Shifting future: Language teaching today and tomorrow

With the present pandemic, a sudden shift away from classrooms has changed the focus of language teaching. New sources, methods, and techniques had to be employed, generating unanticipated changes both for language teachers and language learners. This paper aims to describe the future of language education with the presentation of possible scenarios embedded into the course of paradigm shifts in language teaching. The study analyzes those events, processes, and tendencies which may carry predictive value for the future of language teaching. Those changes which have emerged due to online education, using focus groups and interview-based qualitative research methods for data collection are defined. According to the research results, the future of language teaching and learning is going to be based on four pillars and increased autonomy, which refers to individually tailored methods and contents during online education.   Keywords: Future; language teaching; online education; qualitative research.