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ELT FORUM 10 (3) (2020) 

 

Journal of English Language Teaching 

 
http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt 

 

 

The online global quarantine conversation club as the way to trigger students’ 

ability in speaking English 

 

Totok Indra Suswanto1 
 
1Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia

 

Article Info 
________________ 
Article History: 
Received on 3 July 
2021 

Approved on 23 
November 2021 
Published on 24 
November 2021 

________________ 
Keywords:Global 
Quarantine 
Conversation Club; 
EFL; Speaking 
____________________ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract 
___________________________________________________________________ 
Global Quarantine Conversation Club (GQCC) is a speaking practice program that 
involves more than 20 countries across the world. Since the English subject has not 

attracted students’ attention yet, this program is expected to trigger the students in 
learning English. The study purposed to describe the implementation of GQCC, to 

analyze the students’ perception toward the implementation of GQCC, and to 
analyze the teacher’s reflection toward the implementation of GQCC. This study 

belonged to qualitative research approach with case study design. One English 

teacher and two students of a senior high school in Gresik, Indonesia, were selected 
as the subjects of the study. The instruments used in this study were observations, 

interviews, and documentations. The result showed that (1) the teachers and the 
students’ activities were doing briefing and rehearsal in pre-program, doing 

presentation and group discussion during program and doing evaluation and 
reflection in post program, (2) the students found that the GQCC program gave 

positive impact on their English as well as gave them new cultural knowledge, and (3) 

the teacher was becoming aware about the need of improving the students’ speaking 
skill through some accelerated programs as well as the technology literacy. This study 

gave some recommendations for both school and further research.

 

  
Correspondence Address: p-ISSN 2252-6706 | e-ISSN 2721-4532 

B3 Building FBS Unnes  

Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229  

E-mail: totokindra2010@gmail.com  

http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&&
http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&&


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INTRODUCTION 

Mastering English skill is still becoming a big challenge for students, especially speaking skill. The 

problem is that most students fail to use English as a means of communication whereas they have 

been learning English since elementary school. This phenomenon mostly can be found in very 

school in Indonesia. The failure of communication in English is caused by many factors. 

Wahyuningsih (2020) conducted research on investigating English speaking problems involving 30 

students of English language education department at State Islamic Institute of Kudus exploring the 

factors of why English lesson failed to be studied by Indonesian students. They stated that the 

problems encountered by the students in English language education department especially in 

speaking English cover the lack of appropriate vocabulary, the lack of grammar mastery, the lack of 

correct pronunciation, the lack of input of English outside the class, the lack of confidence and the 

lack of English-speaking curriculum development (Songbatumis, 2017). Another research was also 

conducted by (Rihardini et al., 2021) involving 115 students from tenth and eleventh grade students 

of SMK Negeri 10 Malang exposing that the Indonesian students had low degree of willingness of 

communication which causes the low effort on practicing English. Basically, the existence of those 

problems has long been identified by the school community especially the teachers. However, the 

teachers fail to provide the real solution. Consequently, that condition brings about the negative 

perception of the students on learning English at school (Riadil, 2020).  

Theoretically, Nanay (2013) says that perception sometimes deals with the action. Wood 

(1996) states that teacher’s perception is linked to belief, attitude, and knowledge. Knowledge refers 

to a subset of facts in a broad sense. Belief refers to a conception (narrower than knowledge) believed 

by people that influences attitude (Skott, 2015). Attitude refers to a person’s action or behavior that 

reflects his/her beliefs (Aw & Olafson, 2014). In addition, Eggen & Kauchak (2001) stipulated that 

perception seen from its process related to the people’s effort to attach meaning to experience. It 

means that experiences will be very valuable if taken from meaning studies as a result of perception 

activity. Related to EFL teaching and learning program, perception is very important not only in 

providing estimation but also in providing the development of teaching and learning purpose (Chen 

& Hoshower, 2003). By asking perception to the students, the teacher can develop the changes in 

ELT classroom as the way to achieve the determined goal. 

Teaching reflection means looking at what you do in the classroom, thinking about why you 

do it, and thinking about if it works - a process of self-observation and self-evaluation (Tice, 2004). 

By getting the information about what is going on in our classroom from the beginning to the end, 

analyzing and evaluating it, the teacher can explore the effectiveness of their teaching in the 

classroom by solving the problems exist. Tice (2004) revealed that reflective teaching therefore 

implies a more systematic process of collecting, recording and analyzing our thoughts and 

observations, as well as those of our students, and then going on to making changes. Similarly, 

Fatemi et al. (2011) using teachers’ perspective in defining reflection stated that reflection “involves 

thinking about and critically analyzing our experiences and actions, and those of our students, with 

the goal of improving our professional practice”. In another word, reflection is critical thinking on 

what happened in the classroom related to students-teachers’ experiences and actions. Related to the 

factors which influence the teachers to do reflection, Moradkhani & Shirazizadeh (2017) revealed 

that there are five factors influencing teachers to do reflection, they are; knowledge of reflection, 

institutional demands, teachers’ attitude toward teaching, availability of resources, and collegial 

support. 

Several researches had been conducted related to the importance of students’ perception and 

teachers’ perception on the implementation of English teaching and learning (Alsanie et al., 2018; 

Khoirunnisa et al., 2018; Liansari et al., 2021; Resmini, 2019; Riadil, 2020; Rianto, 2020; Shukri, 

2014). Khikmiah (2011) had conducted the case study on the impact of English club towards 

students’ speaking skill at the eleventh grade students of state senior high school 1 of Pekalongan. 

They stated that English Club had many advantages which could improve and develop students’ 

speaking skill. Similarly, Kusriandi (2016) had carried out the study on students’ perception on 

English extra-program in speaking practices at Madrasah Aliyah Pembangunan Mandirancan 

involving 26 students who joined an English club. The findings revealed the suggestion that the 

students should join English club of extra-program because it can improve students’ speaking skill. 

Related to the teachers’ perception related to the importance of reflective teaching, Cholifah et al. 

(2020) did research on investigating teacher's perceptions of reflective peer observation to promote 

professional development involving the service teacher in one of Senior High Schools in Surakarta 



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who teaches English with 10 years of teaching experience. They found that the teachers have 

positive perceptions of peer observation as a professional development tool. Similarly, Shukri (2014) 

had conducted the research on female teachers’ perception of reflective teaching as a teacher 

development tool in the Saudi context with one hundred female teachers as the subject of the study. 

The finding supported the hypothesis in which the participants’ perception revealed a strong 

relationship between reflective teaching and professionalism in teaching (Shukri, 2014).  

Besides, there were some researches regarding with the importance of conducting reflection in 

teaching English (Ayoobiyan & Rashidi, 2021; Farrell, 2021; Fatemi et al., 2011; Hashim & Yusoff, 

2021; Mede, 2010; Yalcin Arslan, 2019). Fat’hi et al. (2015) conducted research involving 648 

teachers as the participants of the study. The findings showed a meaningful positive relationship 

between the post-method attitudes of the participating English language teachers and their reflection 

in teaching. In addition, Kholis & Madya (2021) conducted a research in Jogjakarta involving 131 

EFL teachers of public senior high school and revealed an insightful finding that the EFL teachers 

are mostly in the level of pedagogical reflection measured from four levels of reflective teaching 

stage, namely pre-reflection, surface reflection, pedagogical reflection, and critical reflection. In 

advanced, Ayoobiyan & Rashidi (2021) did the similar research using EFL Iranian teachers as the 

subject of the study to uncover the relationship teachers’ reflection and resilience. The results 

showed positive relation on teachers’ reflection and their resilience.  

As the new model to accelerate the students’ ability in speaking English, Global quarantine 

conversation club was expected to solve the classic problem of English interaction in Indonesia since 

they used presentation (Hammad, 2020; Le Hoai, 2021; Ng et al., 2012) and group discussion as its 

core of activities (Al Jawad & Abosnan, 2020; Ganji et al., 2020; Safarnejad & Montashery, 2020; 

Yu & Hu, 2017). Global quarantine conversation club was a conversational class involving 

participants from around 20 countries over the world. The purpose of the class meeting was to 

practice English internationally by discussing the actual problems which possibly existed in every 

country. There were many countries involved in this program, such as Indonesia, India, America, 

Turkey, Pakistan, Thailand, Japan, Singapore, Canada and so on. The program was under the 

coordination of Kasabian Armen from the USA and Kohei Nakashima from Japan and conducted 

twice a week. The first was on Friday evening under the coordination of Kasabian Armen from 

USA and the second was on Saturday under the coordination of Kohei Nakashima from Japan. 

From a preliminary study conducted at school through interview and observation, it was found that 

the existence of this program in that school was very unique and special because this program was 

successful in attracting the attention of the school community especially the students. Specially, the 

existence of this program could wake the school community up and did some progressive actions 

related to the development of English at school. Those are the considerations of the researcher to 

conduct this research. In addition, the research related to the implementation of extra program 

especially using Global Quarantine Conversation Club was still under-researched since the 

researches mostly focused on the instructional practices in the classroom-curriculum based (Çelik, 

2020; Isti, 2018; Kheryadi & Hilmiyati, 2021; Songbatumis, 2017). This fact, then, was used by the 

researcher as the gap of the study. Therefore, the researcher was trying to investigate the 

implementation of the Global Quarantine Conversation Club Program at a senior high school in 

Gresik as well as the students’ perception and teacher’s reflection toward this program. The detail 

research questions were presented as below: 

1. How was the implementation of the Global Quarantine Conversation Club Program at a senior 

high school in Gresik? 

2. How was the students’ perception toward the implementation of the Global Quarantine 

Conversation Club Program at a senior high school in Gresik? 

3. How was the teacher’s reflection toward the implementation of the Global Quarantine  

 

METHODS 

This research employed a qualitative approach with case study design (Creswell & Poth, 2016). The 

researcher used this design under some considerations, (1) the novelty of the program in Indonesia 

which has just existed during the pandemic era, (2) the involvement of around 20 countries over the 

world, and (3) the positive impacts of the program at the school. The setting of this research was at 

one of senior high schools in Gresik involving 1 English teacher and 2 students participating in that 

program. The instruments used in this study were observation, semi-structured interview and 

documentation. To answer the first research question about the implementation of the global 



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quarantine conversation club program, the researcher used observation and documentation. To 

answer the second research question on knowing about the students’ perception toward that 

program, the researcher used semi structured interview, while documentation on the form of 

teacher’s notes was used to get the data about the reflection of the teacher toward the GQCC 

program.  

Related to the procedure on collecting the data, the researcher did a school visit to permission 

to be able to conduct a research in that school. After meeting the headmaster, the researcher met the 

teacher to socialize the way to collect data, then the researcher started to collect the data. In 

collecting the data, the researcher gathered the data differently from one research question to 

another. To gather the data for the first research question, the researcher asked the documentation 

related to the implementation of the GQCC program, such as teacher’s lesson plan, as well as the 

videos. In this case the researcher used video which was recorded by the teacher. To gather the data 

for the second research question, the researcher conducted a semi-structured interview. The semi-

structured interview was done toward two students to ask their perception about the program. The 

interview was conducted in Indonesian language to dig the deep information of the phenomena and 

to avoid the misunderstanding between the interviewee and the researcher. To keep the originality of 

the data, the procedure of interview was done together. The researcher did it to eliminate the 

nervousness of the students when being interviewed by the researcher.  To answer the third research 

question, the researcher used the teacher’s note as a part of teacher’s document. The teacher’s note 

was in the form of hand writing notices taken during the implementation of GQCC program and in 

the form of the reflective notices taken from evaluation meeting with the school curriculum team. To 

get the validity, acceptability and reliability of the instruments, the researcher consulted to the expert 

related to construction of the interview items, and did pilot testing to see the acceptability of the 

items. During the pilot testing, the researcher interviewed the three students respectively to see the 

effect of the instrument acceptability. The commonality of descriptive perception by the students was 

used as the consideration of the instruments’ acceptability. The last, the researcher used the 

triangulation of the data taken from all instruments as the criteria of the reliability of the 

instruments. 

Dealing with analyzing the data, the researcher focused on analyzing the data taken from the 

teacher’s lesson plan to know the preparation activity before the conduction of the program and the 

post activity done by the teachers after the conduction of the program. To know the implementation 

of the activity during the program, the researcher did observation by taking a part in the video 

conference as the observer. Creswell & Poth (2016) stated that the researcher can gather the notes by 

spending more time to be the participant as well as the observers. Also, the researcher asked the 

recorded video meeting from the teacher and analyzed them as documents to find the phenomena 

during the three program phases, that is pre activity, whilst activity and post activity. The description 

of the phenomena found in those three phases would be considered as the finding of the research. 

Dealing with the data about students’ perception, the researcher used a semi-structured interview 

consisting of three components recommended by Patton (1987) which were asking about students’ 

knowledge, students’ belief, and students’ attitudes of the motion. The last of all, dealing with the 

teacher’s reflection, the researcher used the teacher’s notes as a part of the teacher’s documents taken 

in both during implementation and after implementation of the program when having an evaluative 

meeting with the school curriculum team. Both of the data were analyzed qualitatively involving 

three stages of organizing and familiarizing, coding and reducing, and interpreting and representing 

(Creswell & Poth, 2016). 

 

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 

Global Quarantine Conversational Club was conducted involving the students of senior high school 

in more than 20 countries over the world. Since the program was conducted internationally, 

Indonesian students needed to make some adaptation toward the program. Technically, the school 

needed to select the appropriate students as the participants of the program. It was a reality that not 

all students in Indonesia could speak English well. Thus, it became another challenge for the teacher 

to participate in the program. Here, the researcher would like to present the data findings which 

were found for each research question. The display of the data in this chapter would be presenting 

the results, summarizing the results, commenting and interpreting the results as well as comparing 

the results with the literature. The data were collected from observation, analyzing documents, 

interviewing the students and analyzing the teacher’s note.  



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The implementation of Global Quarantine Conversation Club 

In this part, the researcher was trying to present the findings related to the first research question 

about the implementation of Global Quarantine Conversation Clubs. The data were collected from 

observing phenomena when participating in the Zoom meeting as the participant-observer, 

observing the Zoom meeting conference video, and analyzing other documents related to program 

such as the lesson plan of the teacher. 

 As the result, the researcher found several activities appearing in pre-program, during-

program (Zoom meeting conference), and post-program done by the teacher and the students. Table 

1 showed the pre-program done by the teacher and the students. 

 

Table 1. The teacher’s and students’ activities before the implementation of Zoom meeting 
No Activities done by teachers Activities done by students 

1. Making a list of the students who will join as 
presenter in this week’s conference. 

Preparing the materials used for 
conference this week 

2. Consulting them to the curriculum team. Creating the questions related to the 
topics 

3. Preparing the materials related to the topics. Consulting the materials to the teacher. 

4. Doing a briefing with students, mostly related to 
the topic mastery. 

Joining briefing conducted by the 
teacher. 

5. Doing rehearsal with the students and teacher as 
facilitator/moderator. 

Doing rehearsal with the teacher 

 

From the table 1 above we got three points related to the pre-program activity of the teacher 

and the students. The teacher focused on selecting the students, preparing materials, conducting the 

briefing and rehearsal to the students. Similarly, the students consulted the materials, created the 

questions, and joined briefing and rehearsal with the teacher. Those activities seemed normal in the 

senior high school where not every student was good in English. The conduction of the briefing and 

rehearsal became very significant since both teachers and students needed to make some preparation. 

The lack of speaking English curriculum development became the reason why speaking ability is 

difficult to be achieved by the students at school (Wahyuningsih, 2020). The students were occupied 

with multiple choice reading based to meet the qualification of national examination (Daeli et al., 

2020). As a result, the students got little chance to use their English in the classroom since the teacher 

also still liked to use the L1 language in the classroom (Riadil, 2020). As a solution, preparing the 

questions, doing briefing and rehearsal became unavoidable as the preparation stage before the 

program. 

Related to the implementation of Zoom meeting conference in during-program, the researcher found 

the detail of activities in the three phases; those are in the pre-whilst-post-activities. Table 2 showed 

the detail activities acted by the teacher and the students when Zoom meeting conference started. 

 

Table 2. The teacher’s and students’ activities when implementing Zoom meeting  

in the GQCC program 

Phases Moderator Activity 
Teachers/ 

Facilitator Activity 
Students Activity 

Pre-Activity • Choosing the facilitators 

of the group 

• Dividing the participants 
into group 

 

• Responding and 

clarifying the topics  

 

• Responding the 

moderator 

 

Whilst-

Activity1 
(in break room) 

No activity • Guiding the 

presentation and the 

group dialog  
 

• Presenting the topic 

one by one 

• Responding the 
questions from other 

participants 
 

Whilst-
Activity2 

(in main room) 

• Calling the presenters 
one by one  

 

 

• Listening to the 
presentation  

• Presenting the topic by 
delegation of group 

 



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Post-Activity • Concluding the materials 

• Evaluating and reflecting  

• Giving some final 
comments 

 

• Listening to the 
moderator 

 

 

The table 2 above presented detail activities done by moderator, teacher and students in the 

implementation session. The moderator did some activities, such as choosing the facilitators of the 

group and dividing the participants into group as pre-activity phase, calling the presenters one by one 

in the whilst-activity phase, and concluding, evaluating and reflecting the program in post-activity 

phase. Differently, the teacher had series of activity, such as responding and clarifying the topics in 

pre-activity phase, guiding the presentation and the group dialog as well as listening to the 

presentation by the participants in whilst-activity phase, and giving some final comments in post-

activity phase. On the other hand, the students had different activities, such as responding the 

moderator in pre-activity phase, presenting the topic one by one as well as responding the questions 

from other participants in break-room session, presenting the topic one by one in main room session 

in whilst-activity phase, and listening to the moderator in post-activity phase.  

From the description of the activity circle above, it seemed that there were no differences from 

the casual meeting in the classroom. The use of presentation and group discussion were dominant as 

the actions of the program. Several teachers had used group discussion as technique to teach 

speaking and had proved its effectiveness (Al Jawad & Abosnan, 2020; Ganji et al., 2020; Safarnejad 

& Montashery, 2020; Yu & Hu, 2017). Similarly, several studies had been conducted and presented 

the effectiveness of groups discussion as the technique of teaching speaking (Argawati, 2014; Bohari, 

2020). In GQCC during activity, the pre-activity phase and post-activity phase seemed to be normal. 

It dealt with the interaction of the moderators with the participants, such as greeting, confirming the 

topics, concluding, evaluating as well as reflecting. However, the surprising fact appeared in whilst 

activity phase. There were two sessions in this phase, namely the break room session and the main 

room session. The activity in the break room was led by the teacher/facilitator. In this break room 

session, everything seemed to go normally. The students presented the topic one by one, and it was 

continued by group discussion. Surprisingly, when the students backed to the main room, the 

students did not present the topic one by one but just listened to the presentation done by a 

delegation of every group without any further discussion. It meant that the group discussion of the 

topic only occured in the break room session. The rationale of this action probably was based on the 

fact that the meeting was limited by the time, just in an hour.  As a result, the process of group 

discussion was only implemented in whilst activity in break room session. The use of oral 

presentation in break-room period is very reasonable if seeing the effectiveness of oral presentation 

technique. That oral presentation is a good way to foster the students’ ability in speaking English is a 

fact which had been studied by many researchers previously (Hammad, 2020; Le Hoai, 2021; 

Nguyen, 2020) 

Related to the post-program done by the teacher and the students, table 3 gave information 

about the activities. As stated previously, the post program was concerning about the activities after 

the implementation of the Zoom meeting. 

 

Table 3. The teacher’s and students’ activities after the implementation of the Zoom meeting  

in the GQCC program. 
No Activities done by teacher Activities done by students 

1. Doing evaluation and reflection with the 

students 

Doing evaluation with the teacher 

2. Doing evaluation and reflection with the 

curriculum team 

Doing reflection with the teacher 

3.  Confirming the next topic for conference to the 

committees 

Sharing problems with other friends 

 

Based on the data above, the teacher and the students had several activities related to post-

program of GQCC. The teacher did evaluation and reflection with the students and curriculum team. 

Also, the teacher did confirmation of the next topic for conference via Whats’ up group. Similarly, 

the students followed the evaluation and reflection from the teachers and continued by sharing with 

other students. The post-activity was dominated by evaluation and reflection toward the 

implementation of the program. The both terms were considered very important by the school 

community to have better participation in the next program (Farrell, 2021). Tice (2004) stated that 



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doing evaluation and reflection is very important for the sake of the changes for next stage. Also, 

activities were purposed to provide any information about what had been done during the 

implementation of the program and gave the teacher sources to make changes for better quality 

(Fatemi et al., 2011). 

 
The students’ perception toward the Global Quarantine Conversation Clubs program 

The second problem statement was trying to answer the students’ perception toward the 

implementation of GQCC program. The data were collected from the semi-structured interview 

toward two students participating on that program. The content of the interview utilized the 

theoretical framework proposed by Patton (1987) related to the three components used to dig the 

student’s perception toward the program. Those three components were knowledge, belief, and 

attitude. In detail, there were six questions used for digging the students’ knowledge about the 

program, three questions used for gathering information about the students’ belief, and four questions 

used for knowing the students’ attitudes. The results of the interview were presented as follow.  

Related to the knowledge about the GQCC program, the interview using Patton (1987) was 

carried out to know about the students’ definition about GQCC program, from whom the students 

knew the program first time, the frequency of the students to follow the program, the length of time 

when the students joining the program, what kind of topics used in the program as well as what topic 

the students like most. Dealing with the definition of the program and the source of information of 

the students about the program, the S1 said that the program was conversational program 

participated by the students from around 10 countries or more to discuss about the specific topic, 

while the S2 stated that this is kind of sharing program about a specific topic involving the students 

from many countries. The students were coming from different levels of education such as junior 

high school, senior high school, university and even elementary school. On answering the second 

question about from where they knew about the program first time, both of the students said that 

they got to know the program first time from the teacher/school. It was not surprising fact since the 

novelty of this program was only known by specific community.  Dealing with the frequency and the 

length of time of the students to follow the program, the students had difference answers. The S1 said 

that she involved with the program 8 times while the S2 said that he involved with the program only 

6 times. Interestingly, both of them always followed the program in full time, starting from the 

opening of the Zoom until closing Zoom. The frequency of the students in participating in that 

program functioned as a validation of the originality of the information. The next question was about 

the variety of the topics used in that conference and what topic the students liked most. The S1 and 

the S2 students helped each other to remember the topics they had used such as influential woman, 

the benefit of artificial intelligence in our life, you are positive or negative thinkers, recalling our 

childhood moment, telling the historical places in the world, the inspiring film, and the down 

syndrome phenomenon of the children. Specifically, the topic telling about the historical places over 

the world was favored by the S1student while the S2 student favored the inspiring films as the topic 

discussion, especially Indian films.  

As the results of the interview related to the belief of the students toward the GQCC program, 

the researcher gave them three questions about whether that program was important for the 

development of the students’ English in general, whether the students got the benefit from that 

program at current time related to their English development, and whether the students believed that 

they would get benefit in the future time from that program (Patton 1991). The first question about 

the importance of the program for the development of the students’ English in general was revealed 

by the S1 and S2 students. The S1 student said, “I think this program is very important because here 

we can learn to ‘speak up’. We do not only study reading or writing, but also speaking. The S2 added 

the proposition, “Here we can learn to communicate with the native where we find the strange 

accents and dialects”. Dealing with the second question about whether the students got the benefit 

from that program at current time related to their English development, the S1 student stipulated, 

“For me, I become more confident and more proud of speaking English since I can speak with the 

native and my speaking can be understood by them”. The S2 student said, “Besides self-confident, I 

can learn the value of life from this program, such as when we discuss about the phenomena of down 

syndrome on the children, I finally realize that they should not be treated differently as commonly 

appears in society. We are actually the same, as person, but they only have different condition”. The 

last, related to the benefit of the program for the future time, the S1 student explained, “Previously, I 

did not brave to speak to the native, but in the future time, I believe that I will greet them and discuss 



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something with them”. The S2 student added, “Besides speaking English, in the future time I hope to 

be able to take a benefit of using artificial intelligence since most of the instructions are written in 

English”. 

The last, as the results of the interview about the students’ attitudes toward the program, the 

researcher gave four questions; they were about the challenges of the students when following the 

program, the actions to be taken by both the teacher and the students as the response of the 

challenges, the new experiences that the students achieved when following the program, and the 

ideal condition which should be fulfilled in order that the students could enjoy the activity when 

joining the program (Patton, 1987). Related to the first question about the challenges of the students 

when following the program, the S1 student responded, “I get problems on understanding what the 

native speakers mean. The foreigners speak English so fast such as the one from India and Turkey 

that I fail to understand them”. The S2 student had the same problem with the S1 student but he 

added, “The problem is about the internet connection that always disappears, and I also don’t 

understand when we make Microsoft Teams and we finally back to use Zoom again”. Both of them 

added that their classmates also got the same problems especially about understanding and 

responding the chat from other participants. They liked to keep silent when they got the turn to 

speak. The next question was about the actions to be taken by both the teacher and the students as 

the response of the challenges. The S1 student said, “The teacher facilitates us to have an extra 

studying about English speaking, and the teacher does briefing and rehearsal before the Zoom 

meeting conference”. To solve the problem of technology, the S2 gave brief explanation, “The school 

gives us free internet card and adds the power of the WIFI internet connection so that the Zoom 

conference will not be disturbed by the problem of technology”. The next interesting question was 

dealing with the new experiences that the students achieved when following the program.  The S1 

and S2 had the same opinion that they got some new insight about the cultural values over the world 

especially about the accents and dialects practiced by other participants. They felt the accents and 

dialects of the foreigners were very strange, especially the one from India and Pakistan. The last 

question probably would be the most interesting one. It dealt with the ideal condition which should 

be fulfilled in order that the students could enjoy the activity when joining the program. The S1 

student explained that the most important one was to ascertain the students’ ability in English 

especially in speaking and listening skill and providing stable internet connection, while the S2 

student differently added that besides mastering the English ability, the students had to have the large 

background knowledge related to the topics, as well as the ability to operate the technology. 

The information above explained the students’ view on the implementation of the program. 

Discussing about the knowledge of the students about the GQCC program, it could be concluded 

that the both students had enough understanding about the program. The reason of that opinion was 

that the involvement of the students achieved 6-8 times starting from the opening of the Zoom 

meeting until closing time. The frequent participation of the students showed that they had 

understood the objectives of the program as well as its detail activities in every stage of the program. 

An interesting finding was that when the both students said that the program was really important for 

developing their English at school. They said that the students needed to learn to speak up, not only 

to read and to write. It meant that the students had limited practice of English in the classroom so 

far. This condition was in line with the research by Wahyuningsih (2020) that the current curriculum 

has lack of speaking materials development in which the materials were dominated by reading and 

writing. The domination of reading was due to the fact that the content of Ujian Nasional (UN) was 

only dominated by multiple choice types of questions (Daeli et al., 2020). This condition led the 

school stakeholder to focus on preparing national examination. As a result, speaking skill was 

neglected by most teachers in Indonesia. Besides, the S1 students commented that she got more self-

confidence was another interesting finding on this study. She also felt proud to see the fact that her 

English could be understood by the native participants. This phenomenon was in line with the 

research conducted by Chun (2014) stated that the native teacher's oral proficiency positively affects 

the learners' level in the English skills especially on listening and speaking skill. It meant that the 

frequency of meeting with native speakers could increase the students’ self-confidence and result to 

the development of speaking ability (Kheryadi & Hilmiyati, 2021). Related to the benefit of this 

program to their future, the both students said that this program is very beneficial for their future. 

The S1 student said that this program would give positive energy when she met native speaker, while 

the S2 student stipulated that he hoped to get to know about some artificial intelligences in which 



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230 

 

most of their instructions were written in English. Both of them believed that the future careers and 

jobs would possibly be achieved if speaking skill was mastered well (Suresh, 2017). 

There were some challenges and new experiences that the students encountered joining the 

program. The result of interview stated that the biggest problem was about the limited ability of 

speaking English. Even though the students had briefing and rehearsal from the teacher before, they 

still spoke nothing when they got their turn. Most of them got problem on understanding the foreign 

participants. The lack of listening ability brought about the problem for the students resulting the 

inability to respond the other speakers’ idea. As a result, they became silent during the meeting. 

Basically, the listening skill of the students in Indonesia was still low, particularly when speaking 

with native (Megawati et al., 2016). The lack of opportunity to listen to the native was becoming the 

major reason for that. This affected on the ability of speaking English because theoretically there was 

positive correlation between speaking skill and listening skill (Demir, 2017). Moreover, the use of 

Indonesian language by English teacher in the classroom caused the problem of listening became 

deeper and deeper (Huriyah & Agustiani, 2018). That some teachers and students still tended to use 

L1 language when teaching and learning English in the classroom is true (Riadil, 2020). Positively, 

the students learnt some new cultural understanding and communication since both of the terms 

were very important in learning English (Ibrahim Zakarneh et al., 2021). They learnt some different 

accents and dialects from the meeting conference. It gave them new insight about the different 

cultural value over the world. Dealing with the ideal condition for the students to be able to enjoy the 

meeting conference, both students commented that mastering English well, having good background 

knowledge of the topics, and mastering technology are the key factors. Background knowledge is 

very important in speaking (Shabani, 2013). It gave the students possibility to develop the idea. Most 

of the students failed to maintain their presentation because they had lack of background knowledge. 

Beside background knowledge, mastering technology had an important role especially when we had 

online learning (Ferri et al., 2020). The fact that the students still had limited knowledge about 

technology literacy had become one of so many challenges for the implementation of online learning 

at school as well as the internet connection provision. 

 
The teacher’s reflection toward the Global Quarantine Conversation Clubs program 

The last research question was prompting to answer about the teacher’s reflection toward the Global 

Quarantine Conversation Clubs program. In this step, the researcher used the teacher’s notes as one 

of the documents as the instruments to collect the data. The teacher wrote some notes in three phases 

of implementation of the program. The first was the notes before the program started (pre-program), 

the notes when the Zoom meeting conference on action (during-program), and the notes after the 

program done (post-program). The teacher’s notes were in the form of handwriting using three 

subtopics, namely problem column, solution column, and reflection column. The following table 

represented the reflection of the teacher in pre, during, and post program taken from the 

documentation of teacher’s note. 

 

Table 4. The data on teacher’s reflection toward the implementation of the program 
Phases Problems Solution Reflection 

Pre-program Difficult to select the 

student as participants 

Doing briefing and rehearsal 

 

Not many students are good 

in English 
 

During-program Unstable internet 
connection 

Upgrading the capacity of 
the power 

Increasing technology 
understanding as well as the 

capacity of the power is 

needed 

Not every student has 

laptop 

Conducting program at 

school and laptop is from the 
teachers 

Don’t know how to use 
microsoft team 

Giving suggestion to the 
committee to use Zoom 

meeting again 
Many students keep silent 

and cannot speak 

Giving briefing and rehearsal The ability of the students at 

the school is still low and 

needs improvements 
They don’t understand 

what the other participants 
mean 

Giving them facilitators Preparing the next students 

to be participants with good 
English is needed 

 



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231 

 

Post-activity Difficult to find the time for 

evaluation and reflection 

Meeting with curriculum, 

sometimes with headmaster 

or conducting it via What’s 
up application. 

Good team, Run well 

 

 Table 4 confirmed problem, solution and reflection taken from the teacher’s notes during the 

program. There were some points that the teacher reflected from the program; the ability of the 

students at the school was still considered as low level and needed improvements, the technology 

literacy and facility as well as the capacity of the connection power was needed to be upgraded Ferri 

et al. (2020) and the lack of understanding about the importance of GQCC program by the school 

community so that the more socialization was needed. Knowing that the students could not 

maximally involve in discussion when meeting conference made the teacher shocked. The students 

did not understand not only how to speak English but also how to use technology (Ferri et al., 2020). 

The teacher got difficulty to choose the students to be the participants of the program. The existence 

of briefing and rehearsal did not help much, so the course of action should be made for better 

changes in the future time. This finding was in line with the data taken from the students’ perception 

explained in the previous section. The students seemed to have problems in speaking as well as in 

listening English since the lack of opportunity that the students got in the classroom and they mostly 

still used L1 in their language classroom (Riadil, 2020). Surprisingly, the school community did 

support on this program. The school management did some improvements to anticipate the 

problems, such as conducting an extracurricular program cooperating with English course and 

upgrading the internet power connection. The solid team, the headmaster, the head of curriculum, as 

well as the English teachers were expected to give big contribution on succeeding the GQCC 

program in the future time. 

 

CONCLUSION 

Global quarantine conversation club gave much contribution to the students in learning English.  

The limitation of its implementation was not because the program was unqualified, but it was merely 

the un-readiness of the school community in Indonesia, especially in providing the students with 

good English mastery. Here, the researcher would give a brief conclusion starting from the first 

research question to the third research question. 

Dealing with the first research question about the implementation of the program, the 

researcher concluded some specific activities related to the pre-program, during program and post 

program. The series of activities related to the implementation of GQCC program were that the 

teachers and the students were doing briefing and rehearsal in pre-program, doing presentation and 

group discussion during program and doing evaluation and reflection in post program.  

Dealing with the second research question about the students’ perception, the researcher 

concluded that the GQCC program gave positive impact on the students’ English development as 

well as gave them some new cultural knowledge over the world. The students became more aware 

with differentiation among the people from different country and learnt about life from the 

discussion. The last, dealing with the third research question about the teacher’s reflection, the 

researcher inferred that the teacher became more aware about the importance of upgrading the 

students’ speaking skill through some accelerated programs as well as improving the understanding 

of the technology literacy. To anticipate the problems of this program, the English teacher should 

start using English language as lingua franca when teaching in the classroom and provide more 

innovative and creative extra school programs for the students. The possibility of the future research 

can be conducted on exposing the teachers’ perception toward this program and well as the 

comparative study between the students who join this program and the students who do not. 

 

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