The Challenges of International EFL Students to Learn English in a Non-English Speaking Country

In the recent era, a wider global community has used English for any purpose; one of the most important is academic purposes. In terms of academic purposes, learning English now becomes a must for any students all around the world, specifically EFL students. Focusing on the learning English issue, this research took a rare case about the  EFL students do a study abroad program in a non-English speaking country, especially in the context of English learning problems and strategies. Under a qualitative case study, the researcher addressed two main methods to two international EFL students at a private Islamic university in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. By using reflective essays and interviews as the methods, the data concluded that most of the problems found had similarities to the EFL students’ problems when they study in their home country. Along with the problems, the researcher also discovered strategies done by both of the participants to resolve the problems.


Introduction
Nowadays, English has become global and brings the impact to people around the world to be able to communicate with the language. The purpose of English has indicated it is not only limited to international purposes but also for local purposes (Gunantar, 2016). Therefore, the role of using English has spread into a wider global community (McKay, 2018). It could happen because the effect of English as an International language that successfully made domination of the English role shifted globally.
According to the spread of the role of using English, Kachru (1992) pointed out that the role of English could be used in non-English speaking countries for academic purposes, especially in the process of learning English. Nevertheless, not all processes of learning the language are always working well. Some challenges still exist along the process. Especially learning English in non-English speaking countries, the potential challenges of the English learning process might arise bigger than in English-speaking countries. The challenges were affected by some factors such as learners' ability, motivation, environment, practices, and previous knowledge of learning foreign languages (Thompson, 2014). Furthermore, linguistic differences also can be another factor that caused the problem; for instance, the difference of phonology, word order, phrases, and verbal system (Tappendorf, 2014).
A study conducted by Akbari (2016) found that the potential challenges mostly faced by EFL students. The reason was that they included the learners of English using the language only on a certain occasion and for specific purposes (Kirkpatrick, 2014;Kanchru, 1992). Due to the limited role of using English, it leads the EFL students to have bigger learning problems than other learners who use English in their daily language, such as ESL students. Accordingly, knowing the English learning challenges emerged in their home country, some of these students studied abroad as one of the learning strategies to cope with the problems.
That way, they were called as International EFL students who participated in a study abroad program (Singh, 2017). English in a non-English speaking country.
Additionally, due to rare investigation and analysis of previous studies about the field problems explicitly in a non-English speaking country, which is Indonesia, the researcher gained more curiosity to investigate the potential challenges that the international EFL students faced while learning English in Indonesia. The researcher would also find out some strategies that the international EFL students do to overcome those challenges to make this study more useful.

Difficulties of EFL Students in Learning English
This study found some learning English problems faced by the EFL students discovered by the previous studies and categorized as followed.

Problems in exposure. Learning
English is quite challenging for most EFL students, and one of the causes is the lack of English roles in society (Akbari, 2015). In other words, English roles in the outside classroom are deficient. Akbari added that the possible impact of the lack of exposure in learning English outside the classroom was raising unnecessary feelings to learn English.
In the following study, the unnecessary feeling of learning English had an impact on their lack of free time due to their other activities (Akbari, 2016 Another common problem also faced by the EFL students is their poor insight into English due to their discouragement to read (Akbari, 2015). The lack of motivation can affect their comprehension while reading processes such as difficulty in learning indefinite words and pronouncing some words (Medjahdi, 2015). Additionally, a major problem faced by the EFL students in comprehending English text was being unfamiliar vocabulary (Raisha & Kasim, 2017). Also, a prior study found that the EFL students' dedicated time to read is inadequate, especially in outside classroom activities (Qarqez & Ab Rashid, 2017). The major listening problems are losing concentration while listening process because of anxiety and unable to listen due to bad recording audio, the speed of speech, accent of the speaker, and inadequate vocabulary (Hamouda, 2013). The cultural differences of language also being a problem for the EFL students because it can affect the students' understanding while listening to the speech (Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2016). Azmi et al., and Underwood in Gilakjani and Sabouri (2016) also mentioned that the length and speed of The problems in maximizing the language skills above could be varied, as clearly mentioned by the prior studies above.
Those problems belong to problems in productive skills, which included speaking and writing skills (Wambayinema, 2016; Rahmatunisa, 2014) and problems in receptive skills, which consisted of reading and listening (Akbari, 2015;Hamouda, 2013). Each of the problems could also be differently faced by one to another EFL students depending on their learning ability. Another study also proved that the most challenging thing in learning English vocabulary is choosing appropriate words with the limitation of word knowledge (Abrar, et al., 2018). Thus, the lack of vocabulary knowledge caused the students could not express their idea or even argue with any topic by using the language (Keong, Ali, & Hameed, 2015 (Akbari, 2015). It is one of the problems of demotivated students in learning English. The indication of demotivated students can be seen by their no willingness to participate in classroom activity (Abrar, 2016). He also revealed three factors affect these problems are shyness, uninterested feeling to study, and fear of making mistakes.
Other problems were discovered by current findings that were feeling of wasting time and challenging (Akbari, 2016).

Problems in teachers' resources.
One of the English language mastery problems faced by most EFL students, especially in Indonesia, is the lack of English teachers' competence (Kurniawan & Radia, 2017 Their investigation concluded that one of the students' difficulties in learning English in the classroom was the lack of teachers' role to use English while teaching and learning process. Thus, the impact is that the students rather use the native language than English.

Strategies of EFL Students in Learning English
Referring to some strategies found by Ellis as mentioned in Safranj (2013)  what the native language speaker will say.
Then, lastly was creative strategies. As initiated by Avila (2015), creative strategies could assist the students' language learning process easily by implementing various interactive activities such as games, role play, and presentation.

Challenges of International EFL Students to Learn English in Study Abroad Program
There have been many studies discussed the English learning problems in

Technique and Procedure
The first method was using the document analysis method because it comprised "manageable and practical sources" (Triad, 2016 record the data was the final procedure to end the data collection process.

Analysis
There were two main steps to analyze the data of this study, such as analyzing the

Findings and Discussion
In this part, the researcher elaborated on those problems and strategies based on the participants' cases in order to provide complete and deep information. For the first part, the researcher will describe the English learning challenges of both participants, along with the discussion of prior studies, while the participants' strategies will be in the second part.

English Speaking Country
The problems of both participants were categorized to be problems in productive skill, problems in receptive skill, problems in lecturer's resource, problems in learning strategy, problems in vocabulary mastery, problems in motivation, problems in exposure, and problems in culture.
Hence, each challenge is in the following paragraphs in detail.
Problem in culture. The cultural issue found in this study was different from prior studies investigation that commonly found this issue in a social context (Wu et al., 2015;Yang, 2017 (Avila, 2015). Similarly, the current study found that doing presentations more often as one kind of creative strategy held by most of the lecturers could help Rio improve his speaking skills. Besides, related to the context of lecturer strategies, especially in giving feedback after the assessment, the present study also found that the feedback could be useful as a resource to deal with students learning problems. As concluded by Rio, the given feedback from the lecturers could assist his writing problem inside the classroom. Klimova (2015) mentions that the feedback could assist the development of students' language skills by assisting the students in detecting their weaknesses and developing their learning process.

Conclusion
The current study on revealing some