Journal of Social, Humanity, and Education (JSHE) ISSN 2746-623X, Vol 2, No 4, 2022, 357-366 https://doi.org/10.35912/jshe.v2i4.979 Teaching and Learning of English as a Foreign Language: The Impact of COVID-19 Mohammad Qasim Farooqi Department of English Language and Literature, Badghis Institute of Higher Education, Afghanistan mhqasimfarooqi@gmail.com Article History Received on 16 January 2022 1 st Revision on 7 March 2022 2 nd Revision on 18 July 2022 3 rd Revision on 19 July 2022 4 th Revision on 22 July 2022 5 th Revision on 28 July 2022 6 th Revision on 9 August 2022 Accepted on 11 August 2022 Abstract Purpose: The purpose of this study was to discover the primary changes that the higher education systems–especially at the department level–brought in their teaching systems as a result of COVID-19. Considering COVID-19, this study also explored the challenges and opportunities EFL learners experienced in their learning contexts. Research Methodology: A qualitative research design was employed in the present study where semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from the study population who were 3 teachers and 7 students sampled through the purposive sampling technique from the English Department at Badghis Institute of Higher Education in Badghis, Afghanistan. The collected data from the participants were transcribed and read several times and the emerged codes and themes were analyzed accordingly. Results: The findings of this study indicated that there were some major changes in the teaching instructions where the learners faced some barriers when trying to adapt themselves to new changes. On the other hand, the paper revealed some opportunities EFL learners experienced in dealing with the changes in the teaching and learning system. Limitations: The limited sample size and the non-random selection method could be listed as limitations of this study. Contributions: The current paper provides the readers with suggestive approaches and opportunities university teachers and students could consider during any future pandemic. Keywords: Education system, Changes, Challenges of COVID-19, Opportunities, Afghanistan How to Cite: Farooqi, M. Q. (2022). Teaching and Learning of English as a Foreign Language: The Impact of COVID-19. Journal of Social, Humanity, and Education, 2(4), 357-366. 1. Introduction Covid-19 outbreaks have taken the entire world by surprise. In December 2019, Wuhan city in China was the first to diagnose the coronavirus disease (World Health Organization (WHO), as cited in Uddin and Uddin, 2021). Then it spread throughout the world and brought enormous changes in almost all human life systems. One of the significant changes it brought was to the education system throughout the world. In order to stop the COVID-19 epidemic from spreading, nearly all educational institutions worldwide have either closed or modified how they provide education (UNESCO, 2021). In most cases, teaching online has become the standard delivery method. Like many other countries, the education system in Afghanistan was also severely affected by the COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdown. Afghanistan's Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) closed all educational institutions on March 14, 2020 (Naidoo& Arian, as cited in Khuram, 2021) to stop the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic, and consequently decided to use an online teaching system to continue the teaching and learning process. Therefore, The Higher Education Learning Management System (HELMS) was developed as an online platform by the MoHE of Afghanistan to conduct online teaching and learning (Hashemi, 2021). Thus, online teaching and learning alternated face-to-face