INDONESIAN L2 LEARNERS’ RESILIENCE AND SELF- DIRECTED LEARNING IN ONLINE CLASSES: A CORRELATIONAL STUDY

The present study aimed to investigate Indonesian second language (L2) learners’ level of resilience and the relationship between their resilience and their self-directed learning (SDL) in an online learning setting at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. The present study used a survey method by distributing Google Form questionnaires. The participants were 187 university student participants taking English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes online in their respective departments. It was conducted to fill the void in resilience literature in the Indonesian L2 context and to find out the Indonesian learners’ resilience in the online learning setting as well as to know whether learners’ resilience was associated with their SDL, a critical element to succeed in online learning. The study found that learners possessed a high level of resilience. Learners were found to have a high level of realistic optimism and self-discipline, prominent characteristics of resilience. However, they reported a slightly lower level of capability in handling multiple tasks at the same time. The study further found that learners’ resilience was significantly, moderately, and positively correlated with their SDL. Based on the findings, possible contributions and implications are stated alongside the limitations of the study and possible directions for future research.


INTRODUCTION
It has been generally known that the second language (L2) learning process can be time-consuming and painstaking. During this tedious process, learners may encounter numerous difficulties (Kim & Kim, 2016). Hence, learners' success can be attributed among other factors to their ability to bounce back, to withstand hardship, and to recover from stress, further defined as resilience (Kim & Kim, 2016;Nguyen et al., 2015). It is "the sum of an individual's abilities that allow him or her to bounce back from adversity and even thrive in the face of difficult times" (Kim & Kim, 2016, p. 2). Resilience enables learners to not easily give up and to overcome challenges of learning in the long run. Simons et al. (2018) stated that though numerous authors give various definitions of resilience, in general, it is based on two core concepts, which are: adversity and positive adaptations. In short, resilience could be understood as one's ability to positively adapt when facing adversity (Simons et al., 2018).
Another Individual Differences (IDs) factor that could influence learning, a slightly more popular concept in L2 literature than resilience, is learners' self-directed learning (SDL). SDL requires learners' active learning. Learners make decisions concerning their learning, with or without teachers (Sze-yeng & Hussain, 2010), in which they deliberately self-direct themselves in planned learning (Ayyildiz & Tarhan, 2015;Basereh & Pishkar, 2016). There are several notable characteristics of SDL. Ayyildiz and Tarhan (2015) mentioned that learners with a high level of SDL likely believe that learning is their responsibility and they are eager to learn despite possible challenges. They also possess good time management and can assess their learning progress (Ayyildiz & Tarhan, 2015). In an online learning setting, it is argued that SDL plays a critical role in influencing learners' success (Zhu et al., 2020). That is because, in such a setting, the temporal and spatial freedom could lead to learners' disconnection and disengagement from learning (Plaisance, 2018) unless learners proactively ask questions whenever they have difficulties and independently study (Zhu et al., 2020).
Learners' resilience could be paramount in online learning settings. It may be more important than ever due to the Covid-19 pandemic where learners are practically "forced" to go online to continue learning despite all the possible challenges and limitations learners have (Lancker & Parolin, 2020;Mondol & Mohiuddin, 2020;Onyema et al., 2020;Subekti, 2020). Several studies in the Indonesian context, for example, reported that learners were not yet accustomed to learning online and thus were not proactive enough in participating in it, further hampering learning (e.g.: Atmojo & Nugroho, 2020;Gunawan et al., 2020). In the face of such adversity, learners' resilience, their ability to adapt positively in learning (Kim & Kim, 2016), could be paramount. It could facilitate learners to cope with changes associated with the shift from the face-to-face mode of instruction to the online one. Besides, specific to the Indonesian L2 context, empirical studies investigating resilience are, to the best of my knowledge, very limited, if not non-existent. Thus, investigating the Indonesian learners' resilience at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic triggered online learning could serve two purposes at once: filling the gap in resilience literature in the Indonesian L2 context and finding out learners' resilience at the time of the possible learning adversity during the pandemic (Onyema et al., 2020). Furthermore, investigating the relationship between learners' resilience and their SDL could also be strategic considering the critical role of SDL in influencing learners' success in online learning setting reiterated in the literature (Park et al., 2018;Zhu et al., 2020).
Considering these mentioned rationales, the present study intends to answer these research questions: First, what is the learners' level of resilience in learning English online? Second, what is the relationship between learners' resilience and SDL in online English classes?

LITERATURE REVIEW
There are several general characteristics of learners with high resilience. These learners will likely show effort in learning and continue their study despite difficult situations rather than abandon it entirely (Bronk, 2013). They likely have a positive outlook and determination to help them endure learning challenges and try to seek external resources they could use to overcome these challenges (Kim & Kim, 2020). This ability to seek external resources is also related to resilient learners' socio-cultural capacities to build interpersonal relationships (Olsson et al., 2003). Furthermore, learners' perseverance to keep engaged in tasks and self-regulation are also the critical psychological components of resilience (Li et al., 2020). In a similar vein, Nguyen et al.'s (2015) qualitative study in China further found several protective factors of resilience such as social competence, sense of purpose, autonomy, and problem-solving skills. The problem-solving skills, for example, allow them to have coping strategies to manage challenges in learning (Hagger & Hamilton, 2018) attributed to better proficiency (Danesh & Shahnaazari, 2020). Furthermore, resilient learners also likely have realistic optimism (Reivich & Shatte, 2002), which is more productive perspectives when facing adversity (Kim & Kim, 2016). Learners with a realistic optimism mindset can identify possible causes of negative events or failure and can change and overcome them (Kim & Kim, 2020). Furthermore, teachers as the designers of instruction also play a role in facilitating the growth of resilience in learners. Well-designed online learning, for example, allows learners to experience collaborations with peers (Gonzalez-Lloret, 2020; Sumuer, 2018), flexibility, and the right amount of challenges (Sumuer, 2018). These experiences are believed to nurture resilience and autonomy (Sumuer, 2018). Overwhelming tasks in such a setting may not be productive as they could instil anxiety rather than nurturing resilience and as such materials should be purposely reduced (Rapanta et al., 2020).
Despite its potentials in affecting learners' learning, compared to other components of IDs such as motivation, anxiety, learning strategies, and aptitudes, learners' resilience is relatively underresearched with a fewer number of empirical studies conducted in this field in L2 learning contexts. In the Asian context, important empirical studies were conducted by Kim Tae-young and associates in Korea (Kim et al., 2018;Kim & Kim, 2020. Kim's and Kim's (2016) study involving 1620 secondary school learners, for example, found that learners' persistence, a part of resilience construct, showed high associations with, and a strong explanatory power for, learners' L2 proficiency in English as well as motivated behaviours. A study by Kim et al. (2018) in an elementary school context found that learners' resilience impacted their L2 motivation. They also found that learners in general possessed a quite high level of optimism, a characteristic of resilience (Kim et al., 2018). In a similar vein, Kamali's and Fahim's (2011) study in the Iranian L2 context found that learners' levels of resilience had a significant effect on their reading ability of texts containing unfamiliar vocabulary items, suggesting the role of resilience in helping learners cope with difficult reading passages. Another study in Iran also found that learners' resilience in reading could predict their translation ability (Malekan & Hajimohammadi, 2017). Furthermore, a study by Oveisi and Nosratinia (2019) in an Iranian university found a significant, positive, and moderate correlation between learners' SDL and their resilience, r (122) = .42, p < .01. It indicated that learners' SDL was closely associated with their resilience. Additionally, though not specifically in L2 learning literature, Kwek et al.'s (2013) study found that the resilience of both international and domestic students at a university in Australia positively influenced their academic achievement, perhaps suggesting the generalisability of the positive contribution of resilience towards learning.

Research design
The present study was quantitative in design and it used a survey as the method of data collection. As the present study was conducted in parallel with a study investigating learners' SDL and involving the same participants (Subekti, in review), both studies shared the same set of questionnaires as the instrument of the survey. The set of questionnaires used consisted of several items of demographic information, such as gender, age, department, and current location/island, twelve items on learners' resilience, as well as fifteen items on their SDL. The questionnaire items were in the Indonesian language, with which language the participants were familiar, to ensure there was no misunderstanding about the statements in the questionnaire.
The twelve questionnaire items on learners' resilience were adapted from an early yet relevant scale from Wagnild and Young (1993) termed Resilience Scale (RS) originally developed in the Nursing literature. The original RS questionnaire consists of 25 items and had Cronbach's alpha value of .91 indicating high reliability. As the RS was not originally designed for L2 settings, adjustments and modifications were made in which only twelve items applicable to the L2 learning context were used in the present study. The possible responses were "Strongly agree" (equal to 5 points), "Agree" (4 points), "Neither agree nor disagree (3 points), "Disagree" (2 points), and "Strongly disagree" (1 point). The twelve items of the questionnaire on resilience had .87 Cronbach's alpha value indicating high internal reliability.
Furthermore, the fifteen items on learners' SDL were adapted from Ayyildiz's and Tarhan's (2015) Self-Directed Learning Skills Scale (SDLSS) consisting of 40 items. It had .86 Cronbach's alpha coefficient indicating high internal reliability. Out of these 40 items, only 15 items applicable to the L2 learning context were selected. The possible responses were the same as those of the questionnaire on resilience previously mentioned. Two negative items in which "Strongly agree" indicated low SDL were reverse-scored. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of these 15 items was .78 indicating that the questionnaire had high internal reliability. As the present study did not focus on the detailed findings and analysis of learners' SDL, which was the focus of the paralleled study (Subekti, in review), the complete results of participants' responses on these items on SDL could be seen in Appendix 2 only.
Before the questionnaire in the Indonesian language was distributed, the questionnaire was piloted by three Indonesian non-English Department university students who were not part of the target group yet had relatively similar level of English proficiency. Two Indonesian teachers of English also reviewed the questionnaire. This was conducted to ensure that all of the questionnaire items were unambiguous, accurate, and simple to complete (Gray, 2014). Based on the feedback from these students and teachers, several minor changes were made.

Participants and ethical considerations
As a paralleled study with a study conducted by Subekti (in review), the present study had the same participants as that of the study by Subekti (in review). The present study involved 187 students taking English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at a private university in Java, Indonesia. 101 of the participants were female whilst the other 86 were male. Their age range was from 18 to 25 with the mean of their age being 20.38. They were from six different departments/study programmes: Management (32.1%), Biology (25.7%), Architecture (14.4%), Product Design (13.9%), Accounting (7.5%), and Informatics (6.4%). As they followed the lessons online at the time of participating in the study, they resided in various islands in Indonesia: Java (67.4%), Kalimantan (9.6%), Sumatera (7%), Sulawesi (6.4%), Papua (2.7%), Nusa Tenggara (2.7%), Bali (1.1%) and other islands/places (3.2%). The study employed convenient sampling (Gray, 2014). In this sampling strategy, participants were recruited per the easiest access (Dornyei, 2007). The whole population was some 450 students taking EAP at the university.
The present study employed several ethical principles. Access to conduct research was granted by the respective Heads of Department as the gatekeepers' consents (Creswell, 2014), with six departments in total as previously mentioned. After that, the EAP class teachers were informed about the objectives of the study and asked for help to distribute the Google Form questionnaire in their respective classes. The questionnaire was distributed from 26 October 2020 up to 6 November 2020 depending on the respective teachers' decisions on when was best to share the questionnaire to their students to avoid or minimise any possible disruption of their class agenda. It was the reflection of the ethical principle of avoiding harm to the participants (Creswell, 2014). That less than half of the EAP learners (187 of around 450 learners) participated in the present study indicated that the study employed no coercion and respected these learners' right of voluntary participation (Israel & Hay, 2006). Besides, the return rate of the online questionnaires is generally lower than that of the paperbased questionnaires (Nayak & Narayan, 2019).

Data analysis
The obtained questionnaire data, in Excel file, were moved to SPSS 25 for further analysis. To answer the first research question on the level of learners' resilience, descriptive formulas were executed whilst to answer the second question on the association between learners' resilience and their SDL, the correlation formula was used. Additionally, a regression formula was also executed to see the extent to which learners' resilience affected their SDL. The whole sequence of the data collection process and analysis could be seen in Figure 1.

FINDINGS Learners' level of resilience in learning English online
The general finding on learners' level of resilience in learning could be seen in Table 1. As could be observed in Table 1, the composite mean score of learners' resilience was 48, indicating that the average response for each item was 4 (equal to "Agree" response). It suggested that learners in general had a high level of resilience. Moreover, the mean score of learners' responses on each item in the questionnaire could be seen in Table 2. 4.14 .73 As seen in Table 2, though in general learners' responses indicated a high level of resilience, several items yielding the highest mean scores were worth further comments. The first was item number 4, "I can be on my own if I have to" which produced a mean score of 4.49. As could be seen in Appendix 1, 70.1% of the participants either strongly agreed or agreed to the statement with no participant indicating their disagreement. The second was item number 8, "My belief in myself gets me through hard times" producing a mean score of 4.21. 83.9% of the participants endorsed this statement with only 2.2% of the participants indicating their disagreement.
Furthermore, not really in line with the general trend on the high level of resilience, several items produced mean scores lower than that of the average mean score of all the twelve items. For example, item number 5, "I feel that I can handle many things at a time" produced the lowest mean score of all at 3.32. 18.7% of the participants indicated their disagreement with the statement and 39% indicated they neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement. Next, item number 7, "I have self-discipline" yielded a mean score of 3.83. 30.5% of the participants neither agreed nor disagreed with this statement whilst 66.3% showed their agreement. Furthermore, item number 9, "In an emergency, I am someone people can generally rely on," had a mean score of 3.83. 31.6% of the participants neither agreed nor disagreed with this statement whilst 63.6% indicated their agreement. Next, slightly higher than the mean scores of item numbers 7 and 9, item number 11, "When I am in a difficult situation, I can always find my way out of it," produced a mean score of 3.84. 32.6% of the participants neither agreed nor disagreed with this statement whilst 63.7% endorsed it.
As could be observed in Appendix 1, in all twelve questionnaire items, learners' responses were somewhat concentrated on three responses: "Strongly agree", "Agree" and "Neither agree nor disagree". Only item number 5, "I feel that I can handle many things at a time" produced more than 5% disagreement from the participants (at 18.7% as stated earlier). The second highest disagreement was obtained by item number 9, "In an emergency, I am someone people can generally rely on," at only 4.8%. These data further confirmed that generally, the participants had a high level of resilience.

Relationship between learners' resilience and their SDL in online English classes
To obtain the relationship between learners' resilience and their SDL, a correlation formula was executed and the complete result could be observed in Table 3.
As seen in Table 3, the study found a statistically significant positive relationship between learners' resilience and their SDL. It suggested that the higher resilience learners had, the higher their SDL. The strength of the correlation was at medium level, r (185) = .53, p < .01).
To see the extent to which learners' resilience could predict their SDL, linear regression formula was executed and the results could be observed in Table 4. As seen in Table 4, the value of R 2 was .279, meaning that learners' resilience could predict 27.9% of learners' SDL. Other possible variables beyond the present study's focus accounted for the other 72.1%.

Learners' level of resilience in learning English online
The present study found that learners had a high level of resilience. More specifically, in several items such as item number 4, "I can be on my own if I have to," and number 8, "My belief in myself gets me through hard times," learners showed a high level of realistic optimism. The result of this study was the same as that of the study conducted by Kim et al. (2018) in a Korean elementary school context in which they found their participants to have a high level of realistic optimism. This similarity gave some kind of support that Asian learners regardless of the level of education generally possessed a high level of realistic optimism in learning, one of the characteristics of resilience (Reivich & Shatte, 2002). With this positive attitude, learners would likely have more productive perspectives in handling challenges and overcome adversity (Bronk, 2013;Kim & Kim, 2016;Nguyen et al., 2015;Simons et al., 2018). Next, item number 7, "I have self-discipline" producing a mean score of 3.83 also merited further comments. This finding indicated that learners, in general, possessed a quite high level of self-discipline, though not as high as their level of realistic optimism. This particular finding was slightly surprising considering several previous studies reporting Indonesian learners' difficulties in adjusting to online learning because they were not accustomed to active learning (Atmojo & Nugroho, 2020;Gunawan et al., 2020). However, the present study's finding on learners' high level of self-discipline brought a more positive perspective about L2 learners amidst the pandemic driven online learning. As learners possessed self-discipline, they would likely be able to employ various strategies helping them to manage various unfavourable situations in learning (Hagger & Hamilton, 2018). These coping strategies could lead them to engage in language tasks (Li et al., 2020), in turn, making them more proficient (Danesh & Shahnaazari, 2020). That the participants had experienced online learning for almost two semesters when participating in the study could also be attributed to their being readier to strive in such situations than the participants of the previous studies conducted at the onset of the online learning practice due to the pandemic (e.g.: Atmojo & Nugroho, 2020;Gunawan et al., 2020).
Interestingly, despite the general trend of a high level of resilience, item number 5, "I feel that I can handle many things at a time," indicating learners' capability to handle multiple tasks at a time, produced the lowest mean score of all at 3.32. This indicated that compared to other resilience skills learners reported, the particular skill was the one they possessed the least. Though this finding suggested that learners should improve this particular skill, this finding also implied that teachers should design online instruction in such a way that learners' weakness in this particular area would not hamper learning. Though during the pandemic, multiple tasks in online learning may be a common practice, Rapanta et al. (2020) suggested teachers cut back expectations and simplify materials to reduce learners' anxiety. Allowing learners to experience well-planned online learning enabling the right amount of challenge, collaboration opportunities, and a certain degree of flexibility (Sumuer, 2018) could facilitate learners to develop their resilience and autonomy.

Relationship between learners' resilience and SDL in online English class
The present study found a statistically significant, positive, and moderate correlation between learners' resilience and their SDL, r (185) = .53, p < .01) with learners' resilience being able to predict 27.9% of the variance in their SDL. The finding of this study was in line with the finding of the study conducted by Oveisi and Nosratinia (2019) which found a positive association between learners' resilience and SDL in the Iranian university context, r (122) = .42, p < .01. That Oveisi's and Nosratinia's (2019) study was conducted in a face-to-face mode of instruction whilst the present study was conducted in an online learning setting indicated that there was a positive association between resilience and SDL regardless of the modes of instruction. At the present, it could be quite difficult to compare this specific correlation finding of the present study with those of other studies due to the scarcity of research in this area. However, the present study's specific finding could be interpreted, with cautions, as a further confirmation of several previous studies' findings on the positive relationship between resilience and several positive indicators of L2 learning such as motivated behaviours (Kim et al., 2018;Kim & Kim, 2020) and L2 achievements (Kamali & Fahim, 2011;Malekan & Hajimohammadi, 2017).
Specific in the context of online learning, this finding could give a hopeful sign amid the pandemic triggered online learning that has been associated with challenges from within instruction and beyond (Lancker & Parolin, 2020;Mondol & Mohiuddin, 2020;Onyema et al., 2020). That learners' resilience was positively associated with SDL, very critical for the success of learning online (Zhu et al., 2020), means that learners had what it took to succeed in learning despite the possible challenges. Hence, teachers should capitalise on learners' resilience and SDL for the success of learning. For example, teachers can design online collaborative tasks (Gonzalez-Lloret, 2020) and offer a flexible structure (Rapanta et al., 2020;Sumuer, 2018) for learners' resilience and SDL to flourish. That is because both resilience and SDL in an online learning setting does not mean learning alone but rather it means understanding that learning is social (Olsson et al., 2003) in which even at a distance, learners learn from and with others (Rapanta et al., 2020).

CONCLUSION
The present study has contributions and implications for L2 learning online. First, this study paves a way for further study in the field of resilience and SDL in the Indonesian L2 online learning context. That the study found the participants had a high level of resilience could also give some kind of positive perspective in seeing the pandemic triggered online learning which has been overwhelmed with a plethora of reported challenges and difficulties. Teachers are to optimise their online instructional design which could capitalise on these learners' high resilience. This study also shed a light on the association between learners' resilience and their SDL in an Indonesian university context with a possibility of generalisation though further studies in other Indonesian contexts may be necessary for a more established conclusion about the association between the two constructs.
This study, furthermore, also has limitations based on which possible further studies could be suggested. Firstly, the present study relied solely on questionnaire data obtained from the participants' self-reports, which depended on their honesty (Gillham, 2011). Whether or not they truthfully responded to the questionnaire items was beyond my control. Further studies could investigate learners' resilience in an online learning setting through semi-structured interviews and learner journals capturing the fluctuation of their resilience over time. Learner journals could capture learners' realistic optimism and self-discipline which turned out to be the present study's participants' most prominent resilience characteristics. Secondly, due to the scarcity in the literature investigating the relationship between learners' resilience and SDL, literature with which the present study's findings were compared was limited. Regarding this, besides investigating the relationship between resilience and SDL in other learning contexts, future studies could investigate the relationship between learners' resilience and other psychological constructs such as anxiety, reticence, speaking confidence, and willingness to communicate specifically in the Indonesian context.