFE A. Şahin, A. Ertaş Atılım University (TURKEY) Abstract When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in March 2020 for the first time in Turkey, there were many uncertainties taking place in the minds of everyone in the society. There were some innovative applications needed. For this purpose, Atılım University Department of Basic English established a TV channel, named “DBE TV”, broadcasting language games for four days a week on Zoom. Secondly, they opened 86 clubs with the help of their instructors in three categories (Literature, Media, and Leisure) and students attended these clubs for two class hours a week. Lastly, a website (www.juventude.life) open to the public was set up and students’ club outputs were shared through this website. This paper aims to first present how Atılım University, Department of Basic English could turn the hurdles they faced during those hard times of turmoil to their advantage by introducing these new applications in the English Language Teaching field and to share the results and findings of the questionnaires administered to both students and the instructors on them. Keywords: English language teaching, DBETV, Intensive English Programs, Online Clubs, www.juventude.life, student motivation, COVID-19. 1 INTRODUCTION When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out first in March 2020, the uncertainties evaded all parts of human life. Education was not an exceptional field that could save itself from the negative effects of the pandemic. The sudden and unexpected shift from face-to-face model to distance teaching model in education added more to these uncertainties in the minds of the educational administrators. It was a personal and professional shock which shook the entire world [2]. Moreover, this forced the institutions take some decisions on different scenarios [5]. However, there were also some opportunities offered by the vast Distance Education Environment created after the pandemic because in online learning students can be anytime anywhere [6]. Atılım University (Ankara/Turkey), Department of Basic English (DBE), which offers a year-long intensive English preparatory program to its students before they start taking courses from their departments, was one of those departments that used the Covid-19 crisis to the advantage of the learning and well-being of their students. There were some challenges observed during these hard times. First of all, the sudden shift from face- to-face to online teaching brought some emotional and psychological impacts among the students [1]. Moreover, it is also known that students struggle with online learning [3]. Secondly, the pandemic caused an increase in their anxiety level [4]. Therefore, the new distance teaching environment required some attractive activities that would let the students enjoy their distance learning time more. Firstly, a TV channel called “DBE TV” broadcasting hour-long language games for language learners for four days of the week via Zoom with the following features : • The names of the DBE TV games were “LetterWiz”, “Beat me If you Can”, “Just 4 Fun”, and “IQ lab”. • All DBE TV games were after school hours starting at 18:00. • DBE Instructors used pseudonyms instead of their real names and they created their online characters. • All winners of the DBE TV games received gift cards from an online bookstore. DBE TV program schedule with brief descriptions of the DBE TV games can be found below in Figure 1. Proceedings of EDULEARN21 Conference 5th-6th July 2021 ISBN: 978-84-09-31267-2 11206