Teacher‟s strategies in survival speaking learning during COVID-19 pandemic

This paper focuses on the teacher’s strategies during an online learning in Survival Speaking subject. Drawing on narrative inquiry, the paper describes and analyzes how a teacher deals with online learning from August to September 2020. Through teacher’s interview, the thematized data were narrated in accordance to the research problems. The paper concludes that the teacher experienced challenges in teaching during the pandemic and inspired by Vigotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (1978) he was stimulated to provide engaging learning by combining both synchronous and asynchronous mode of learning for his Survival Speaking students through the use of WhatsApp as a form of scaffolding.


Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic as declared by WHO has received international concern as it has brought risk not only in health sector but in economic and education as well. Teachers are demanded to alter their ways of teaching as schools are designed to change the face-to-face mode of learning to the online one due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Moorhouse, 2020). As schools are educational institutions, they are expected not to carry out their usual activities to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Some schools in Philippine, for example, as the government has considered COVID-19 as a risky activity and they have decided classroom activity change into online teaching as there is a requirement to adhere to quarantine needs (Talidong & Toquero, 2020). In the United States, schools implement learning remotely. This is believed to prevent students from suffering hindrances throughout the school closures. However, in reality some children do not have internet access and this has brought challenges. While in Australia, Scull et al. (2020) reported the effect of COVID-19 has swept away the education system as it hit hard the university. Lockdown has forced education sectors to implement innovations in teaching, changing the teaching mode, converse all offline courses into online mode both in synchronous and asynchronous learning experiences. The purpose is to enable the students" engagement in the learning process. As the similar case has hit Indonesian education by the evidence that Indonesian"s number of COVID-19 cases has grown bigger in 2020 (WHO, 2020) hence schools are instructed to conduct online learning (Mendikbud, 2020). The policy leads educational sectors to implement the school closures and students must learn from home.
The learning mode has changed into online learning from primary schools to universities. This has brought challenges in most of educational divisions; one of them is university level. The learning mode has impacted the teaching-learning performance, one of which is in the English speaking for survival course. Survival Speaking is a subject offered in English Department aiming to provide skills for students to be communicative in speaking skills. As the basis for English education students to survive in their speaking skills, the course highly relates to students" confidence during performing speaking. Introduced by Freitas (1978) Survival English encourages students to practice English speaking in every day topic. It aims to develop the students" speaking competency and confidence. Through Survival speaking, teachers are suggested to help students to be ready to communicate in real life, that they will be able to communicate naturally by connecting ideas across fields and to everyday life (Darling-Hammond et al., 2020). Some previous studies were reported in the area of survival speaking although they were in different focus. Lekatompessy (2019) analyzed textbook for sources to teach Survival Speaking. It was stated that Survival Speaking textbook needs to consider contextualized vocabularies as it aims to provide natural natural and real the situations, creates natural and real dialogues, and covers various topics of different fields. Amalia et al. (2019) described students" Survival Speaking and corrective feedback in the practice. These two studies were conducted before the pandemic and in different scope of interest, all lead to the need of natural speaking and contextualized learning. In the present study, Survival Speaking (SS) is reported in the COVID-19 pandemic. What differed in the current study is that the data is acquired from SS teacher"s narration. In the pandemic, Survival Speaking, as one of subjects in a university in Central Java, Indonesia is being adapted to online learning system. Teacher mandatorily is required to change the teaching into different mode of teaching by optimizing both synchronous and asynchronous learning. In line with this, therefore, this research intends to answer the ways English survival speaking"s teacher carry out online Speaking learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially to cope to challenges in carrying the activities.

Research context and participant
This research was based on the implementation of a course carried out in English Department of a university in Pekalongan, Central Java, Indonesia. In this Department, English Speaking for Survival is a course delivered to beginner students. The course forms the basis for students of the department to survive in their speaking skills. This qualitative study aims to explore how an English teacher managed the class during the pandemic of COVID-19 and the obstacles he faced and the strategies he conducted in the process of learning. The research participant was a teacher of survival Speaking. Data were collected through semistructured interview to acquire informations converning his strategies in helping students in the English speaking for survival course during this COVID-19 pandemic through the use of WhatsApp voice notes and some additional supporting videos. Data analysis and interpretation were based on Vigotsky"s ZPD by teacher"s provided scaffoldings to guide students to be able to be independent in acquiring knowledge and to practice confidently in speaking.

Findings and Discussion
Based on the analysis of the data gathered from the participant"s interview, the teacher"s narration cover the challenges faced in the teaching of Speaking for Survival, and the strategies implemented by the teacher in the course. The participant"s series of narrations are displayed as evidence and to explain the themes.

Teacher's Challenges and Strategies in Teaching Survival Speaking during the Pandemic of COVID-19
Based on WHO"s report (2020), Indonesia belongs to the highest death toll country in Southeast Asia due to COVID-19. This has brought the government"s policy in school closure up to December 2020. Therefore, online platforms have altered the face to face learning and brought a revolution in education. Teachers and students are required to be accustomed to the learning platform.
Teaching in the pandemic for beginner students was complicated. Opik, the teacher of Survival Speaking narrated that he should understand the problems hampering in the process of learning.
In the first meeting I followed the institution's guidance that the lecturers should use e-learning as the LMS in our campus. Students were suggested to download it and were engaged in the learning process. Some problem hampered. When students were confused they still contacted me through WhatsApp messages. (Opik, WhatsApp, October 18th 2020) For students in the first semester, they were invited to learn through Zoom or Goggle Meet. This was because they had not met the teachers and this mode of learning during the pandemic was new. To overcome boredom, Zoom is recommended. However, they complained about the data or internet connection. They wanted the face of face meeting. I was also situated in a bitter circumstance as to save the data students turned off their video and the microphone (Opik, WhatsApp, October 18th 2020) The data narrated by the participant showed thatthe constraints were there during the learning. They were not ready; both students and the teacher had come into some problematic circumstances, particularly affecting the psychological factor that may demotivate both parties in the learning process. In the case of students" effort in internet data, might result on teacher"s inconvenience as he taught in a non cooperative situation, that students preferred to turn off the video in online learning. (Assunção Flores & Gago, 2020) mentioned that COVID-19 pandemic has affected education sector, and according to (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020) both parties needed adaptations to overcome the learning challenges.
To manage the obstruction, hence the participant stated that creativity in providing other plans was needed. Related this, Opik described how he developed the creativity in the learning process to attract students" eagerness to learn. This can be seen in the following data: I think as a teacher I need to be ready to be Mr handy man especially in the creativity of finding alternatives in learning. Although in my case, I was dealing with university students, they aer still beginners. They tend to be passive in the learning projects. Probably as they face all courses were adapted into online meetings. So, they found that learning sessions were quite boring for these students. I ever requested them to have zoom meetings, so we would have direct learning, the synchronous one but they refused it. The students said WhatsApp class would be more saving internet data. Then, there was problem as not all students paid attentively. When I greeted them, they answered, but when lessons were started, there were only some students replied. (Opik, WhatsApp, October 18th 2020) The data showed that apart from using Zoom as synchronous learning, the teacher altered the option to the use WhatsApp since students requested it. WhatsApp was at first used as a synchronous mode of instruction, as he used it directly and he expected students to interact as in the sceduled meetings. The use of synchronous learning, according to Moorhouse (2020) includes certain real-time live lessons. In his study, he reported that the learning system was accomplished after students receiving learning materials. In this learning, the design was to enable discussions concerning content to be discussed. Students were expected to be involved in questions sessions, however he reported that there were few students participated. In Survival Speaking"s case, the teacher narrated that even the WhatsApp implementation in the learning process did not run well as there was lack of participation in the process. Hence, to manage the barrier, he implemented another option as informed in the data, that: When students did not participate fully in the online class, I was mad actually. They did not want Zoom, but chose WhatsApp. When I agreed to use it and material was delivered the fact did not show good impression. I invited them to question, they only read the messages. It hit my self-esteem actually, but giving up was not the answer. I understood the pandemic had triggered boredom as they had too many assignments from all classes. Then, I assumed I had to mix between the use of synchronous and asynchronous learning. I gave instruction a day before, to let them discuss in their spare time, arranged the agenda and executed in the scheduled day. In the asynchronous moda of learning, I communicated to students to let them chit chat about the tpics they preferred. This gave me idea to implement updated topic based on their interest (Opik, WhatsApp, October 18th 2020) In this context, teacher needs to be creative. The problem of students" passiveness was also reported in a study of Assunção Flores & Gago (2020) They reported that students usually hide behind the camera, less opportunity to participate, thus they must adapt the teaching method to address students" needs. This is important to ensure that students are not left behind. In this case, teacher needs to be creative and adapt to the learning need. From the data, the teacher chose the mixed of asynchronous and synchronous platforms. Moore (2020) mentioned that in his study, the asynchronous online teaching included the attachment of readings materials, accompanied by teacher presenting narrative voice along within the materials. However, in Survival Speaking"s context the teacher decided to consider asynchronous to collect information in accordance to students" interest and to blend the communication. This was counted although he admitted that he confronted problem in students" engagement during the learning process. Despite of giving up, the teacher managed himself to understand the situation of learning during the pandemic. The asynchronous moda of learning was operated when students were not online then they might participate anytime. This brought him to an idea of using WhatsApp interactively, through the WhatsApp voice notes. This can be seen in the data that The data showed the type of mode of learning method applied by the teacher during the pandemic of COVID-19. The use of WhatsApp voice notes was triggered from his personal experience navigating from certain references. WhatsApp voice note is one of the voice recording features provided by the WhatsApp application. WhatsApp voice note displays the sender"s name and a line containing the voice message. The voice note feature would be easy for users to record voice with hands-free capability. That way, the recording function will be locked during the recording process. During message recording, users can still scroll through chats in an open chat window. In this case, students can see which messages need to be answered. After the recording process is complete, they might click the send button to immediately send a voice message in WhatsApp.
Some previous studies concerning the use of WhatsApp in speaking practice have been conducted by Nurazizah et al. (2019), and Rahman et al. (2018). Nurazizah et al. (2019) reported that implementing WhatsApp voice note in teaching speaking may help students" skill on certain text. Through WhatsApp voice note in speaking class, most of the students showed positive response through their opinions that the media of learning provides them opportunities to speak. Further, they state that WhatsApp voice note is an attractive learning activity and easy to use. While Rahman et al. (2018), although they did not specifically work in speaking performance reported that through the mobile applications, the use of WhatsApp may reduce psychological barriers as students will be more confident in expressing their opinions. WhatsApp, according to the students is more constructive, gives each other feedback between students and students and lecturers with students.
Another difficulty to consider was related to how to conduct the course in meaningful ways as Survival Speaking is a course for beginner students in the department. The participant narrated in his description that Teaching in the pandemic requires innovations, ideas how to handle class to be alive. Yes, there is a class bu WA group as synchronous learning but how to make students active in the process? Will they be active or just read the messages of their friends? I thought about this many times. This brought me a motive to make sure most of students would participate fully in the process. Preparing, supervising the learning must be ensured well although problems still appear. Reflection from problems was a must as by this I can predict what I should not do later, to plan the better and more prepared possibilities in the class to engage students (Opik, WhatsApp, October 20th 2020).
The participant considered that meaningful learning must be guaranteed. This had become his motivation in teaching. Hence he mentioned that students through the WA group were encouraged to participate and be active. This entailed to the need of making sure for the good planning and supervising the process as well. Apart of the use of WA as synchronous learning to replace the offline communication, Phelps et al. (2004) stated that for most learners and teachers, the nature is not quite the same as the real thing particularly when it is combined with an unpredictable internet connection. Related to this, Opik mentioned how he determined to provide engaging activities for his students by doing reflections to prevent misconduct in his teaching. This was relevant to Mclaughlin et al. (2020) that pandemic situation has brought educators to be more reactive and be able to provide educational support to students. In short, the pandemic needs teachers and students" innovation, creativity, and humanistic efforts thus they can survive the COVID-19. Teacher"s creativity was narrated in the data. It related on how he conducted the process of learning.
I followed the procedure of conducting the WhatsApp voice recording by informing them the plan, things that they should do. This was considered important as they know what they would perform in the learning process. I typed how to do and more instructions or answered their relevant questions. (Opik, WhatsApp, October 20th 2020).
The teacher stated that instruction was clearly delivered to reduce the misinformation during the learning process. In this learning method, the teacher set the goal of learning and instructed how to do for students. By this he expected that they would find it easier to perform the task during the process. This can be seen in the following data.
Following the instructional procedures, I implemented the stages in teaching. First, I followed the stages of preparation and implementation. These two stages helped me to find the guidance of teaching so I would find linear teaching. In the first phase, I introduced what and why to perform Survival Speaking assignment. Students were given some videos from Youtube to support the understanding. (Opik, WhatsApp, October 20th 2020). According to Opik, there were two steps he had undertaken in the process. The first was the activity preparation, and the second was the implementation of the learning process. The preparation stage is important as it is a foundation determining the direction and process of how learning using WhatsApp voice note can be carried out properly.

Lesson plan and activity preparation
Regarding lesson plan Opik mentioned that he prepared a simple lesson plan.
Lesson plan is a must. It is a guidance to what plan I will conduct along with students. I don't know much about the best criteria, but here I just inform the sudents the goal of our activity, what are needed, what will be the outcpme (Opik, WhatsApp, October 20th 2020).
From the data, it is known that lesson plan is an important component to prepare. This is because lesson plan serves as the basis or benchmark for how learning. It is a planning process carried out by a teacher before teaching and learning activities for students. Opik in this case communicates to students the rational of their activity: about the goals of certain learning, the learning resources and the outcome the students will achieve in the end of their learning.
In this stage Opik narrated that he introduced the purpose of the activity. He mentioned the goal of Survival Speaking and what are needed in the practice. Opik recommended several audio files containing conversations in English by native speakers to be downloaded by the WhatsApp group for the English speaking for survival course. After that they should listen to the audio files, and practice it by their own WhatsApp voice note. This is a recommended activity as students would experience how to pronounce as modelled by the examples. Conversation is suggested as the target of English Survival Speaking is how to maintain natural conversation smoothly. To support students" selfconfidence there are two videos that students can enjoy any time. The first is the purpose of survival English in general and the second is a youtube video providing series of information and examples of problems and solutions for non-native speakers. The terms of native and non-native are used to motivate them that it is okay to be different accent and the teacher provides examples of non-native speakers who can pronounced well and accepted internationally. The explanation of the use of native and non-native speaker, according to Opik was: It is important to differ the two. It is true that in speaking we may speak diversely as we were not born nor raised in English speaking countries. This is why I said that to know how native speakers pronounced is crucial. The solution is I introduced them to survival listening, and this related to how they pronounce words and sentences. This is why I suggested them to navigate through Jungle Listening for their weapon in listening, a youtube video containing phrases related to Survival speaking, and the most important thing is about motivation. It is about why they should have Survival Speaking. (Opik, WhatsApp, October 20th 2020).
From the data Opik mentioned how listening and pronunciation relate each other to speaking. They serve as students" weapon in real communication. He suggested some references to explore therefore students would be able to know the exactly meaning of other speaker"s intention. Speed and accents are vital to know therefore students would not get lost in probing other"s intention in the real communication. He mentioned some websites related to the reasons of why Survival speaking needs to be accompanied with Survival Listening ability for surviving in the communication. There were also some websites to support vocabulary"s richness to smoothen the clauses as well.

Implementation of Activities
In the pandemic condition, as the mode of learning is 100% was not offline, Opik realizes it was not as easy as before. This was seen from the data that From the data it was clearly seen that Opik considered the obstacles of conducting learning during COVID-19 pandemic that learning should be adhered to the condition needed. His goal was to let students understand to the target of learning in the specified course. Clearly in the pandemic, the learning willingly should be made-to-order to the condition. It is relevant to Moorhouse (2020) that ass a result of face-to-face classes interruption, there was an urge in a combination to adopt asynchronous and synchronous modes in learning. This implementation was designed to provide sessions in which students are able to ask questions and discuss certain activities. Further, his reason of choosing WhatsApp according to him is that WA is a cheap app compared to others. It is relevant to Kumar & Sharma (2017) that the application is mostly used as it is user-friendly and highly popular communication services, and the app does not need significantly internet quote hence students, according to Kumar and Sharma (2017) did not feel inconvenience in the cost while for teacher the app enabled the teacher to share learning material, build interaction and communication among two parties in the asynchronous communication (Kholis et al., 2020). The WhatsApp class, according to Opik serves as both asynchronous and synchronous modes. These can be clearly described as in picture 3 and 4.

Picture 3 and 4 The Use of WhatssApp as Asynchronous and Synchronous Learning
Opik in this case mentioned how WhatssApp enabled him in guiding the students by typing the course instruction. In picture 3 he provided the guidelines to conduct the learning before scheduled meeting. He opened sessions of discussion as he considered the importance of preparation before the class. This is in line to Vigotsky"s (1978) scaffolding that the teacher"s help served as the guidance for novice students thus they will be able to be independent later and scaffolding can be removed. In this, a student will be able to complete the specified task on his own. While in picture 4, he narrated that it is the sessions for direct practice in the course of Survival Speaking. He implemented the voice recording in a real time class; hence students participate in accordance to the schedule. The use of WhatsApp learning as explained by some previous research is that the WA-mediated learning supports learning resources as WA is able to engage students and teacher synchronously (Susilo, 2014), WhatsApp supports and helps the language learning asynchronously as it is easy to access and low cost technology thus students are able to practice the language they learn (Kholis et al., 2020). What differs in Opik"s implementation that he did not only focus on single platform as in Kholis et al. (2020) in which WhatsApp has been used mostly in asynchronous language teaching. Teachers are able to share learning materials such as audio, video, and supplemented documents. Opik"s integration between WhatsApp for synchronous and asynchronous learning in the practice of survival speaking was stated in the following narration.
After I gave direction how to do to students in the asynchronous mode, based on the real time schedule every Tuesday, all students gathered in the WhatssApp Class. By this, we had synchronous learning. This is what I called as combination. So, consultation, communications before class is opened, and direct execution is always based on the real class as in the regulation. This I believe has helped the members in the class. Learning speaking is not easy for beginners especially in a hard condition like this. If I did not provide direct communication, students will feel bored as they cannot see their friends face to face in the WhatsApp class. Providing session for recording their voice was an alternative to engage them in learning (Opik, WhatsApp, October 20th 2020).
From the data, it was clearly seen how Opik as the teacher maximized the use of WhatsApp. He considered the current situation of learning during the pandemic and students" psychological factor. As Survival Speaking is aimed to help beginning learners in the starting level the teacher understood that the course is in the first level of the department"s courses and that student"s need motivation and chances for them to experience live communication. The practice leaves an entailment concerning teacher"s teaching philosophy as he understands the students" need. Learning in the pandemic is not easy, thus he should provide an enjoyable learning environment for the students. Engaging students to have a direct interaction in the speaking practice as he believed enabled the students to experience a joyous learning moment. This is relevant to Adedoyin & Soykan (2020) that learning during the pandemic is not easy as there is a shift from face to face to online meetings hence teachers need to alter all the limitations of learning activities. A teacher is challenged to find solutions during the pandemic to transform problems into opportunities.
After the implementation, another problem was related to the learning assessment. Burnkart (1998) in (Heriansyah, 2012) noted that language learners need to have three areas of knowledge involved within speaking namely (1) correct pronunciation, (2) the clarity of the message delivered, (3) the sociocultural norms. The first relates to how speakers may pronounce certain words correctly thus the hearer will not gain miscommunication. The second means that the students in this context should ensure about the messages they want to deliver, whether the core points are understood or not by the hearer. The third entails the understanding whether the students know how and when they should take turn in the conversation. It also covers to whom they communicate to and in what context. Spoken discourse holds the rules of the games. Concerning this, the teacher had mentioned that positioning students to the native speakerism is important. The preparation in the beginning that language learners must also acquire the knowledge of how native speakers use the language in the context of structured interpersonal exchange by giving link and practice in certain supporting website according to Opik has helped them.
By using Bunkard"s (1988) three elements as the standard, Opik mentioned that the learning would be natural. The recording of students" clauses or sentences through WhatsApp voice note was expected to meet the three criteria.
The goal of Survival Speaking in pronunciation, speed can be traced from students" voice recording. Turn taking was tracked from whether students could relate the sentences they produced coherent or relevant to the previous ones. The same case was for the message clarity. Again, it's not only me who checked as the students in the group also did the same. Sometimes, if the clauses or sentences were not clear, and there was chaos they typed and informed others to delete some parts. This trained them to be alert in errors. It provided feedback and evaluation from others as well. I guess they were engaged in the process and I felt happiness as they experienced new learning method with a cheap cost (Opik, WhatsApp, October 20th 2020) The data revealed the fact how the teacher simplified the process of speaking by using the mentioned parameters. Although students learned through a low-budget media, the prove of students" efforts concerning the pronunciation could be checked by the whole students in the group. The evidence of students successfully followed the turn taking based on his explanation could be traced by the cohesiveness of the sentences production. This can be seen in 00.44 I that student mentioned "was breakfast in the morning" followed by another student in 00:66 producing "then I go to college". In 00:88 the other student said "I meet my friends there", followed by 00: 99 "and go to the canteen", 00:10 "and buy me some drink", 00:13 "Then I go to class", and 00:16 "and learning about English". Although Opick recognized there were errors, he did not correct at once as in spoken discourse, there is a rule of ellipsis that a speaker may eliminate a head of the sentence. The same case was for the message clarity. Again, it"s not only me who checked as the students in the group also did the same. Sometimes, if the clauses or sentences were not clear, and there was chaos they typed and informed others to delete some parts. This trained them to be alert in errors. It provided feedback and evaluation from others as well. I guess they were engaged in the process and I felt happiness as they experienced new learning method with a cheap cost. Opik also narrated that after the students conducted the assignment of live voice recording, he involved other students to participate and give feedback. He added that it"s not only he did the checking as other students performed the similar conduct. The chances given to them to inform their friends whether the messages were clear or not served as peer feedback. The teacher functioned this as assessment also. Related to peer-assessment, Güler (2017) mentioned that WhatsApp is regarded as a valid tool for peer assessment. The lecturer mentioned that there were series of word game, where all of students have to continue the word from the previous. They must make a logical continuation with the best accent, thus student"s speaking skills can be trained with this learning method, although they have to learning from home and without meeting the lecturers. So far, students participated in the learning process. I said that in speaking every one must practice. It's not like memorizing vocabularies in our head and after that get stuck. Yes, they were afraid before, later as they were forced to they adapted to the condition. Scaffolding from me and other students, the practice over and over helped other students who were not confident in the beginning. WA is friendly to use, so if any students motivate themselves to speak, practice and get feedback, I believe there is always a chance to be better in speaking (Opik, WhatsApp, October 23rd 2020).
Based on the teacher"s experience during the learning process, it was revealed that this learning method has received a positive response from students. The data clearly showed how Survival Speaking teacher provided help through the integration of both asynchronous and synchronous learnings to enable students to get guidance of what to dos in the practice as scheduled. Further, the empirical data showed that the insecure students, after receiving the help both from the teacher as well as other students by applying this learning method, motivating themselves to be accustomed in speaking practices, they could gain positive impact in their speaking skills. It means that learning method using WhatsApp voice note is one of the right alternative that can be applied during this pandemic. WA in this context supports the practice of learning as it is free application that is easy to use, it enables teacher and students share material, it gives teacher as well as peers to send feedback through leaving comments and recording, and the most important thing is it is cost-efficient compared than any other synchronous applications (Barhoumi, 2020).

Conclusion
The decision of COVID-19 as an international health emergency received a response from various parties including from the world of education. To prevent the spread of COVID-19 in campus environments, many universities have issued a work and study from home policy. Teachers have been required to design lessons that can be followed by students from their respective homes. As a result, there has been a shift in the learning process from what was previously carried out, the alteration from face-to-face learning to online learning that can be followed by students from anywhere. Online learning that was carried out during the COVID-19 Pandemic forces teachers and students to use more modern technologies in the learning process. In this study, the learning method applied by using the WhatsApp voice note has become a solution to provide positive results for students in learning during this pandemic. The solutions among some are related to cost-saving internet data leading to convenience use among students, without reducing the meaningful learning through the integration of synchronous and asynchronous modes. From the data presented, the problems that teacher faced at the first time concerned students" discomfort of having a non-WA class entailing to a silent mode of Zoom"s camera and microphone, students" lack of interaction before the implementation of synchronous learning through WA"s voice note, and minimum engagement due to students" erroneous belief of afraid making mistakes. Apart from these challenges, teacher initiated his strategy following Vigotsky"s ZPD (1978) that was providing scaffolding for his students. By combining both synchronous and asynchronous WA learning, the teacher gave guidances, help and series of engagements in Survival Speaking activities. One of them was the students" engagement through the use of voice recording. By this, students gained attention and felt appreciated. The study implied that the integrated use of WhatsApp enabled teacher and students experience meaningful learning, and further might be considered as more efficient as it is a costeffective application compared to other synchronous applications.