Teacher Perspective on the Use of Blended Learning to Assess Students' Speaking Skill

Introduction

English is designated as one of the mandatory international languages, which is taught in both
formal and informal education. By establishing a variety of methods to enhance students'
learning experience of the four skills: Speaking, Reading, Listening, and Writing (Rahmadani &
Adityo, 2022)The understanding that English must be learned and taught inside and outside of
school has been fueled by the growing importance of English as a global lingua franca and even
the fact that it is required in all countries so they can communicate effectively with each other.
(Panggabean, 2015). English teaching and learning activities are very important in a country.
because apart from being a foreign language that must be learned, English is also a second
language in many countries in the world, to be precise countries that rely on tourism as income.

Blended learning is a student centered flexible, self-paced multi model approach to learning
(Sen, 2011). Blended learning combines traditional face-to-face and online learning methods.
This learning model combines a variety of traditional teaching techniques, including lectures and
in-person instruction, with self-directed learning techniques, including projects, assignments, and
laboratory work, as well as online learning techniques, including e-learning, information and
communication technologies (ICT), and multimedia (Sukirman, et al., 2022). Blended learning
can be developed depending on the needs and educational objectives. Depend on the purpose of
the study blended learning the successful management of blended learning in an institution will
produce satisfactory output for both students and teachers.

There are four skills in English learning namely, writing, reading, and speaking. Meanwhile,
speaking is very important in order to enable students to communicate effectively through oral
language because the disability of the students to speak their express of ideas even in simple
form of conversation (Perdana & Rianti, 2021). Speaking is a tool that people use to interact with
the others. It occurs everywhere and has ingrained it into our daily lives. When someone speaks,
they interact and use the language to express their ideas, feeling and thought. They also share
information to other through communication (Marleni, Sari, & Hardi, 2021).
The COVID-19 pandemic is currently having an impact on the entire world. The pandemic's
consequences on the education sector have a wide range of implications, including changes
to learning approaches. Many students are not really fully prepared to engage in online learning
or study from home as a result of the sudden change in the educational system brought on by the
COVID-19 pandemic (Sukirman, et al., 2022)

In Indonesia, English teaching and learning activities begin to be taught effectively when
someone is in formal school. Learning begins in elementary school, but there are also many
institutions outside of school that teach English. The learning process began to change methods
after the spread of Covid-19 became more widespread in Indonesia. Some teachers started to get
confused about choosing the right method, because this unexpected disaster made them unable to
prepare many things in such a short time.

Blended learning has actually been implemented for several years before Covid-19 attacked, but
the use of this blended system is more effective and more popular during the pandemic. Where
teachers are forced to make effective use of online schools, so that students continue to get the
same learning as offline learning is implemented. A lot of application has been utilized by the
teachers, one of them is Google Classroom.

Google Classroom is a kind of platform that teachers and students have come to know about.
Through Google Classroom, the teacher can conduct the class virtually from the distance and any
condition. In the modern higher education system, where technology is sorely needed, Google
Classroom plays a crucial role. Students also like it since they can access all reading materials
and resources, lesson plans, and course outlines in advance. (Fatimatus Suhroh, 2020). Google
Classroom is the one of the Google platform that can be used for students and teacher.

As one of the popular education application, Google classroom as an online room that becoming
one of the major apps for teaching and learning process. Because of this Google Classroom has
been used more than 100 million students and educators around the world. In Indonesia almost
all of the teachers are using Google Classroom for help them in teach and learning process. The
blended learning teaching method have a lot of obstacle for students and also for the teachers.
The initial problem faced was the difficulty of adapting from offline to online learning at the start
of the spread of Covid-19. This problem was experienced by the author himself during the early
days of the pandemic, many students did not understand the learning material because many
teachers could not make good use of the available applications.

Utilizing a lot of application during the ELT (English Learning Teaching) process in a blended
learning method are really helping the teachers in giving materials to the students. Besides for
provide some materials, the teacher also can be easier in using blended learning method for
doing an assessment to the students. Apart from the teachers, students also have a chance to
utilizing several platform for helping them to developing their speaking skill. By giving an
assessment test by Google Classroom, the teacher will be easier to collecting the data. If using
the traditional method it will be hard for the teacher, because the data has to be collected straight
to the class by analyzing students’ skill in speaking.

By utilizing the apps in a good way, the perspective of the teacher in blended learning slowly
going to be a positive perspective. When the teacher have a good understanding about the
technology or the apps that using in the teaching and learning process, there will be a good
output of the ELT. A lot of students will be get many advantages from the teacher and also from
the apps. Nowadays, the usage of technology and the platforms that provide a lot of stuff for
helping teachers and students are really easy to find on the internet. Teacher have to change their
perspective of the blended learning, that might be they thing that blended learning is really hard
to do. Because all we need, we can easily find on the internet.

Through blended learning the ELT process will be easier and effective for the students and the
teachers than using the traditional learning method. Why? Because, traditional teaching style
means course with no online technology used-content is delivered during face-to-face class
delivery in writing or orally (Sen, 2011). But do not rule out, that traditional learning still really
needs to be used in the learning process. The need for oral communication is very important in
the educational process, because students need to get explanations directly from the teacher.

Based on the explanation above, blended learning is a good method to be implement in a school
or university. And this study will examined the Indonesian teachers’ perspective on blended
learning method, in several questions that has to be answered by the teacher.
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