ENGLISH TEACHERS’ PERSPECTIVES ON CHALLENGES, SUGGESTIONS, AND MATERIALS OF ONLINE TEACHING AMIDST THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC

Maintaining undisrupted learning during this pandemic becomes a challenge for teachers all over the world. In Indonesia, the practices of open online learning are not yet to be implemented. Online learning in Secondary school Year 7-9 level goes as far as internet-assisted learning or blended learning. Thus, previous research has not examined teachers' perspectives on full online learning as implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic. Considering this situation, EFL Secondary school Year 7-9 teachers’ perspectives, as one of the essential aspects of online learning, lack investigation. Therefore, the present study offers 20 EFL Secondary school Year 7-9 teachers’ insights regarding challenges, suggestions, and teaching materials needed during the Covid-19 outbreak. Drawing on qualitative data collected by means of self-written reflections and semi-structured interviews, the findings informed that poor internet signal disrupts the teaching process. Thus, the teachers suggest that maintaining a stable internet connection should become a priority. Then, easy access to online applications and websites is deemed necessary by teachers as material sources for online teaching. The results of this study contribute to the literature of English language teaching in response to the present-day phenomenon about online learning, particularly in Secondary school Year 7-9 level.


INTRODUCTION
The Covid-19 pandemic that happens globally brings challenges in almost every aspect of people's lives, including education. In Indonesia, online learning is unavoidable due to closed schools and universities caused by the Covid-19 outbreak. Teachers must adjust their teaching plans from the face-to-face classroom into fully online learning outside the classroom (Atmojo & Nugroho, 2020). This becomes an interesting topic to discuss since teachers may have different views about online teaching, especially in teaching Secondary school Year 7-9 students.
Considering the characteristics of teachers and students in the Indonesian education context, the sudden full shift to online learning could affect students' learnings. Meanwhile, teachers could also experience challenges in adapting to the full online teaching. Therefore, secondary school ear 7-9 teachers' perspectives on these matters are compelling to be investigated.
Learning English is compulsory in Indonesian schools starting from the junior high school level. Hence, teachers are expected to have an essential role in the teaching-learning process (Alwehaibi, 2015;Nugroho & Nartiningrum, 2020). Although some primary schools in Indonesia are still giving English materials as additional courses, the English proficiency levels of primary students in Indonesia are varied due to the absence of ELT national standard for primary level. Consequently, Secondary school Year 7-9 English teachers might face challenges in teaching students with different proficiency levels. Moreover, the sudden shift of learning situation possibly adds to secondary school year 7-9 EFL teachers' challenges in teaching English. As a result, adding to exploring teachers' challenges, the present study also focuses on teachers' suggestions in implementing full online teaching.
The fact that English teaching practice in Secondary school Year 7-9 must follow the Ministry of National Education and Culture curriculum becomes an interesting topic to discuss since the present curriculum does not accommodate the sudden alteration to full online teaching. As mentioned by Intansari (2013), the curriculum has been considered the main guidelines and components of teaching processes to achieve the objectives of teaching activities. These circumstances might lead to confusion among teachers, especially those used to rely on the curriculum. Teachers would probably face many challenges in translating the curriculum into online teaching practices in this relatively short time. Consequently, research on teachers' challenges amid online teaching needs to be done more extensively. Suggestions and needed teaching 103-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | DOI: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license materials related to the teaching practice amidst the Covid-19 pandemic are crucial now that effective teachers should meet learning objectives, as pointed by (Virgiyanti, Widiati, & Suharmanto, 2016).
Overall, in response to the current situation, the present study aims to uncover the challenges, suggestions, and teaching materials needed by EFL secondary school year 7-9 teachers in Indonesia regarding implementing the English online classes. Hence, to ensure the objectives, the present study is guided by three research questions: (1) what kind of challenges experienced by Indonesian EFL secondary school year 7-9 teachers during online learning? (2) what are teachers' suggestions toward the challenges they encountered in online learning? and (3) what do Indonesian EFL Secondary school Year 7-9 teachers need regarding the teaching materials in online learning? In order to provide empirical answers to these research questions, a written reflection questionnaire and semistructured interviews were utilized to obtain the required data from 20 English teachers teaching at secondary school year 7-9 in Indonesia. The results will provide insights for English language teaching practitioners (e.g., teachers, students, school administrators, and school authorities) to enhance the efficacy of teaching English online in the Indonesian context, particularly in secondary school year 7-9 level.
Online learning is more than presentation and materials distribution using the web. Bazan (2016) also stated that online education starts when faculty move to the online classroom from the traditional one. Online teachers have the role of guiding students through online learning experiences. The experiences are often planned and designed long before starting the course. Online learning could feel lonely without intentional efforts to build a positive social environment. Therefore, when teaching online, a teacher must encourage the students to create a positive online learning environment and help students to have conversations with their peers.
During online learning, the important roles of a teacher encourage the present study to examine teachers' perspectives on fully online learning implementation. Hughes (2005) explained the definition of perspectives. In an interpretative sense, perspectives include "a view or prospect", "a particular way of regarding something," or "an understanding of the relative importance of things". This definition is employed in the present study. The teachers' challenges explored in the present study cover the situations faced by teachers' that require great physical and mental efforts in implementing full online learning. Investigating these challenges would be useful to provide insights into the implementation of online learning. Meanwhile, suggestion means plan, action, or idea that is suggested or the act of suggesting it. Therefore, teachers' suggestions in the present study refer to ideas, actions, or plans shared by teachers to support the online learning implementation.
Several studies on online learning and blended learning have been conducted for years. Kebritchi, Lipschuetz, & Santiague, 2017) synthesized previous studies and provided an overview of issues found in online courses. The data were collected from peer-reviewed journals ranging from 1990 to 2015. The issues were related to online instructors, learners, and content development.
From 104 articles, it was revealed that instructors-related issues included changing faculty roles, the transition from face-to-face to online, teaching styles, and time management. Learners'-related issues included learners' identity, readiness, expectation, and participation in online courses.
Issues related to content included content development, integration of multimedia in content, the role of instructional strategies in developing content, and instructors' role in content development. This study concluded that higher education institutions need to provide training for learners, professional development for instructors, and technical support for developing content. Alberth et al. (2018) presented the myth, reality, and promise of online learning. According to the US Department of Education, there are nine benefits of online learning: broadening access to quality education, engaging students in active learning, improving learning efficiency, building on students' interest, enabling teachers to focus on high-value activities, increasing students' learning rate, and reducing face-to-face schools' facilities costs. The paper also suggested finding ways to make affordable and available online access for all students and teachers. The authors believed that online learning is matched to the learning goals for US students. infrastructural requirements to make adequate provision of ICT. Secondly, it was important for teachers to be ICT literate. The teachers also needed to develop their capacity to make use of various ICTs in different situations efficiently. The suggestions found were that teachers could become comfortable using technology, select and evaluate digital resources, and develop a positive attitude towards ICT to be interested in learning about it. Also, teacher discussion forums could be created to discuss ICT usages in their classes and learn from each other in the process. Teachers may also LMS (Learning Management System) that would engage learners.
A recent study by Abbasi, Ayoob, Malik, & Memon (2020) investigated students' perceptions of e-learning during the lockdown caused by the spread of Covid-19. A self-administered questionnaire was sent by email to the participants. Overall, from the total of 382 responses, 77% of students had negative perceptions towards elearning. The study concludes that students preferred face-to-face teaching over e-teaching during the lockdown situation.
Another study in the same year by Kumi-Yeboah (2013) investigated the benefits, obstacles, and possible solutions of blended and online learning in K-12 schools in the United States. Some mentioned advantages are; students could contact the teacher for assistance after the online section, shy students might gain confidence by participating in the online discussions, and efficient data collection from assessments can be achieved. However, major challenges of blended learning were also brought up, such as teacher training, lack of social interaction among students, and possible access to unsuitable sites. Then, some solutions proposed are redesigning traditional classroom approaches, offering professional online education training, and providing equal access to online education.
Another study on using online learning platforms in Indonesian EFL classrooms was done by Cakrawati (2017). She focused her study on students' perceptions about the use of online learning platforms in EFL classrooms. From the questionnaires and interviews given to junior and high school students, the majority of the respondents considered the use of online learning platforms was efficient and effective in terms of time. However, there was also a challenge found in the study, which was the slowspeed internet. On the other hand, students also agreed that online learning platforms could help them acquire new vocabularies, practice

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http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | DOI: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license language skills, and improve their understanding of the lesson's contents. The aforementioned previous research has given some information on implementing online learning in Indonesian and foreign contexts. The benefits, challenges, and suggestions regarding the practice of online learning have been mentioned. However, the application of online learning in the previous studies was consciously planned by the government, not suddenly done because of the Covid-19, and most of those earlier studies were, in fact, still included in blended, not full-time online learning. Thus, sudden and fully online learning performance at this time in Indonesia remains a lack of evidence. Therefore, the present study intends to examine the challenges faced by Indonesian EFL secondary school year 7-9 teachers during online learning in the Covid-19 outbreak.
Furthermore, teachers' suggestions and teaching materials needed are also explored since the teaching process during the full online learning changes unexpectedly. The teacher needs to adjust their teaching plans almost immediately. Insights on these matters are crucial because online learning is one of the most critical issues in education during the Covid-19 outbreak.

Research design
The in-hand study aimed to examine English teachers' perspectives on challenges, suggestions, and online learning materials. In order to address the issue, a qualitative design employing written reflections and semistructured interviews was adopted. Qualitative research enables researchers to portray, summarize, and depict an in-depth understanding of an ongoing phenomenon (Yin, 2015). In the context of the present study, the views and insights of Indonesian EFL secondary school Year 7-9 teachers were revealed by following this approach. As in qualitative research, contextualization of the data is a crucial aspect (Harding, 2018). This study does not focus on generalizing but concerns the accuracy of the phenomenon studied in this paper. Therefore, the data were only interpreted in the context of Indonesian EFL teaching, where the authors collected the data.

Research site and participants
This study was conducted in English language teaching for secondary school year 7-9 level in Indonesia, in which English is considered a foreign language. Hence, the most available place where students could obtain a large amount of  (Nugroho & Rekha, 2020). The participants were 20 Indonesian teachers (6 males, 14 females) teaching at secondary school year 7-9 in some provinces: East Java, Central Java, and West Java. They voluntarily participated in this study upon invitation and selected based on two primary criteria, (1) experiencing distance teaching during the global pandemic and (2) having experience of teaching English at least for three years. The participants' age ranged between 24 and 35, with the average was 27. All the teachers earned professional training through an undergraduate program in English language teaching from several universities in Indonesia. Their teaching experience ranged from 3 to 7 years.

Data collection and analysis
The present study employed written reflection and semi-structured interviews as a means of data collection. First, written reflection, a written story template consisting of a set of instructions (Barkhuizen, 2014), was administered to reveal the participants' perceptions about challenges, suggestions, and materials during the online teaching. It was completed with a blank space where the participants wrote their responses. The main advantage of this data collection tool was for participants to freely produce an intelligible answer and response based on their own experiences and reflections (Onwuegbuzie et al., 2010).
In the context of this study, the written reflection consists of six items examining the participants' views about challenges, suggestions, and materials needed during the online teaching and learning. The written reflection was administered to the participants online in Google Forms from WhatsApp, the most frequently used social media in Indonesia. Second, semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand about the participants' challenges, suggestions, and needed materials.
There were seven participants in the semi-structured interview (namely, Ana, Ella, Dina, Angga, Yanti, Imah, and Tiwi) who were conveniently selected based on the responses provided in the written reflection. This method of inquiry was open, allowing new ideas and questions to come up during the interview (Harding, 2018). The benefit of this method was that the researchers brought guidance in hands, but still possible to extend the guidance if a new issue was raised during the dialogue . Because of the global pandemic, the interviews were conducted online using phone calls for 15 to 30 minutes each. Considering the benefits and practicality, written and semi-structured interviews were selected as data collection instruments in this study.
The data gathered through written reflection and semi-structured interviews were analyzed by following some procedures of a sequential explanatory strategy developed by Creswell (2009). First, the data from the 20 participants, both from written reflection and semi-structured interviews, were tabulated. Second, the data were coded based on several themes referring to the research questions (e.g., teachers' challenges, suggestions, and needed materials). Third, the researchers reviewed, analyzed, and integrated the emerging themes as reflected from the 20 participants, which led to data analysis and conclusion drawing. To maintain the validity and reliability of the data in this study, the two authors coded and reviewed the data from both written reflection and semi-structured interviews independently. After that, several stages of discussion were conducted to achieve a consensus on the final results. The most relevant excerpts as the empirical answers to the research questions in this study were presented in the result section.

EFL Secondary school Year 7-9
Teachers' Challenges amidst Online Teaching In general, teachers have difficulties delivering the lesson since they cannot face their students' directly as in traditional classrooms. For instance, Fitri shared her challenges in teaching an online class.

Fitri (Written reflection)
The main difficulty in delivering the lesson is that we can't see the students directly. I often think about whether my students can follow my teaching activities.
During online learning, few minutes are wasted since many students are late to join the class.

Agus (Written reflection)
I need to wait for a long time because sometimes the students don't respond.
Another problem experienced by some teachers, especially teachers who Teacher Imah (Interview) The first problem that I encounter when teaching online is the poor internet connection. I teach in a small city where the internet signal is not as good as in big cities. This situation concerns me since my teaching becomes less effective.
Few teachers also mentioned that they need to adjust their lesson plans for the rest of the semester since the online learning is implemented completely. Teachers' ability to adapt during the sudden change in the teaching environment is put to the test.

Teacher Angga (Interview)
The problem I experienced during online classes is that I had to rearrange my teaching plans since I could not meet my students face to face anymore. It is quite challenging for me as I have to make myself used to this sudden situation too.
In summary, teachers' challenges in online learning are difficulties in delivering the lesson, slow responses from students, and poor internet signals. Adapting lesson plans also becomes one of the teachers' challenges in teaching online since they have quite a short amount of time to adjust. The teachers also shared their suggestions for maintaining fun and meaningful online classes. Most recommendations are related to internet signals. Many teachers believe that a stable internet signal is important for teachers and students to support video calls without any distractions.

Nana (Written reflection)
Conducting online teaching and learning needs a stable internet connection both in the teachers' and students' sides. The internet should be stable and supporting condition (calm without any distraction) for both parties.
Teachers in big cities have a good internet connection, so they often suggest using various learning platforms such as google classroom or Edmodo and ask fellow teachers to seek more interesting learning platforms.
Teacher Ella (Interview) I encourage fellow teachers to use online learning platforms such as google classroom or Edmodo. As a matter of fact, I have used some online platforms in teaching. However, I have never implemented it completely. My teaching is often blended, so maybe it will be good if other teachers look for other online platforms that can be used to support online learning.
Many teachers also suggest the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology administer training for teachers, such as webinars which enable teachers to attain information about adapting to the full online teaching that has been done for months now. The webinars will also allow teachers to share their experiences during online learning and propose good solutions to each problem in online classes.

Bayu (Written response)
I think it will be good if the Ministry of National Education holds webinars to help teachers who have difficulties adapting their former teaching practices into full online teaching. Teachers will have opportunities to share their problems in class and ask for solutions from fellow teachers.
Then, one suggestion proposed for teachers who teach in places with unstable internet connections is to minimize video calls in teaching. The teachers can use chatting applications or assign students to study independently by sending links to educational websites when the internet signal is poor.

Teacher Ana (Interview)
For me, teaching online doesn't have to be in the form of the video conference. It would be quite ineffective, especially for teachers who work in a rural area. My advice would be using chatting apps or sending links to educational websites for students so that they can learn by themselves at times. It can be a solution when the internet signal is happened to be bad. The students would be able to learn the materials instead of trying to connect to the internet for a long time.
A fascinating suggestion was proposed by Teacher 13. When absolute online teaching seems difficult due to technical issues, he is willing to visit his students' houses and deliver the learning materials or quizzes. Then, the

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http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | DOI: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license students will send the assignments or the answers to the quizzes online. When the students do not submit the assignments during the given time, the teacher can collect them in the next visitations.

Teacher Yanti (Interview)
Teaching online in a small city is quite challenging. My students' access to a stable internet connection is limited. Since I have only a few students in my class, I am happy to visit my students' houses to deliver learning materials and quizzes. I will also ask them to work on some problems such as assignments or quizzes, and I will ask them to send the answers later when the internet signal is available. If it is still not possible, I can collect their assignments later, when I visit them again. After sharing the suggestions for challenges in teaching online, the teachers also give their insights on what other teachers possibly need teaching materials. Most teachers believe that more interactive and engaging teaching materials can make students more active.

Novi (Written reflection)
I need more interactive and engaging materials which can make the students be more active. Not only just by doing a worksheet.
Some teachers also mentioned that they need information on videoconferencing application that can accommodate many students and are safe and easy to operate.

Budi (Written reflection)
I need information about applications that enable me to have video conferencing sessions with my students. After hearing the rumor that the zoom application is not safe, some of my students asked me to use other applications.
Since many students ask for fun activities during online learning, such as movies and songs, teachers said they would appreciate creative ideas utilizing movies, songs, or other fun materials. Probably due to staying at home for a long time, my students complain that they feel bored and suggest watching movies or listening to songs during classes. However, I think it must be followed by fun and educative activities, so I need ideas on accommodating movies and songs in my classes without neglecting the learning process.

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Some teachers say that their students are greatly interested in games. Even during online learning, the students still ask for games. This situation leads to the teachers' needs for online English educational games or games instructions that can be applied during online learning, which both meaningful and fun.
Teacher Dina (Interview) My students are always asking for games. Normally I do games in my offline classes in order to grab my students' attention. But I find it quite difficult to do games during online learning. I guess I need resources of fun and meaningful online games that still make my students learn, or probably instructions to do games, but online, if there is any.
The administration of assessments during online learning is also challenging. Therefore, teachers need to find solutions for this matter.

Malik (Written reflection)
Sometimes I conduct interviews or ask my students to do performances such as drama to assess their ability to use English. Yet, the implementation of online classes makes it quite difficult for us to do such assessments.
Most of the participants argue that secondary school Year 7-9 students could not study English independently. The teachers assume that their students still need supervision to some extent. This assumption is based on students' late collection of assignments or students' comments that they encounter difficulties in understanding the learning materials. Therefore, teachers noticed that websites or applications that support autonomous learning are needed.

Yana (Written reflection)
Few of my students are always late in collecting their online assignments. I need to remind them to collect the assignments. When I ask them the reasons for the late collection, most of them answer that they do not really understand the assignments. My

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http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | DOI: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license students also mentioned that they are not motivated to do assignments alone at home. I think they need fun English websites or applications to support them in learning English independently.

Discussion
When teachers think that delivering the lesson is one of the challenges in teaching online, fully online learning practices are quite brand new for possibly all secondary school year 7-9 teachers in Indonesia. The closest step to online learning that has been practiced in few schools in Indonesia is blended learning practices. Halverson and Graham (2019) mentioned that the planning process in blended learning is required so that the independent learning process can be more effective. In fact, during online learning, students are expected to learn more independently (Cole & Vanderplank, 2016;Sundqvist, 2019;Zainuddin & Perera, 2019). Thus, teachers should deliver the lesson effectively so that the students can do independent learning.
The following problem in teaching online is students' too relaxed behaviors. Teachers often have to wait for quite a long time to be responded to by their students. It is indeed possible that an unstable internet connection could cause the delayed responses. However, on some occasions, such as video conferencing classes, few students are always late or disturbed during the class. Other students say that those students are probably still sleeping and forget to attend the class. Therefore, teachers need to wait for the late students to be contacted by their classmates.
Since online learning mostly relies on the internet connection, internet signal becomes vital for the continuous implementation of online learning (Derakhshan & Hasanabbasi, 2015;Fatimah et al., 2020). Considering that Indonesia is formed by thousands of islands with various geographical and economic conditions, it is not easy to expect equal internet access throughout Indonesia. Thus, uneven internet connection is considered as one of the challenges in online learning practices.
The unforeseen shift from learning in brick-and-mortar classrooms into online learning really brings challenges, as mentioned previously. One challenge for teachers is adapting the lesson plans. We know that pure online teaching has not been popular in Indonesia. Even so, the spread of Covid-19 made Indonesian schools implement pure online learning. Hence, teachers are demanded to work on their creativity in facing this challenge. Various suggestions are also proposed by Indonesian EFL secondary school year 7-9 teachers. One suggestion mentioned by the teachers is providing stable and fast internet signals across Indonesia. Teachers' and students' ability to access the internet must also be assured (Mollaei & Riasati, 2013). If online learning is more permanent, every student and teacher must connect to the internet comfortably (Hembrough & Jordan, 2020). Of course, it is not a simple matter, but Internet access is the main factor in ensuring the continuity of online learning (Marwan, 2017;Prawiro, 2020).

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One suggestion comes from a teacher who teaches in a rural area. He is willing to visit his students' houses to deliver materials and assignments due to often unstable internet signals in his area. Later, when the internet signal happens to be good, the students can submit the assignments. If the students cannot connect to the internet, the teacher will collect the assignments in the next visitation. Since his students are not that many, he decides that this kind of internet-assisted learning or blended learning is the best solution. There is also a suggestion for teachers who teach in places with poor internet signals to use chatting applications or educational websites that can be accessed when the internet signal is stable. This is a reasonable suggestion since using video conferencing applications may not work well.
When the internet signal is quite good in another part of Indonesia, some teachers mentioned using various online learning platforms such as Edmodo or Google classrooms. Thus, according to those teachers, pure online learning is possible to be managed well. They need to adjust their lesson plans that are mostly blended learning forms into pure online learning. They also suggest other teachers find more online learning platforms and use them in teaching. Then, teachers can give information to fellow teachers about the good and bad sides of the platforms and applications.
Another suggestion is administering webinars for teachers with topics related to online teaching. Not all teachers are familiar with teaching online. The majority of schools in Indonesia still require face-to-face meetings in classrooms. Therefore, to familiarize teachers with online learning, webinars are quite efficient since conducting regular seminars is not possible. A national seminar that all teachers in Indonesia can access is a good alternative to give insights about online teaching for the teachers. Moreover, teachers' perspectives on teaching materials needed during online teaching are also shown in the present study. Most teachers responded that they need interactive and engaging materials. It is understandable since students may tend to get bored and unmotivated while studying at home. Teachers also mentioned that they wanted safe and easy to operate video conferencing applications. Ideas to utilize movies or songs in class are also required since many students ask for them.
Doing assessments during online learning is quite tricky so that the teachers require suitable forms of assessments.
Students get less assistance from their teachers during open online learning, so websites or applications that support autonomous learning are necessary (Köse, 2016). Then, educational online games or instructions to do educational games online are also on-demand as many secondary school year 7-9 students are interested in them.
The present study offers some inferences on the implementation of open online learning during the Covid-19 outbreak. First, the results provide EFL secondary school year 7-9 teachers' perspectives on the challenges they face in implementing open online learning. Second, suggestions from the teachers and information on teaching materials that the teachers expect during online learning are also presented in the present study. It is expected that the results of the present study can be beneficial in improving the quality of open online teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic.

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTION
The present study findings paint a picture of the practice of online learning in Indonesia during the Covid-19 pandemic that is yet to cease. Secondary school year 7-9 teachers who teach at the starting level of English education in Indonesia have shared their experience in teaching beyond the classroom. Teachers' challenges in teaching online are difficulty in delivering lessons, poor internet connection, slow responses from students, and problems in adjusting teaching plans. Then, the suggestions submitted by EFL secondary school year 7-9 teachers are providing stable internet signals, visiting students' houses, using online learning platforms, administering webinars, and using chatting applications or educational websites. Lastly, the teachers also share teaching materials that are beneficial 116-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | DOI: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 P-ISSN: 2356-1777, E-ISSN: 2443-0390 | This is an open access article under CC-BY-SA license during online learning. The materials mentioned are interactive and engaging materials, safe and easy-to-operate video conferencing applications, ideas on how to utilize movies or songs in class, suitable assessments during online learning, websites or applications that support autonomous learning, and online educational games or instructions to do online games.
The results in this study are necessary in order to maintain the efficacy of online learning. Speaking about effective learning, the teachers' role is essential, especially in educating secondary school year 7-9 students who are starting to learn English as a compulsory subject. Information on teachers' challenges in teaching online will allow other teachers to think of solutions when they face the same situations.
The present study's suggestions and teaching materials can offer perspectives on making online learning fun and meaningful. Since the available respondents in the present study are 20 EFL secondary school year 7-9 teachers, future studies are expected to employ more respondents to better understand the online learning implementation, especially in secondary school year 7-9 level in Indonesia. Future research may also consider secondary school year 7-9 students' perspectives on the challenges, suggestions, and learning materials needed during online learning to substantiate the results of the in-hand study. Investigating perspectives from teachers and students from senior high schools and universities is also suggested because English is also taught there. Those proposed studies are expected to provide a more complete picture of online learning during the Covid-19 outbreak in Indonesia. Therefore, the effectiveness of online English teaching and learning practices in Indonesia is well maintained.