Gagasan merdeka belajar yang disampaikan oleh Mendikbud bahwa salah satunya adalah pembelajaran itu harus menyenangkan, tidak membuat peserta didik merasa tertekan, peserta didik bebas memilih arah kreatifitas mereka sendiri. Adapun peran seorang guru tidak lagi menjadi satu satunya sumber belajar, sebaliknya seorang guru yang dapat membantu peserta didik menemukan bakat mereka sendiri. Desa Sukorejo masih banyak memiliki lingkungan yang pure belum banyak diubah oleh teknologi, kemerdekaan belajar dapat diwujudkan melalui pembeljaran kontekstual learning dengan cara guru menggunakan pendekatan humanis. Peserta didik di berikan materi yang hubungannya dekat dengan lingkungan mereka. Kemerdekaan belajar memang seharusnya diterapka dilingkungan belajar peserta didik, karena hal ini sangat menentukan output sekolah, terlebih jika peserta didik dipandang sebagai insan kamil, bukan sebauh robot yang harus memenuhi perintah tuannya sama persis 100%.

Due to the closure of Schools and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), HEIs had shifted the teaching and learning method from face-to-face to Screen-based learning, such as the use of Learning Management System or Moodle, and other applications. Moreover, screen-based learning, such as the use of Learning Management System or Moodle, and other applications the EFL students’ writing argumentative essays barriers in online learning as well as their learning strategies as alternative solutions to cope with them. The research employed descriptive qualitative design. The participants were six EFL students from the fifth semester who experienced writing argumentative essays during pandemic. The instrument used to gather the data was depth interviews about the issue of research. After analysis, it exposed three barriers in writing argumentative essays made by the participants, namely unusualness on the implementation of e-learning for writing, low bandwidth while learning, and students’ discouragement on writing argumentative essays. To overcome the barriers, students must be given a brief simulation previously before attending the real-time class, making classification and analogy for the complex materials up to the simple one, and get a relaxation during the argumentations class. So, it becomes a crystal clear that teacher must assist students to be aware of their weaknesses in writing argumentative essay class so that they can be more creative in writing. Besides, students are expected to be able to solve their barriers by maintaining well communication among the teachers and classmates to sharpen their understanding and implement the best learning styles individually.

The current study aims at investigating the effectiveness of using strategy-based instruction on the student’s listening achievement. This research applied quasi-experimental design, and the instruments were pretest and posttest. Both tests were about putting the pictures in order and form completion.  Prior to strategy choice, this study utilized Posteriori Taxonomy of Strategies of Learning English Listening Skill (Zuhairi & Hidayanti, 2014) especially focusing on the use of eight strategy categories deployed by successful students (Hidayanti & Umamah, 2018). Gaining the result from Independent t-Test analysis, it was found out that the experimental group outperformed better than their counterparts in control group. Thus, Strategy-based instruction plays important role to enhance and improve the EFL learners’ listening skill.

This study aims to investigate the use of social strategies in English as A Foreign Language (EFL) learning. This was inspired by the learning condition that has been changing from face-to-face atmosphere to the online-based due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This changing situation requires teachers and students to be more aware of applying suitable strategies in online learning mode, especially social strategies. Using the descriptive qualitative approach, this study was conducted on the fourth semester EFL students in a private university. To elicit the required data, set of online questionnaires was disseminated to 50 participants to obtain information on social strategies use in online EFL learning. The result of the descriptive analysis showed that average students exhibited a high frequency of using social strategies in their learning processes. In asynchronous learning, students preferred doing ‘collaboration and discussion’ to assess their completed task. The strategies of ‘using tools to improve interaction and communication as well as asking for clarification’ were more influential in synchronous learning in which technology effected the use of social strategies in the online class participation. Therefore, it becomes crystal clear that social strategies are deemed effective to aid online EFL learning. Further suggestions regarding the use of social strategies are also accessible at the end of this article.