The Teaching Practicum Experience of Pre-service English Language Teachers through Synchronous Learning Nurjannah

During the pandemic COVID-19, teaching practicum has shifted from offline to online mode following the school policy. In this demanding situation, pre-service teachers might have new experience of conducting online teaching learning activities. The experience could be found in planning, teaching, and reflecting stages of teaching practicum. This study employed two pre-service English language teachers who majored in the English Language Education narrating their experience of their teaching practicum. The data was obtained from the preservice teachers’ reflective journals and interviews. The findings of this study showed various experiences of teaching English in synchronous online classes, including the experience of using the digital platform, the experience with the students, the experience of teaching English lessons, and the experience working with the cooperating teacher.


Introduction
Teaching practicum is a crucial part of any teacher preparation program. It provides a chance to build links between theory and practice and to apply academic knowledge (Nemtchinova, 2018). In the English language teacher education program, teaching practicum also plays a vital role. It gives pre-service English language teachers an excellent opportunity to bring the pedagogical content knowledge they have learned through the coursework into practice by teaching real students (Koşar, 2021). A successful teacher education program is indicated by the success of teaching practicum (Köksal & Genç, 2019). A teaching practicum is one of the courses that will make the student teachers get authentic and hands-on experience for teaching in the classroom (Kim, 2020).
Thus, student teachers are required to take a teaching practicum course to practice teaching in the real school context.
In the Indonesian context, teaching practicum is included in the teacher education program, commonly known as Praktik Pengalaman Lapangan (PPL). It is a mandatory subject for pre-service teachers who are in the final year at universities (Shalawati & Hadijah, 2018). In March 2020, the Ministry of Education and Culture of Indonesia, Nadiem Makariem, issued a Circular Letter Number 4 year 2020 about the implementation of Educational policies in the emergency period of the Coronavirus outbreak (Pusdiklat, 2020). One of the policies is to conduct online learning during the pandemic. All schools and universities were closed and switched the teaching-learning activities to the online mode. As a result, the teaching practicum had to follow the school regulation. The pre-service teachers who were implementing a teaching practicum have to switch from learning how to teach English face-to-face in a classroom to online mode during the practicum. Gustine (2021) stated that pre-service teachers, most of whom have no teaching experience are forced to teach online.
The change from the traditional face-to-face into online learning during pandemics becomes a current issue in teaching practicum. Nel & Marais (2020) stated that the teaching practicum is likely to be significantly impacted because it coincides with the pandemic. They explained that in South Africa the universities are discussing eligibility and safety for placing the pre-service teachers in schools for their practicum. Meanwhile, Nasri et al. (2020) mentioned that Malaysian preservice teachers must shift their teaching practicum to be online but were disappointed because they did not prepare well for online teaching, so they could not develop their skills.
The issue of shifting from teaching face-to-face into online has also been experienced by Indonesian pre-service teachers who should be taking a teaching practicum during the pandemic. According to Gustine (2021), pre-service teachers expressed their negative feelings of online teaching and learning during a pandemic. First, they were confused, worried, and panic about how to teach online because they had never learned it at university. They were confusing to choose the right methodology to teach students online.
Synchronous online teaching is one of the methods to teach online, which implicates one-hour long real-time live session conveyed through Video Conferencing Software (VCS), such as Zoom Cloud Meeting or Google Meet. In synchronous online teaching, the pre-service English language teachers should use various online synchronous meeting tools (SMTs) to facilitate student learning (Kohnke & Moorhouse, 2020). In the context of teaching the English language, the teacher needs to analyze whether the platform they choose is suitable for teaching the English skills. Kohnke & Moorhouse (2020) reviewed Zoom to teach the English language. They said that it can support synchronous online learning and the features are beneficial for the students to develop their communicative competencies.
However, there are several reasons why pre-service teachers did not conduct synchronous online teaching practicum. Nel & Marais (2020) found that parents were not familiar with video conferencing platforms. This has become a reason why the school did not allow the pre-service teachers to teach with Zoom or Skype during teaching practicum. Meanwhile, Gustine (2021) revealed that preservice teachers have no experience in using video conferencing platforms, such as Zoom or Google Meet. They hoped that the school and university have a session to teach them to conduct synchronous online classrooms. Furthermore, Gustine (2021) also argued that Indonesian pre-service teachers have never prepared to teach in an online classroom at university, which makes them puzzled and anxious.
In my experience, before the pandemic, I learn how to teach in face-to-face classes. I developed lesson plans for offline teaching. I also created a teaching simulation video without any students. What I learned in the microteaching course is different from what I did in the teaching practicum during the pandemic. I had to teach English classes synchronously using Zoom Cloud Meeting. Thus, I was surprised because I have only ever used that platform for several times before practicum. It is called 'reality shock' when the realization is conflicted with the implementation (Köksal & Genç, 2019). Then, the cooperating teacher suggested me to join her online class which is conducted via Zoom to make me familiar with the platform.
Other pre-service teachers might also have their own experiences of teaching practicum during the COVID-19 Pandemic, especially shifting from physical into virtual classrooms. Some of them might struggle with the use of the synchronous teaching-learning mode, which is considered as a new teaching practicum method, as I experienced. Some others might have different experiences. Therefore, this study is going to find out the experience of preservice English language teachers teaching through the synchronous classroom during practicum.

Teaching Practicum
Students in teacher education programs need an opportunity to develop their teaching skills and implement the theory they have learned during the courses in the real school context. According to Prabjandee (2019), there is a time for the pre-service teachers to transfer the theory, knowledge, and skills they obtained during the study in a teacher education program into practice which called teaching practicum. Teaching practicum has various labels to describe such as 'practice teaching', 'field experience', 'apprenticeship', 'practical experience', and 'internship' (Köksal & Genç, 2019).
There are three stages in the teaching practicum process. The pre-service teachers should do all stages, which are similar to what they did in the Microteaching phase. According to Karlström & Hamza (2019), teaching practicum phases consist of planning, teaching, and reflection as main parts of microteaching in teacher education programs. In the planning phase, the preservice teachers decide what should be taught, concepts, goals, and objectives. In this phase, the pre-service teachers write a lesson plan. The second, teaching phase is the pre-service teachers teach in the real school context. The third, the reflection phase is the review for the pre-service teachers to develop their teaching skills. Becker et al. (2019) also stated that the teaching practicum stages consist of planning, teaching, and reflecting on lessons.

The Cooperating Teacher
In the teaching practicum, the pre-service teachers will cooperate with the school teacher who supervised them during the teaching practicum. Because the pre-service teachers are accepted and established members within the school, they have to follow the guidance and direction of their cooperating teacher (Gallchóir et al., 2019). Before practicing in the teaching practicum, the pre-service teachers assume to master educational theories and they are supervised by the cooperating teacher (mentor) (Zhu, 2017). Nel & Marais (2020) also stated that the mentor teachers supervise, monitor, and mentor them during practicum.
The cooperating teachers have a huge role in the teaching practicum process. Becker et al. (2019) stated that the pre-service teachers would get teaching experience by learning from the cooperating teacher. In the planning stage, the role of the cooperating teachers is to observe every lesson that preservice teachers conduct to teach in the class (Windsor et al., 2020). The observation can help the pre-service teachers to find out their personal, professional, and teaching potentialities (Rivera & Gómez, 2017). The cooperating teachers also help the pre-service teacher in planning the lessons, for example, they share the resources (curricular materials and old lessons) (Gurl, 2019). Rivera & Gómez (2017) stated that in the implementation or teaching stage, the cooperating teacher will help the pre-service teachers to give quick feedback like solutions for the problems that appear in the classroom. Also, the cooperating teacher will sense the relationship between what was planned and what was done in the reflection stage.

Synchronous Online Learning
Some things need attention before using the platform. According to Sidpra et al. (2020), things to watch out for are audio and video quality, screen sharing, speaker and organizer controls, background image quality, and the ability of the platforms to have multiple hosts. Based on the features of the platform, Zoom has become an answer to be used for synchronous conferencing (Archibald et al., 2019). Another capability provided in this platform is the ability to record the session (Archibald et al., 2019).

Method
This study used qualitative method with a narrative inquiry. The use of narrative inquiry can assist the researcher to comprehend how language teachers and students manage their experiences and identities (Barkhuizen et al., 2014).
The essence of what has happened to a person can be generated from the life story narrative, which got from the life story interview (Clandinin, 2007). Therefore, the researcher employed narrative inquiry to find the teaching practicum experience of pre-service English language teachers through the synchronous classroom during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study used purposive sampling to find the participants who have relevant experience with the study (Gray et al., 2007). They are required to take a Practical Experience Course, Praktik Pengalaman Lapangan (PPL) in the seventh semester. They were chosen because they had done teaching practicum and implemented synchronous teaching during the online teaching practicum in one of the private Islamic junior high schools in Tangerang, Indonesia. The participants of the study were two pre-service English language teachers enrolled at the English language department of a private university in West Jakarta, Indonesia.
They were asked for their consent to participate in this study and their data would be taken with care to make sure all information is secured. All information from the participants would be secretly saved in the researcher's computer and would be used only for this research. The consent forms are attached in appendix 1.
Before conducting the research, the participants filled a form about their identity.
The researcher assured the participants that their identities would be anonymous.
The participant's name used pseudonyms.
In order to answer the research question, two data collection procedures employed, namely reflective journal and interview. A reflective journal is one of the techniques to do the self-reflection by the pre-service teachers during teaching practicum (Maaranen & Stenberg, 2017). The reflective journal was employed to formulate the interview questions through the codes appeared. Meanwhile, the interviews were used to confirm what were written in the participants' reflective journals. The interview was conducted once online via video call using Zoom.
The researcher used interview protocols during the interview. During the interview, Bahasa Indonesia was used to communicate. The participant was asked to tell their experience of doing the teaching practicum in synchronous mode and to reflect on their practices. Thus, there are four themes of instruction, namely: (1) tell me about your experience when you first learned that you had to teach English in a synchronous class, (2) tell me about your preparation before teaching English in a synchronous class, (3) tell me about your experience when teaching English in a synchronous class from the beginning to the end of the teaching session, and (4) tell me about new things that you learned from the practice of teaching English in synchronous class.
To analyze the reflective journals and interview data, the researcher used thematic analysis. This method included the coding process, which the researcher should understand the text data, distribute the text data into text or image segments, code the label segments, check out overlap and redundancy, and make the codes into broad themes (Cresswell, 2015). The process of a good thematic analysis always contains a repeated reading of the data and some rounds of analysis. It means to refine themes and theoretical relationships, the researcher moves back and forth between the data and its coded and category (Barkhuizen, et al., 2014). The interviews were transcribed from the recording audio into text.
Then, the researcher was retelling the story of pre-service English teachers' experience based on the interview transcript.

Results and Discussions
To answer the research question about the pre-service teachers' experience of teaching English through the synchronous classroom, the researcher discovered four themes arisen from the participants' stories. The themes are pre-service teachers' experience of using the platform, experience with the students, the experience of teaching English lessons, and experience with cooperating teachers.

Pre-service teachers' experience of using the platform
The school suggested the participant use Zoom Cloud Meeting, a video conferencing platform, to teach English lessons. Both participants admitted that they never hosted Zoom Cloud Meeting, but they had never been participants in Zoom video conferences. Therefore, when they had to teach using it, they decided to learn about how to use Zoom as a host with their friend. It is revealed that when the school suggested pre-service teachers teach via Zoom Cloud Meeting, pre-service teachers took the initiative to study independently using the platform without being assisted by cooperating teacher or supervisor. This issue is different from previous research conducted by Gustine (2021), where pre-service teachers asked tutors and supervisors to teach them how to use Zoom for online synchronous classes because they had never seen Zoom before teaching practice. This means that even though pre-service teachers do not have experience in using video conferencing platforms before the teaching practicum, they can still learn with their friends to get to know it.
By teaching English using Zoom, two participants made some preparations with the platform. Participant 1 explained that she checked the laptop, speaker, and camera. She ensured that there were no technical problems during the session.
Then, she also tried the Share Screen feature to present the slides. Additional things need to prepare before teaching English in synchronous online mode. It starts from the device to the features available on Zoom. The participant said that they checked the available features on the platform, such as Share Screen and Microphone, laptop, speaker, and camera. Sidpra et al. (2020) revealed that there are things that need attention before using the platform, such as audio and video quality, background image quality, screen sharing, speaker and organizer controls, and the ability of video conferencing platforms to have multiple hosts.
After teaching English through the online synchronous class, both participants claimed that their ability to use technology had improved. Participant 1 asserted that she is able to manage a Zoom video conferencing platform. It includes how to set a synchronous class meeting schedule, change the meeting title and password, present the picture, video and audio materials, and record the teaching-learning process. Teaching English through online synchronous classes can improve the skills of pre-service teachers in using technology for teaching. Pre-service teachers could manage a Zoom video conferencing platform. They could use the features available on the platform, such as the synchronous meeting schedule feature, the title and password for the meeting, and the recording feature to record synchronous classroom learning. The recording might be useful for students who missed the session. Pre-service teachers could record learning when teaching in synchronous classes so that the recorded videos could use to share with students who cannot attend synchronous meetings (Sunasee, 2020).

Pre-service teachers' experience with the platform
In learning English through synchronous classes, both participants experienced the same problems regarding the lack of students attendance.

"… So, my student should be twenty-three. Wow, why is it only twelve? Why is it only fourteen? It was never full [laughs] but, that was okay". (Participant 2)
The findings showed that doing learning in synchronous classes affects student attendance. Students rarely came into class, so the synchronous classroom was never full of complete students. As told by the participants, the students' presence was half of the total number of students. This case might be caused by technical problems or a lack of student motivation. It might be different if the learning is done face-to-face in the classroom. As Scull et al. (2020) said that students who study in synchronous classes might not be the same as students who study in a physical classroom.
Besides absence from the synchronous sessions, the students were frequently late for joining the class. In this case, participant 1 felt that she did not have the authority to give sanctions, such as not being allowed to attend class if they were late for more than the specified time. She could only remind students not to repeat the same thing. In joining the synchronous sessions, students who attend were often late.
This could cause pre-service teachers late in starting learning which would have an impact on planned learning activities. In dealing with the issue, pre-service teachers felt they were not authorized to sanction the students when they are late for more than the specified time. Thus, the pre-service teachers could only remind students not to repeat the same thing. The decision to communicate with students as opposed to giving sanctions is a good one. It is because communication is the best way to solve the problem rather than sanctions that can hurt students' selfesteem and self-confidence (Qiu, Xie, Xiong, & Zhou, 2021).
In terms of students' participation, participant 1 explained that only a few students were enthusiastic about participating in the lesson, such as answering questions when the teacher asked questions. From the participation in the online synchronous sessions, it was noticed that only a few active students participated. One example is when pre-service teachers have to call students' names first so that they participate in answering the questions. Calling students by name included in teacher immediacy can motivate the students to encourage them to be engaged as active participants (Webster et al., 2021). Students do not even answer the teacher's questions even though their names have been called (Serhan, 2020). However, by using a game to start the lesson, pre-service teachers can enhance student engagement in the classroom. In contrast to research conducted by Ak & Gökdaş (2021), pre-service teachers cannot ensure student participation in the virtual classroom, so that their teaching motivation is reduced.
Based on the stories of the two participants, the students' interaction were fine. Participant 1 told that their interaction could be seen from the opening session. Students asked each other about what English material would be taught that day.

"… Yes, at most, they interact with each other like normal conversation or at least interact by asking, 'What will we learn later?'". (Participant 1)
Similarly, participant 2 remembered that students liked to joke with their friends during the session.
"… the interaction is when they are joking. When I asked one person, later another friend answered". (Participant 2) It seems that during synchronous online teaching, the interaction between students looks normal even though they do not learn in the physical classroom.
Based on the stories from the participants, students often asked other students about the lesson that day. Students also liked to joke with their friends when studying. However, teaching-learning English through online synchronous classes is better applied to the class with a small number of students so that all students have sufficient opportunities to interact (Kim, 2020).

Pre-service teachers' experience of teaching English lessons
In preparing the material, both participants adapted the material from many sources. Participant 1 adapted material from Ruang Guru website. She adapted simple materials supplemented by pictures. To teach English through the synchronous classroom, pre-service teachers have to prepare what to teach and how to teach in the synchronous online mode.
In preparing the teaching materials, participants can adopt or adapt the material.
As experienced by the pre-service teachers, they could adapt the images available on the websites with a current book. They could also adopt materials from learning platforms such as Ruang Guru. It seems that teaching through online synchronous classes can make pre-service teachers' teaching and language skills improved. They can determine whether to adjust or utilize the material, thus that it can suit the students' circumstances. These decision-making skills of pre-service teachers develop when they engage in reflective practice (Kwangsawad, 2021).
Practicing field experience can increase pre-service teachers' content knowledge about the subjects they teach (Hojeij et al., 2021).
Participant 1 claimed that her skills to explain the materials were improved.
She explained the materials briefly, but all topics could be covered.
"Well, if, for example, online like this. What do we really have to do? Sort out the material like that. It is like a really short one, but we can get to all of that. And they understand too". (Participant 1) Teaching English in online synchronous classes also can improve the ability of pre-service teachers to deliver the materials. As mentioned before, pre-service teachers explained the materials briefly, but all topics can be covered. This is because teaching through online synchronous classes requires pre-service teachers to have good presentation skills like using PowerPoint, so they only put the necessary points of the material. As stated in previous research, pre-service teachers must be able to demonstrate their ability to convey material in the exploratory language (Kazaz & Alagözlü, 2020).

Both participants expressed their perceptions of the practice of teaching
English through synchronous classes. According to participant 1, conducting English teaching-learning through the synchronous class is not effective. Learning through the synchronous class made the instructional materials less clear. As discussed by participants, teaching English through a synchronous classroom can make the material presented less clear. Similar to the previous study, pre-service teachers also do not know whether the material content they convey is clear to students if they explain it through the asynchronous classroom (Nel & Marais, 2020). Thus, it might be more effective to deliver the material in a face-to-face class or pre-service teachers need to find out new activities to overcome those challenges.
In addition, pre-service teachers also become unable to implement various learning methods such as collaborative, cooperative, and inquiry. Applying such a learning method is hard to do when learning through synchronous classes, especially since pre-service teachers do not have much experience in teachinglearning through online synchronous classes. This is because when studying in an online synchronous class, students cannot have separate discussions with other groups. In previous studies, it was also seen that pre-service teachers had problems in implementing group work in the physical classroom (Kwangsawad, 2021).

Pre-service teachers experience with the cooperating teacher
Back to the story before the English classes started, both of the participants were allowed to do the observation before doing a teaching practicum. The observation was to find out how was the teaching-learning activities conducted in the synchronous classroom. For example, she learned how the teacher conveyed the materials in class. The cooperating teacher also assisted the participants during the English learning activities. Participant 1 explained that the cooperating teacher helped her in responding to questions posed by a student with special needs. "There is a student with special needs. Well, coincidentally, that child often asks. In the process of teaching practice through online synchronous classes, the cooperating teacher has a huge role in all stages. The cooperating teacher becomes a role model for pre-service teachers during the observation in the planning stage.
They learn how to conduct the teaching-learning activities, including conveying the materials in the online synchronous class, and they learn the teaching style.
Similar to Becker et al. (2019), who said that teaching experience for pre-service teachers could be obtained by learning from the cooperating teacher. Moreover, the cooperating teacher provides the syllabus, lesson plan, and module. Gurl (2019) also stated that the cooperating teacher is responsible for providing information on the platform, syllabus, lesson plans, and modules. It does not end there; the cooperating teacher also suggests the pre-service teachers about the platform and gives advice related to the assessment.
During the teaching-learning process, the cooperating teacher helps the pre-service teachers to face the question from the student with special needs. She also assists the pre-service teachers to remind the students to join the online synchronous class. Then, the cooperating teacher helps the pre-service teachers to consult related the teaching-learning in online synchronous classes. For example, the cooperating teacher gives suggestions related to student's attendance, and she also shares the story about the students who learn in the online synchronous classes.

Conclusion
The pandemic situation has pushed pre-service teachers to conduct online teaching-learning activities to complete the teaching practicum. They might find various experiences from those who conducted the teaching practicum in offline mode. This study explored the teaching practicum experience of pre-service English language teachers through the synchronous classroom during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the results of this study, it was found that pre-service teachers get new experiences during the teaching practicum in the pandemic situation. The experiences include their challenges, difficulties, and benefits of conducting English teaching in synchronous online mode in all practicum stages: planning, teaching, and reflecting stages.
Four main findings of their experiences are related to using the platform, the experience with the student, the experience of teaching English lessons, and the experience with the cooperating teacher. According to the story of pre-service teachers in this study, it can be concluded that teaching English through online synchronous classes is challenging. The challenges are to create the various learning methods and to explain the English language materials in a limited time.
However, the pre-service teachers' technological and pedagogical skills were improved. Besides, many lessons were learned from the teaching practicum during the pandemic COVID-19.
This study with a sample of two pre-service English language teachers in one school is not representative of other pre-service teachers' experiences. The study was also conducted at the beginning of the pandemic, where everyone was still trying to adapt to virtual modes for all purposes. Therefore, the results of this study cannot be generalized. Because of this limitation, further studies are recommended to explore the pre-service teachers teaching English in other schools and levels, do the observation to know the process of English teachinglearning in online synchronous classes, and explore how pre-service teachers overcome the problems and challenges in teaching English using synchronous online mode to enhance their experiences in online synchronous classes.

About the Writer
Nurjannah is an English Education Department student of Teacher Training and Education Faculty of Universitas Esa Unggul, Jakarta.
Sri Lestari is an English lecturer at The Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Esa Unggul, Jakarta with core competencies of EFL teaching and training, teacher professsional development, curriculum and material development and language assessment.