ADAPTATIONS TO EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING ON EFL WRITING COURSE DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced lecturers and students to stay home and manage online remote teaching systems. This current study explored the adaptations to emergency online teaching on EFL Academic Writing courses in the aspect of practices and perception from both lecturer and students at university. A mixed-method approach was selected using an exploratory sequential design. The participants were a lecturer and 51 university students registered for the course at a private university in Jakarta. The instruments were the lecturer’s documents from 14 meetings and an online questionnaire sequentially. The data were then analyzed using descriptive and thematic qualitative data analysis. The findings showed that the lecturer’s adaptations consisted of digital learning platforms, material delivery, teaching methods/techniques, and writing activity and assessment. Some students assumed that attending online remote teaching was confusing, while others had no adjustments and called it a new and valuable experience. In general, they perceived positive perceptions toward teaching practices. The WhatsApp mobile messenger with content materials in PDF format using a Genre-based approach is very effective in managing Academic Writing courses for emergency remote teaching during the pandemic.


INTRODUCTION
When the outbreaks of novel coronaviruses  reached a great number of cases outside China, WHO declared it a world pandemic in mid-March 2020 (Cucinotta & Vanelli, 2020). The scale of impacts is exceptional and unusual. This pandemic has brought huge challenges to public health in many countries (Djalante et al., 2020) In educational sector, more than 800 million children and young people have been impacted because of the policy of national school closures in 107 countries (Viner et al., 2020). They learn from home to curb the spread of the Covid-19 disease and to limit the number of cases among people. In Indonesia, the first two confirmed cases of Covid-19 were reported on March 2, 2020 by President Joko Widodo (Djalante et al., 2020), and as in Situation Report by WHO in 2020, total confirmed cases in Indonesia reached 113.134 cases through community transmission (WHO, 2020). In response to this situation, the government issued several rules and regulations related to national guidelines of the pandemic situation that led to the application of a large-scale social restriction, and as a consequence, people were forced to work from home as well as learn from home (Purwanto, 2020).
Then amid the pandemic, schools and universities need to maintain their instruction by switching their system from face-to-face into online remote teaching. This teaching system cannot be regarded as normal online learning with well-preparation from the beginning. Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust, & Bond (2020) consider it as an emergency remote teaching. It is a temporary shift of the instructional system to an alternate delivery mode because of crisis situations. From this point of view, emergency remote teaching (ERT) can be separated from a typical online learning design at university; the differences between them can be seen on Table 1. Despite the fact that technology is ubiquitous in education and has become our daily basis (Palvia et al., 2018), applying it to facilitate remote teaching system provides a huge challenge since it is a first-time experience for most teachers and students. For example, Fauzi, Hermawan and Khusuma, (2020) reported that elementary school teachers found some obstacles in conducting online remote teaching due to poor internet connection and facility and learning management, including planning, implementing and evaluating the lesson. It was also reported by Atmojo & Nugroho (2020) that EFL teachers at secondary schools from 11 different cities had applied several digital platforms for their English remote classes, yet they seemingly ended with failure because of lack of preparation and planning. From the higher education context, university students found that online remote learning they had during the pandemic could be attractive and somewhat helpful, yet not truly effective; they still waited to come back to class (Anhusadar, 2020;Sujarwo,et.al., 2020). Likewise, a study by Rahayu (2020) explored students' experience and perception on the synchronous Zoom conference system. She found that students perceived this system accommodates good access to communication; however, face-to-face teaching is still more preferable compared to e-learning. From English lecturers' perceptions, Mardiah (2020) interviewed some lecturers and concluded that e-learning during Covid-19 is not quite effective due to a lack of support from the institution to purchasing internet data; in addition, not all students can afford internet access.
For lecturers who have to manage their online remote teaching system, adaptations to the current system are undeniable and unavoidable to maintain their professional teaching management. For example, Moorhouse (2020) wrote a report to describe how one initial teacher education course should be adjusted due to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease in Hong Kong. The course was prepared for face-to-face instruction at first. However, the suspension occurred on mid-November 2019, and it led to rapid changing of course system. It had to be delivered in online mode with a combination of synchronous and asynchronous system. Session activities and discussion could not be applied. They changed to individual tasks. Micro-teaching was difficult to do. After several sessions, there were less participation and presence through optional video conference on the course. Then, the course adopted a mandatory join on video conferencing session to maximize students' presence.
Struggles and challenges in delivering online(?) instructions during the pandemic occur in all levels of education for both lecturers and students. EFL academic writing course at university is not an exception. EFL writing, particularly in academic genre texts, is difficult and complex including constructing thesis, developing supports, and error-free piece of writing (Seifoori, Mozaheb, & Beigi, 2012). Meanwhile, course objectives are based on the needs of students in the institutions (Widiati & Cahyono, 2001). However, students' writing products still contain ineffectiveness, and inaccuracy in the respect to grammar, vocabulary, sentence patterns, and mechanics (Sundari, Febriyanti, & Saragih, 2018). In ordinary days, the EFL writing course has faced some challenges in achieving its goal. Then amid the pandemic, both teachers and learners need to generate possible solutions and problem-solving along with the rapid change. Research on EFL teaching contexts have been conducted to explore the EFL instruction in the face of Covid-19 using the lens of both teachers and learners, such as the implementation of synchronous video conference (Rahayu, 2020) and activities and challenges faced by EFL teachers at secondary schools (Atmojo & Nugroho, 2020). However, an exploration on how teachers and students adapt to the online remote teaching situation, particularly for EFL writing courses was still undiscovered. The way teacher manages and adjusts the teaching system from preparation to assessment may need to describe as well as how the students keep themselves motivated to learn and to write in crisis circumstances might be urgent to explore. Therefore, this current study addressed to answer the following research questions: (1) What are the practices in adaptations to ERT on EFL academic writing course for both a lecturer and students? (2) What do the students perceive of the teaching practices in adaptations to ERT in EFL academic writing course applied by the lecturer?

Research Design
To meet the research purposes and research questions, a mixed-method research approach was carried out using the explanatory sequential design. Through a mixed-Adaptations to Emergency Remote Teaching on EFL Writing Course During the Rr. Astri Indriana Oktavita,Nurmala Hendrawaty) method design, researchers could get a deeper understanding of practices and perception in adaption to ERT on EFL academic writing course. As stated by Creswell (2012), a mixed-method design is a procedure for collecting, analysing, and mixing both quantitative and qualitative methods in a single study or a series of studies to understand a research problem. For the sequence of data collection, the exploratory sequential design was selected. It involved the procedure of the first collecting qualitative data to explore teaching practices in adaptation to ERT; and then gathering quantitative data to explain students' practice and perception in adaptation to ERT in EFL academic writing course.

Setting and Participants
This present study was conducted in the English Education Department, Faculty of Postgraduate Program at one private university in Jakarta. The academic writing was initially prepared for a face-to-face 14-meeting course with 1.5 h time setting each session from mid-March to mid-July 2020. The first meeting was successfully held in presenting course orientation and warm-up writing activity. But then, after the confirmed cases of Covid-19, national school and university closures were implemented. Teachers and students were forced to stay home and manage remote teaching until the last sessions. The teaching system rapidly changed into online remote teaching.
The participants were one 36-year-old lecturer with a doctoral degree and taught EFL academic writing course and 51 students who registered and attended her course offered in the first semester of the program. The students were 23 males, and 28 females with age range 23-57 years old. They had various graduate (S1) backgrounds, such as Education, German Education, Journalism, Islamic studies, Informatics Engineering, Economics, and Management, but most of them were graduated with English education major.

Data Collection Method(s) and Analysis
There are two steps in collecting data. At first, the teaching practices in adaptation to EFL academic writing were gathered through documentation along 14 meetings of the course, such as lesson plan, materials, learning activity and worksheets as written artefacts. The documents were then collected, named, and categorized into several emerged themes using thematic analysis. The themes emerged from the first data collection were that constructed to design an online questionnaire to gather the students' perceptions on the teaching practices in adaptations. As mentioned by Creswell (2012), a popular application of an exploratory sequential design is to explore a phenomenon, identify themes, design an instrument, and subsequently test it. The online questionnaire was distributed to the participants at the last meeting after the course session had ended. It covers a set of closed-ended questions using the Likert scale to figure out the students' perception on teaching practices and open-ended questions to cater to their practices in adaption to the course. The obtained data were analysed quantitatively using percentages. They were then presented in a combination of numbers using graphs and texts.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION
From the data collection, it was found that though the change from face-to-face class into online remote teaching mode was at a very fast pace, the teacher tried to maintain the course goal and objectives as well as the content materials were quite similar to the ones for the face-to-face program. However, due to the differences on the teaching mode, facilities and interaction before and during online remote teaching, some adaptations need to take to continue teaching management professionally. Then the data were presented in two parts: 1) themes emerged on teaching practices in adaptations, and 2) students' perceptions of the teaching practices in adaptation on EFL writing course.

Adaptation in the use of digital learning platforms
Once the course switched to online remote learning, the teacher decided to use the learning management system (LMS) Google Classroom. The class code was informed to the students. It lasted from meeting 2 to meeting 7. However, the lecturer thought the students' participation and presence were getting lower every week. Moreover, the lack of interaction and discussion stimulated a lot of questions delivered on direct and personal messages. The lecturer also had to respond to the same questions repeatedly on the Stream on Google Classroom. It indicated that the students might not read the lecturer's reply to the other students. Therefore, she initiated to take a survey on the use of other digital platforms on May 17, 2020. The result showed that 45.5% of the students agreed to Google Classroom completed and live session, and 40.9% of them chose WhatsApp and Google Classroom. Then for the rest of the meetings, the lecturer used WhatsApp for marking the students' presence, greetings, distributing materials and learning activity, communication and question and answer session. Meanwhile, Google Classroom helped in greetings and submission of assignment/exercise using Google Forms as seen on Figure  1. For video conference software, zoom video conferencing, as seen in Figure 2, facilitated the session three times (meeting 9, meeting 11, and meeting 12). Two meetings were for presenting discussion on the topics completed by PPT shared presentation, and one meeting was for parallel presentation by selected students in communicating their ideas on the topic.  Figure 2 The Use of Zoom Video Conferencing All in all, in adjusting the situation, the teacher used multiple digital learning platforms, such as learning management system, video conferencing, and mobile messenger application. A similar case occurred for EFL teachers at secondary schools when handling remote teaching during this pandemic. They used learning management system, chat and message, video conference, content maker, online learning provider, and additional resources facilitated by Google Classroom and Schoology (Atmojo & Nugroho, 2020). Moreover, 212 teachers from LPTK in Mataram also applied these types of platforms though some of them also used electronic mail and Moodle (Gunawan, Suranti, & Fathoroni, 2020). The variety of learning tools may stimulate students' engagement and create engaging, attractive content materials (Yulia, 2020).

Adaptation in Material Delivery
At first, on face-to-face teaching mode, the content materials were prepared to be delivered on PPT presentation shared using an LCD projector in the classroom. The session included learning activity and interaction facilitated by printed worksheet. However, those seem hard to be applied in online remote learning. The lecturer chose to add several materials resources in various formats, as seen in Table 2. The lecturer revealed that it was not an easy work to prepare those materials in the intended formats. For example, the lecturer had to learn how to create a recorded video presentation using Quicktime Player Software. Due to the first-time experience and lots of technical problems, she took many times to record the videos. Searching URL links was also not as easy as it was imagined. The lecturer had to select a short video since video streaming requires high internet speed and access. Additionally, the PPT presentation was facilitated by Zoom video conference software. For the lecturer, it was the first time for her to be a host in the video conference session. It took several days to adjust how to operate the features in it finally, and not all of them were well-executed at the session.
Considering the data above, the study by Atmojo and Nugroho (2020) revealed similar findings. EFL teachers in secondary schools searched materials in the forms of PowerPoint slides, YouTube videos, and Word documents. Otherwise, they created their own materials in videos, pictures, PowerPoint slides, Word documents, and PDF documents.

Adaptation in Teaching Method/Techniques
The sessions were initially designed with a variety of pair-work and group-work activities in the classroom. Moreover, in general, the course was adopted several approaches in teaching writing, such as Process Writing approach and Genre-based approach. In the writing process for essay development, a peer-review/feedback, firstly designed in a pair-work activity for argumentative essay, was switched into teacherfeedback through Google Classroom. Feedback and returning the essays to the students were given essays of poor quality because reviewing and writing comments for all essays was very consuming-time and exhausting, while the teacher should prepare the material for the next session. Indeed, peer-review or peer-feedback theoretically and empirically contributes to learning development and increases motivation; at the same time, teacher feedback benefits from giving correct, accurate and appropriate input to students for revision (Loan, 2017). However, teacher-feedback became a realistic option since it was possible to do peer-review/feedback in the class.
Furthermore, discussion through group work were prepared in analysing sample texts, and then one of them should present and communicate them in class. Those then turned into individual work through writing exercise helped by Google Forms. Not only that, the teacher made the session by giving explicit written instruction related to activities at each session on Google Classroom and WhatsApp starting from meeting 3. The session was divided into three stages of activities: warm-up activity, main activity, and follow-up activity, as seen on Figure 1. This was to provide a systematic session with structured activities because the teacher was not there to tell the students what to do now and next. Therefore, the sessions need to tell themselves the steps of learning activities.
In addition to adjusting the learning activity and the type of feedback, the teacher also initiated a parallel presentation. Not pointed out by the lecturer, the students who were willing to communicate and share their text products took a 7-minute presentation via Zoom meeting session, followed by a question-and-answer session. The lecturer acted as a host who managed the session.

Adaptation in Modes of Writing Activity and Assessment
As mandated by the Faculty, mid-term and final tests are usually types of sitting examination that the students are assigned to create writing products dealing with academic genre text. However, this time, those tests were facilitated by digital platforms with asynchronous mode. There was also a designed rubric on Google Classroom in which the teacher put some criteria in assessing students' essays, such as format, mechanics, organization, content, grammar and sentence structure, as seen on Figure 3. The use of scoring rubric as writing assessment was also found on the study by Crusan, Plakans, and Gebril (2016). They reported that besides portfolios in the classroom, EFL/ESL teachers in 41 countries used scoring rubric when grading essays. This analytical scoring system consists of several aspect of writing criteria and provides more Adaptations to Emergency Remote Teaching on EFL Writing Course During the Rr. Astri Indriana Oktavita,Nurmala Hendrawaty) detailed information about the students' writing performance in different aspects (Weigle, 2002).

Figure 1 Scoring Rubric on Google Classroom
In follow-up activity at each session, the teacher at this research also gave writing exercise, called online quizzes, for checking comprehension, analysing sample text, comparing sample texts, and reviewing or evaluating sample text. Quiz and assignments were helped by Google Forms linked to Google Classrooms.

Students' Adaptations and Perceptions in ERT on EFL Academic Writing Course
In general, the student's perceptions were poles apart among positive and negative perceptions about the rapid changing in the teaching system. Few students perceived that online remote teaching system they experienced was quite challenging to handle. For example, M12 wrote "(it) was rather difficult to attend online classes, I prefer face-toface," and what was expressed by M15; "To tell you honestly, it's better for me to have face-to-face teaching rather than remote teaching". On the other hand, most of them thought it was confused at first, but then they got accustomed on it; as stated by M35 "I had to adapt with it. But so far, it's going well". Surprisingly, some of the students found it as "good experience" (M23) and "proper enough" (M26) to improve writing skill.
Concerning the adaptations that the students had experienced during the changing mode, it can be generally stated as "I tried to do my best in following the lesson whether online or face to face" (M4). Almost a half of the students revealed their activities to purposefully maintain their participation, performance, and motivation during the course. As in the excerpts below, those can be preparation before the session begins, strategies while the live session lasts, and activities after the session ends.
"I should make alone preparation and give more attention to the online course" (M18) "I need to make sure I have a good internet for every zoom session, but the rest can be adjusted by mobile." (M21) "prepare everything, including looking for better internet connections, because long distance constraints are internet signals in each of the different regions, especially in my area. then the phone quota that must always be filled." (M24) "I prepared everything before the session started, like google what material will be discuss" (M28) "I tried my best to follow all of the lecturer's instruction in each activity" (M39) "Set a certain time to reread and understand about material given. And try to find a well spot relating the unstable internet connection." (M43) "I prepare myself by studying the material in GC and then I seek help using YouTube or Google's explanation if I don't understand" (M50) Furthermore, it is quite surprising that some of the students yielded the switching mode from face-to-face to online remote learning was not a problem at all. They did not give much effort to make the adjustment to a new teaching system. For instance, M47 wrote that "For me, I actually feel no much adjustment. Only for the deadline sometimes I almost missed. Luckily google classroom has deadline reminder." and M9 noted that "I have nothing problem about this and I feel remote teaching is also effective for me…". Each student had different, unique, personal experience and acceptance regarding to the teaching situation he faced. As we can see, M31 described it excellently in the following excerpt.
"It was unpredictable thing and that was my first time as well experienced the transition. I felt unqualified at first and had no self-confidence because I always compared myself to my classmates. I saw them as my major competitors to make my head up again. Then, I decided to put myself work harder than usual such as staying up at the nights to review the course's material little by little many times. Moreover, when the point came out of my head, I took my own style note to remind me about the material, giving specific marks at my notes where I concern about. In conclusion, I think this is everybody's problem to face this phase. However, I am pleased and relieved that I am able to follow the pattern eventually." (M31) As a summary, students perceived both positive and negative perceptions dealt with the choices of teaching system. Though face-to-face class received quite high agreement on "very effective" option, online remote learning can also be "effective" choice; proven that it gained the highest score. The teacher's options to use Google Classroom, WhatsApp mobile messenger application and Zoom video conferencing were considered a very good decision, providing that the three digital learning platforms the teacher used on the course got positive perceptions. Additionally, the students chose WhatsApp as the most effective platform among the three, as displayed on Figure 4. The fact that WhatsApp considers the most effective digital learning platform also appeared in research on teaching during the pandemic (Sujarwo et al., 2020). Figure 2 Students' Perceptions on teaching modes, digitals platforms, and material delivery Adaptations to Emergency Remote Teaching on EFL Writing Course During the Rr. Astri Indriana Oktavita,Nurmala Hendrawaty) Regarding the way materials deliver to the students, a variety of the format of materials, including URL links, PDF files, PPT presentations, electronic books, and teacher-made videos. Among those formats, the students revealed that PDF files and PPT presentation as "very effective" formats for material delivery. Besides, the students also perceived teacher-made video was an effective video in presenting materials. The chart of material delivery is displayed in Figure 4.
In adapting to immediate online teaching on EFL academic class, teacher made several adjustments related to teaching methods/techniques. Those contains a 3-phase activity process writing approach using teacher-feedback, the steps of Genre-based approach, and one parallel presentation. From the data, the students though in general those methods and technique were effective and appropriate for them. A 3-phase activities called a very effective technique among others; meanwhile, the steps of Genre-based approach gained the highest score as effective method, as seen on Figure 5. Genre-based approach emphasizes on writing in social context and a range of kinds of writing such as sales letter, reports, and research articles (Badger & White, 2000) with, according to Hyland (2003 as cited by Dirgeyasa, 2016), three stages of genre teaching and learning cycle: modelling, joint construction, and independent construction. By giving a lots of sample texts and students involved in constructing the text product, this model helps students learn to write gradually and systematically guided by the sample texts they learn. For writing activity and evaluation, teacher adjusted type of tests, from sitting examination in class into online quizzes and writing assignment facilitated by Google Forms. The students yielded a positive perception of all tools of writing assessment. Sample analysis through identifying, analysing, comparing and evaluating text was a very effective learning activity and testing activity in writing class. In addition, they also thought that essay development was effective as a tool in evaluating their writing skill though it was in online remote teaching. The chart of writing activity and assessment can be seen in Figure 6. Assessment of writing skills, some considerations need to take place. Bachman and Palmer (1996, as cited by Weigle, 2002) described two main purposes of language test: making inferences about students' language ability and making decisions based on those inferences. In this current study, students were assigned to write essays and compose a research journal guided by several aspects to be fulfilled. It was not different much to one it was on face-to-face class, but the assignments had to be submitted via digital platforms. As written by Crusan et al. (2016), writing ESL/EFL teachers have to acquire skills in developing, administering, and scoring writing tasks as well as delivering and presenting the tasks.

CONCLUSION
The purposes of the study were to explore the adaptations in emergency remote teaching on EFL academic writing in terms of practices and perception from both lecturer and students. The lecturer adapted her teaching system in learning platforms, material delivery, teaching methods, and writing activity and evaluation. At first, the teacher only employed one single digital platform, Google Classroom. But then, due to the lack of student's participation, she initiated applying WhatsApp mobile messenger and Zoom video conference. Teaching amterials were delivered in the forms of URL link, electronic books, word.doc, PDF files, presentation slides. The lecturer also created her own videos (of the materials?). Peer-review feedback was impossible to do; then it switched to lecturer-feedback as well as pair and group work were changed to be individual work.
From the students' point of view, they made some adaptations during digital remote teaching. They had to make sure their internet connection, read materials before classes, do self-study and be a more independent learner. Concerning to the online remote course they experienced, some found it complex and confusing, while others did not need any adjustment to the new system. They revealed that the use of WhatsApp was a very good decision, with PDF files and PPT presentations as the most effective material formats. In general, the students called positive perception on teaching methods/techniques the teacher selected, but the Genre-based approach and parallel discussion were the most effective of all. At last, the students perceived that all types of writing activities and assessmentsonline quizzes, sample analysis, essays and research development were very effective and compelling as tools for writing assessment.
This study surely had some limitations with taking only a small number of participants and using few instruments. However, the findings of the ways lecturers adapt their teaching systems and how the students perceive them could be beneficial as considerations in designing a future EFL academic writing next semester providing that the number of the Covid-19 cases seems far away from decrease in Indonesia.