Respected sir,

This is the senior and junior year students of the Department of English in the academic year of 2021 - 2022. Students, whose names have been listed below, accumulate together and decide to send the department this email in an attempt to appeal to you of a matter which we deem as one that requires attention. The students would like to request the department to release the result of the surveys conducted at the end of the semesters as well as to give us, the students, proper reasons as to why the department cannot possibly go back to physical learning/teaching.

We, the students, see that the concluded decision made by the department or the university as whole to sustain the continuity of distance learning to be very disappointing; there are several reasons as follows that led us to have such belief. First and foremost, IFL could accommodate the physical final examination of the end semester at the campus without causing any major concerning problems. We totally understand that it was just a week, and if the physical classes were to be conducted in the next semester, the risk would be much greater. However, that also leads us to our second reason. The other universities carry on with the lectures in physical state just fine. It is very questionable when the other institutes can kick off their face-to-face classes without any major issues, but a tradition-learning environment seems very far-fetched with IFL. Third of all, the learning quality has dropped. We have to admit the quality of the provided lectures within the virtual and traditional classes do not have much of a difference. But being in virtual classrooms where the interaction of teacher-students and students-students is very limited, this makes it hard for us to compel ourselves to concentrate on the lectures. Not to mention, at least more than half of the students of DoE are pursuing two universities thus we are required to sit in front of the screen for hours every day. The combination of those aforementioned factors, we are really stressed, and our eyesight has worsened which makes our studying performance to be lowered. The result of our semester examination might not display a big gap from those of when we were learning at the campus or the time when we have just started online classes though we could not learn much during the online lectures. The reason for that is because we, the students, do a summary of the lessons and try to force things into our short-term memory before taking the test. We believe such things help us to get good results with the test, but that information’s lifespan is short, which means it is not beneficial for us. Moreover, sitting in front of our devices’ screen for too long also leads to physical and mental health of us, the students. Fourth of all, it might not be a big problem to the department or school however we believe that we are missing out on so many things. University though is draining, it is one of the sweetest moments of one’s life. Additionally, we also believe we miss out on a lot of class activities which can only be conducted in a physical setting. As future teachers, we believe studying is very crucial and helpful to us. We can observe how classes are conducted and use such learned techniques later. We are not saying we will copy exactly the things we learn, but we can always use some ideas and make betterments to our class as well as the learning of our students.

All of us understand that it is an impossible thing for us to vigorously demand the department to go back to physical class, for there might be some behind-the-scenes reasons which we might overlook. Consequently, rather than unreasonably demanding that, we are here to make a request to the department to at least show us the result of the surveys conducted at the end of the semesters. Additionally, we also wish the department to officially release the statement to let the students know as to why it is not possible for us to study physically. The reasons for that are because we do not think it is a righteous thing for the school to just expect us to follow everything that has been put forward by the school without proper explanation, especially the one that we perceive to be unreasonable. We are adults so we can distinguish the right and wrong, and we are sure that we will totally respect the decision made by the school if we are to be provided with logical reasons, after all ‘communication is the key’, and we hope to resolve this conflicting issue efficiently and effectively with no damage done to both sides . With that being said, we would really appreciate it if the department could perhaps consider a ‘hybrid’ classroom if going back to physical class fully is not doable.

Because of the things mentioned above, we sincerely wish the department would take our suggestions into consideration. We are looking forward to seeing a response from the department.

Sincerely,

Students of Year 3 and 4 of DoE, Academic Year 2021 - 2022