The article is devoted to an important issue of maintaining students’ interest at English language on-line lessons. The problem has become especially acute during the pandemic of COVID-19 when all the lessons at universities were moved to different educational platforms that was challenging for both students and teachers. One of the biggest problems was to keep students as interested in the subject as they were during their offline lessons. To study the issue the authors had a close look at the situation with distance learning at the Kazan Federal University and especially Institute of International Relations that prepares linguists with a major in translation. In order to obtain information about the changes in students’ motivation the authors asked students and teachers to assess the students’ motivation with the start of pandemic.