Best Digital Platforms in ELT during New Norms Era for Remote Area

The use of E- learning in English Language Teaching (ELT) has been strongly promoted since the pandemics Covid-19 is widely spread. Many researches have been conducted to find the best digital online learning to be used in the classroom. However, little to no research investigates about the most suitable digital online learning for the students living in the remote area whereas, especially in Indonesia, there were so many remote areas. Thus, this paper assists to describe the best digital platforms to be used in the remote Area. There were 15 ELT students involved as the participants. The chosen students were the students living in remote area. The instruments were a questionnaire. The result showed that Messenger Application, especially WhatsApp is the most preferred by the students living in the remote area, following by LMS represented by google classroom, and the last is video conference, particularly zoom. The finding of this research can become a consideration for the educators, especially teaching in remote area, in selecting the digital platform in online learning. &nbsp

EFL College Students' Skill in Using Collocations in Writing Essays

Collocation is a natural order of words in which one word should be attached to another in a particular context. For students who learn English as a foreign language (EFL students), using collocations has been recognized to become a problem. This article is going to describe EFL college students’ skill in using collocations in writing essays. 42 students from the same class were selected. They were the 4th semester students of English Education Study Program at Teacher Training and Education Faculty of UMRAH who took Essay Writing course in the academic year 2019/ 2020. The students were given a take-home assignment to write essays. Then, the essays were analyzed to find out the students’ skill in using collocations. It was found that in using collocation in writing essays, 5 students had excellent skill, 14 students had good skill, and 23 students had low skill. The incorrect use of collocations consisted of lexical and grammatical collocations. Finally, it is hoped that these findings could be a useful input for future Essay Writing course

EFL students’ preferences on digital platforms during emergency remote teaching: Video Conference, LMS, or Messenger Application?

The use of technology in language learning has extensively expanded in line with the advancement of technology itself. However, the investigation into the implementation of video conferences, learning management systems, and mobile applications, particularly during the emergency remote teaching/the Covid-19 pandemic, is still lacking. This paper presents survey data from three groups of Indonesian EFL students using three different digital learning platforms: Cisco WebEx Meeting video conferencing, Google Classroom learning management system (LMS), and WhatsApp mobile messenger application. The purpose of the study was to determine the students’ preferences including their perception and point of views on using the platforms and application during the remote teaching situation. There were 140 EFL students from two universities/institutes in Jakarta and Aceh to take part as the participants. The instrument was a questionnaire based on criteria of CALL evaluation, and descriptive analysis using percentages and thematic analysis was applied. The findings show that the Cisco WebEx Meeting, Google Classroom, and WhatsApp gained highly positive agreement on all criteria. Specifically, the Cisco WebEx meeting got the highest scores on authenticity and meaning focus. Meanwhile, for GC and WhatsApp, the criteria on language learning potential, meaning focus and authenticity achieved the highest scores. Moreover, WhatsApp is the most preferred among others in meaning focus, learner fit, positive impact, and practicality.  However, the three digital platforms received the lowest score on a positive impact at each group-participant. It seemingly indicates that they thought the full online digital learning system they experienced during ERT is less preferable than face-to-face learning

Satisfaction, Challenges, and Communication Channel Preferences (SCaCCP) towards Remote Teaching-Learning (RTL) during Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

The unexpected emergence of the deadly COVID-19 all over the world affected very much the education sector which led into the use of remote teaching-learning (RTL). This gave rise to the conduct of this study which focused on the profile of the 127 faculty members and 942 student respondents along with their level of satisfaction, degree of challenges encountered and communication channel preferences towards the remote teaching-learning. The respondents were the graduate and undergraduate faculty and students at a certain State University in Pangasinan, Philippines who experienced the RTL from Academic Years 2020-2022. The expanded Technology Model (TAM) was the theoretical model behind this study. The quantitative descriptive method and purposive sampling were used. The instrument was adopted and administered through google forms.  In analyzing the data: frequency counts and percentages are used in terms of the profile of respondents; weighted mean, average weighted mean, and ranking are utilized in level of satisfaction, degree on seriousness of challenges encountered and communication channel preferences while t-test was used in computing the significant difference along satisfaction, challenges, and communication channel preference. Results revealed that the satisfaction level on remote teaching-learning was Highly Satisfied. On the other hand, the degree of seriousness encountered by teachers and students in RTL was moderate. The top three picked preferred communication channel preferences of the respondents were Group Video Conferencing, Email, and Learning Management System (LMS) discussion forum. The level of satisfaction, the challenges encountered are significantly different except on communication channel preferences