The students’ motivation in learning has been a crucial issue for many researchers so far. It is because motivation takes an important role to support the students’ learning achievement. Hence, motivation cannot be separated from the teaching and learning activities conducted by the EFL teachers. This current research was aimed at investigating the elements of the students’ motivation in joining the EFL virtual learning activities using the zoom application during the covid 19 pandemic. The research applied a qualitative descriptive approach. To collect the data, the researcher observed one elective class and interviewed some students from the class investigated. The results revealed that the students’ motivation was mostly influenced by the positive effect related to the learning situations created by the teacher when using the zoom application to conduct the teaching and learning activities. This also implied that the zoom application could lead the teachers to think of being creative in conducting the virtual teaching and learning activities.

The current study was aimed to investigate the cultural perspectives on online learning through the flipped learning activity to face the 4.0 industry era in Indonesia. Online learning has been a trend in education as the development of education in the world refers to the current situations due to the development of technology. The important thing needed to be considered is concerned with the strategy of providing the learning time allocation and using technology. The best alternative strategy to support online learning is conducting the flipped learning activity. However, it is not an easy matter since some cultural aspects in Indonesia can be great obstacles. That's why it is crucial to recognize the problems and find the solutions referring to the existing cultural dimensions. The results revealed that the way how the learners studied English through the online learning activities was mostly influenced by the cultural dimensions such as getting passive in the class, focusing on getting good grades, expecting the teachers’ dominations in the class, and getting fond of being given playful learning activities. Regarding this, some solutive efforts were also done by the teachers in the form of flipped learning activities leading the acts of building the classroom interactions through questioning and giving various tasks targetting to improve the generic capabilities. Hence, it is recommended that both the EFL teachers and learners can overcome the problems related to the existence and influence of the cultural dimensions by implementing the flipped learning activities to support the online learning activities conducted for reaching better academic achievements through the developments of their generic capabilities to face the 4.0 industry era.

In the domain of education, great teachers are those who facilitate students’ learning effectively in an inspiring learning environment. Therefore, they should continuously develop and empower their professional and pedagogical competencies. In fact, there emerge abundant ways to empower themselves, and one of which is through the so-called ‘reflective training’. As empirical evidence, English teachers in specific primary schools have not reached the expected level of CEFR criteria for creative writing (B1 at the minimum). For this reason, this study adopted action research via the implementation of reflective training to enhance the subjects’ creative writing skills in one cycle incorporating planning, taking action(s), observing, and reflecting. Three instruments were employed, i.e., writing tasks, observation sheets, and questionnaires. Creative writing rubrics were taken from CEFR and Mozaffari to evaluate teachers’ writing. The training made the teachers engaged in producing a piece of creating writing as output and allow them to reflect and improve it with the elements of creative writing aspects namely image, characterization, voice, and story. Teachers have successfully completed their writings with theories and skills in their writing products to reach the B2 CEFR level in creative writing.  Keywords: primary school teachers, creative writing skills, reflective training, CEFR

Cooperative Learning (CL) strategy can be the alternative way for leading the students to have the capacity in solving the problems in learning grammar. It is because CL gives the access for the students to have mutual or cooperative working within the groups or team works formed. The students’ mutual or cooperative working can be measured by peer assessments given. The study was aimed at revealing how the students in the groups or team works performed their contributions in solving the problems related to understanding grammar through cross-cultural translation. The study used a quantitative approach within a survey design. There were 50 participants in this study. The research instrument used a questionnaire containing about 16 closed questions distributed via Google form. The result showed that most of the students were initiated to have mutual and cooperative working by being consistent to contribute, feeling a complete sensitivity to others, encouraging others, and having high social attention and care in solving the problems on learning cross-cultural grammar translation. It is recommended that the teachers apply the CL strategy which also gives the access for the students to improve their learning motivations and self confidence through mutual and cooperative working done.

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