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CLUBHOUSE AS VIRTUAL COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE FOR NON-NATIVE

ENGLISH SPEAKERS TO PRACTICE

Fatimah Az Zahra

and Shierly N. Yappi

1, 2

Magister Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, STKIP PGRI Sidoarjo

Email: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Clubhouse application, since it is found, becomes the popular application to practice English. It is

because it is easy to use worldwide as well as provides good features and a community system. This

case study investigated whether the Clubhouse application could become a virtual community of

practice (VCoP) and motivate non-native English speakers (NNES) to speak within the community

system. The data were collected through questionnaires with a Likert scale and semi-structured

interviews. The participants were the members of the Smart and Easy English club, one of the biggest

English clubs in the Clubhouse, who come from Morocco, Afghanistan, and Indonesia. The results

revealed some points including 1) Based on the club system, Clubhouse can become an ideal IDLE

for VCoP; 2) Clubhouse application motivates the NNES to practice English in the VCoP depending

on the features and system used by the club or community; 3) The leadership role in the club does

not influence the NNES to practice on Clubhouse as VCoP. The study concluded that Clubhouse is a

virtual community of practice which features and community system motivate non-native English

speakers to practice English regularly. The findings suggested that the Clubhouse application can

be used by English instructors to enable their learners to have English-speaking practice in VCoP.

The results of this study may be advantageous for English-speaking course developers with

contemporary channel practice.

Keywords: Clubhouse, Virtual community of practice (VCoP), Non-native English speakers (NNES)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 CC BY-SA International License.

INTRODUCTION

Clubhouse application is an Informal Digital Learning of English (IDLE) used by non-

native speakers worldwide to practice English. It is a social application that brings a voice-

mediated platform launched in March 2020. Zhu (2022) confirms that Clubhouse is the most

popular application used to create communities (so-called clubs) and build intensive

communication based on his study. Clubhouse facilitates individuals to build community

through clubs as well as interact with people worldwide with no regional limit. It is an audio-

based application so the people merely focus on the audio, no videos are needed. Some

English teachers and practitioners own English clubs to spread the teaching or facilitate the

people to practice English speaking. They open free public rooms or paid private rooms. It

becomes a signature goal of the community.

Dealing with the application, two phenomena arouse in which (i) Clubhouse becomes

a popular IDLE for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) online learning and (ii) Clubhouse

turns into a virtual community practice (CoP). The fame of Clubhouse as an IDLE is

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supported by Lee and Drajati's idea (2020) that technology-enhanced learning brings wider

opportunities for cross-cultural communication because of the accelerated advancement of

communication technologies and digital media. Lee (2018) also adds that there is a rising

number of self-directed digital settings used by EFL students. Lousada (2021) adds that

Clubhouse enables the speakers to gain meaningful information through voiced real-time

communication which is applied to language learning.

Meanwhile, when it comes to a community of practice. Lave & Wenger in Nagao

(2018) defines a CoP as a group of people who have a mutual understanding of the goals,

roles, and meaning of their activities despite the diverse ideas and interests, and they remain

collaborating to practice together. Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner (2015) mentions

three main characteristics of CoP as follows (i) it shares the same domain of goal and interest,

consequently, it needs the commitment to develop the corresponding competencies (ii) its

members help each other, share information, and build relationships to conduct collaborative

learning, and (iii) in its practice the members evolve habitual resources to solve problems or

sustain the interaction. The CoP recently develops through virtual technology

implementation and it is called a virtual community of practice (VCoP).

There have been some studies regarding CoP or VCoP in EFL learning both in

classrooms and social media. First, Koga, Furuya, and Miyo in Nagao (2018) reveal that in

higher education EFL classrooms in Japan, it is suggested to treat smaller groups of students

and an instructor in a classroom unit as a CoP, in which the teacher ought to acknowledge

the problem and discuss the solution proactively. In other words, CoP characteristics in these

classrooms are to clarify the issues, solve them, and create a mutual goal. According to

Nagao's study (2018), in college classes, CoPs were suggested (i) to form knowledge based

on the situation and relations of the collaborative activities among the members and (ii) to

form the acquired knowledge and skills for the general personal characteristic as identity

development. In a real EFL classroom context, the students experienced a community centre

in learning English for Specific Purposes (ESP), particularly English for business and

management. Therefore, the curriculum and syllabus are designed to combine the

characteristics of activity individually, in pairs, or groups, and the teacher set the

environment which enables the students to help their classmates to gain collaborative

learning.

Second, the study of Facebook as a virtual community of practice (VCoP). Peeters and

Pretorius (2020) conduct research to find out the use of social media based on the graph

theory of empirical approach for exploring the VCoP configuration relating to the

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community’s interaction. The social media analysis shows that the research subject groups

establish peer work and they contribute different roles in the groups. The participation

matrices show that different participants lead to certain factors in incorporating online and

offline assignments through the collaborative dialogue within VCoP on Facebook. Dealing

with Facebook, Peeters, and Pretorius (2020) believes that social media brings a new

atmosphere to enhance the students in higher education to conduct interpersonal

communication. The informal engagement among the students increases their motivation as

well as solidarity so that it could be used to evaluate the target language. Based on this study,

the community concept in CoPs or VCoPs remains unjustified because the students' behavior

and configuration rely much on the environment, the design, the role flexibility, and the

actor’s freedom in a collaborative dialog. In addition, the students' interaction online can

work only if both the teacher and students are solid in acknowledging the roles.

Third, Nematzadeh, et al (2021) conducts a study on the use of intercultural on EFL

learners' social and cultural VCoP in Iran. They found that EFL learners communicate with

each other interactively in the VCoPs through texts and voices. They obtain awareness and

knowledge about the specific syntax and elements of the foreign language while

implementing intercultural movie clips for discussion. Furthermore, the use of intercultural

movie clips in VCoP reveals that exposure to authentic and intercultural material can

enhance the EFL learners' awareness about the individuals' opinion diversity so that it can

improve their social interaction. However, the study merely focuses on the Iranian context

and learners’ intercultural identity.

Responding to the mentioned previous studies, this study focuses on the Clubhouse

application which has not been examined for VCoP in the EFL context before and it relates

to the motivation of non-native English speakers (NNES) in practicing English on this

application.

To analyse the implementation of the Clubhouse application as VCoP dealing with the

NNES, the following research questions were formulated:

1. Based on the club system, can Clubhouse become an ideal IDLE for VCoP?

2. To what extent does the Clubhouse application motivate the NNES to practice

English in the VCoP?

3. Does the leadership role in the club influence the NNES to practice on Clubhouse as

VCoP?

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RESEARCH METHOD

A case study design that included five participants was implemented. A case study was

chosen because according to Heale and Twycross (2017), a case study is particularly seen in

examining the phenomenon in social and life sciences. It is an intensive study of individuals,

groups, or units. Sandelowski in Heale and Twycross (2017) suggests a case study for

examining the holistic phenomena in the natural setting. Several participants from English

clubs are chosen randomly in this study. The steps are shown as follows.

Figure 1. Case Study Design and Methods (Yin, 2018)

In brief, the steps are (i) planning the study after the preliminary study, (ii) designing

the research components (participants and clubs), (iii) preparing the consent forms for the

participants, the questionnaires, and the interview questions, (iv) collecting data from the

questionnaire and interview, (v) analyzing the data collected using classification and coding

technique, and (vi) sharing the finding.

The community studied is the “Smart and Easy English” club which is one of the large

English clubs on the Clubhouse application. The research participants are from each role

except the founder because he is a native English speaker, while this research focuses on

NNES. They are Yonas of Morocco (27, leader), Novita of Indonesia (24, leader), Norahmad

of Afghanistan (33, leader), Elhamullah of Afghanistan (22, speaker), and Ghandi of

Indonesia (13, speaker). All of them are regular in participating in the speaking practice

rooms and have been a member of the community for more than six months. They come

from the countries that usually attend the speaking practice rooms.

This study uses several data sources; they are documentation, field notes,

questionnaire, and recording. Ten questionnaires and semi-structured interview questions

were asked to participants respectively. The questionnaire result was documentation, while

the interview result was recording, coding, and field notes. All of the data sources covered

the participants’ views about Clubhouse application as VCoP, to what extent it motivates

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them to practice English, and whether the leadership roles influence the club's sustainability.

The study was carried out qualitatively in a natural context to gain data from the participant’s

perspective as Aydin (2012) mentioned about a case study.

Case study research typically includes multiple data collection techniques and data are

collected from multiple sources. Data collection techniques include interviews, observations

(direct and participant), questionnaires, and relevant documents (Yin, 2014). The

participants completed the questionnaire in the form of text on the Likert scale (Appendix

1), then the researcher classified the total score. Next, the participants were interviewed

based on their statements in advance (Appendix 2). The interview questions were also read

first by the participants because knowing the questions before helped them to answer more

accurately (Diaz et al, 2015).

In this study, the answers to the questionnaire of the Likert scale are classified based

on the research questions.

Table 1. The Classification Table of Characteristics of VCoP (RQ 1)

Total Score

Category

21 - 30

Clubhouse is VCoP

11 - 20

Clubhouse is fairly a VCoP

1 – 10

Clubhouse is not VCoP

Table 2. The Classification Table of the Relation between Clubhouse Application and

NNES motivation to practice (RQ 2)

Total Score

Category

5 – 10

Clubhouse motivates NNES to practice English

1 – 5

Clubhouse does not motivate NNES to practice

English

Table 3. The Classification Table of between Leadership Role and NNES’ Motivation to

Practice (RQ 3)

Total Score

Category

5 – 10

Leadership role in Clubhouse motivates NNES to

practice English

1 – 5

Leadership role in Clubhouse does not motivate

NNES to practice English

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After classifying the category, the researcher interviewed the participants deeper about

their responses to have the further discussion through calls and it was recorded.

RESULTS & DISCUSSION

The results in this study include two results. The questionnaire result deals with the

Likert scale categorization and the interview result in the form of coding and documentation.

The total score us based on the research questions (RQ) which was then classified based on

the category in the classification table above.

Questionnaire Result

The questionnaire result below was represented respectively based on the research

participants’ responses.

Table 4. Yonas’ Perception about Clubhouse as a VCoP (Morocco, 27, leader)

Total Score

Category

Clubhouse is VCoP

Clubhouse motivates NNES to practice English

Leadership role in Clubhouse motivates NNES to practice

English

Table 5. Novita’s Perception about Clubhouse as a VCoP (Indonesia, 25, leader)

Total Score

Category

Clubhouse is VCoP

Clubhouse motivates NNES to practice English

Leadership role in Clubhouse motivates NNES to

practice English

Table 6. Norahmad’s Perception about Clubhouse as a VCoP (Afghanistan, 32, leader)

Total Score

Category

Clubhouse is VCoP

Clubhouse motivates NNES to practice English

Leadership role in Clubhouse motivates NNES to practice

English

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Table 7. Elhamullah’s Perception about Clubhouse as a VCoP (Afghanistan, 23, speaker)

Total Score

Category

Clubhouse is VCoP

Clubhouse motivates NNES to practice English

Leadership role in Clubhouse motivates NNES to practice

English

Table 8. Ghandi’s Perception about Clubhouse as a VCoP (Indonesia, 13, speaker)

Total Score

Category

Clubhouse is VCoP

Clubhouse motivates NNES to practice English

Leadership role in Clubhouse motivates NNES to practice

English

The brief scores difference is shown as follows.

Figure 2. The Participants’ Perspective of Clubhouse

Interview result

1. Yonas

As the leader, Yonas thought that clubs in the Clubhouse share different goals and

interests. Some of them seek quantity and not quality. However, the English clubs, commit

to developing the competency of education and mostly help to build a good learning

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environment. Dealing with collaborative learning, he could not really tell if the majority of

club members help each other to conduct collaborative learning, but most of the members

he encounters on the Clubhouse, exit on the platform for one reason, which is to learn

something new every day. However, some members do not sustain themselves because of

learning disappointments. As long as they are regular, they develop super quickly for goal

achievement. Club members are most comfortable practicing when the application provides

them with different good features, especially the audio-based feature.

Dealing with NNES, he agreed that NNES needs a public platform to practice English,

so as long as Clubhouse support this feature, the NNES can get highly motivated to practice

English in the community. The club or community system helps the members a lot since the

NNES suffer from the lack of new language communication which makes them afraid of

speaking the language. Furthermore, the NNES can be easily influenced by leaders to be

able to speak as comfortably as the leader, because all they seek is, motivation to start the

learning journey. Lastly, the leadership role in the club is the most important part of helping

the sustainability process for the community of English practice in the Clubhouse.

2. Novita

Novita thinks that some clubs in Clubhouse share the same goal and the members

commit to developing the competencies in the club. It can be reached by helping each other

practice, sharing information, and building collaborative learning. The members also interact

regularly to achieve their goals by using the features of Clubhouse. The audio-based system

motivates the NNES to speak more without worrying about judgment or personal life. The

club system also takes a role in influencing the NNES motivation because it can be improved

depending on the moderators/interlocutors provided by the clubs. The levels of club

leadership somehow affect the NNEs to come and practice in the club. It could be because

they are fond of the position or the comfort to be with them in the club. Therefore, the

leadership role also helps to sustain the club as a VCoP.

3. Norahmad

According to Norahmad, the clubs in Clubhouse do not share the same domain of goal

and interest because there are various goals of each member inside, and not too much need

for commitment to developing the corresponding competencies in the club. However, he

agrees that the members of the club could conduct collaborative learning to build

relationships, help each other, or share information. They also take part in sustaining the

interaction in the club so they keep developing to achieve their goals. The comfort of club

members in practicing English depends on whether the replay is on or off. Replay off means

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there is no recording during the live room, and replay on means there is automatic recording

while they are speaking in the live room. The features of Clubhouse motivate the NNES to

speak in terms of audio-based, raising a hand, social room, and community room. The club

system and management also motivate them because the founders, leaders, and moderators

always encourage them to practice and speak every day in their free rooms. Therefore, the

leadership role also influences them to practice and helps sustain the club as VCoP.

4. Elhamullah

Elhamullah is a speaker in several English clubs. He disagreed that the clubs in

Clubhouse share the goal and interest because many clubs are established due to various

goals. However, he supported the idea that in every club the members need the commitment

to develop their skills through helping each other, sharing knowledge, and building

relationships for collaborative learning. The members need to sustain the interaction for

reaching their goal and the Clubhouse features make them comfortable to practice, especially

for the NNES. Besides the features, the club or community system of Clubhouse strongly

motivates the NNES to practice in their community. Dealing with the leadership role,

Elhamullah takes the neutral insight because leadership is only the structure of the club

organization. Eventually, the members are the ones who sustain the club as a virtual

community of practice in English.

5. Ghandi

Ghandi is the youngest speaker of an English club. He has a high motivation to come

regularly to the live rooms. He often becomes the moderator as well. Although the

Clubhouse shares the same target and interest, the commitment to developing competencies

in the club less exists according to him. Collaborative learning is implied among the club

members such as sharing knowledge, bonding with each other, and helping each other.

Moreover, they should sustain the interaction daily so they can develop and achieve their

goals. Dealing with the Clubhouse features, Ghandi agrees that it is useful and makes them

comfortable to practice English in the community. The NNES which is the majority of

members of the Clubhouse are strongly motivated due to the features and the club or

community system. The leadership role here also influences the NNES to practice on the

Clubhouse as a VCoP because it sustains the club age and the bonding among the members.

Based on the questionnaire and the interview result, all of the participants confirm that

Clubhouse is a community of practice depending on the characteristics of community

practice defined by Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner (2015). In other words, Clubhouse

shares the same domain of goal and interest, consequently, it needs the commitment to

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develop the corresponding competencies; Clubhouse members help each other, share

information, and build relationships to conduct collaborative learning; and in its practice, the

Clubhouse members evolve habitual resources to solve problems or sustain the interaction.

Some notes came from Yonas and Elhamullah who revealed that regardless of Clubhouse as

a VCoP, the club members themselves commit to realizing the characteristics of a

community of practice. Clubhouse can be a supportive application, but eventually, the

members take the main role in the reliable community of practice.

Dealing with the NNES motivation, all of the participants agree that Clubhouse

motivates NNES to practice English. However, there is a note from Norahmad responding

to the question about how Clubhouse features make the NNES comfortable to speak.

According to him, the NNES’ motivation enhances more if the live rooms do not provide

the replays on. They feel more comfortable if they speak without being recorded. The

Clubhouse members are also encouraged to learn continuously in the community or club

system which schedule and opens the live rooms to practice every day. To sum up, the NNES

motivation in practicing on Clubhouse is depended on the features and community system.

The leadership role in the community brought by Jewson in Peeters and Pretorius

(2020) informs the mutual understanding concept of leadership and community within

VCoP. The impact of leadership roles on the Clubhouse as VCoP does occur. However, in

this matter, not all participants agree that the leadership roles in Clubhouse influence NNES

to practice and help to sustain the club as a VCoP. Elhamullah and Jawadi prefer to say that

the leadership roles do not impact the NNES’ motivation to practice as well as sustain the

club. It is the members themselves who can motivate their willingness to practice thus

sustaining the club as VCoP. Meanwhile, Yonas, Novita, and Ghandi agreed that the

leadership role also give an impact on the club as VCoP.

CONCLUSION

To draw conclusion, it should be understood that this study is aiming at investigating

whether the Clubhouse application could become a VCoP for NNES to practice English

regularly. Several participants from several countries have contributed their idea and

opinions for the data in this study through the questionnaire and interview. The data collected

deals with the research questions made by the researcher. Therefore, regarding the finding

and the research questions, the conclusions are as followed:

1. Based on the club system, Clubhouse can become an ideal IDLE for VCoP.

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2. Clubhouse application motivate the NNES to practice English in the VCoP depending

on the features and system used by the club or community.

3. The leadership role in the club does not influence the NNES to practice on Clubhouse

as VCoP.

Clubhouse application is inferred as one of the IDLEs for implementing online

learning formally or informally. It is in line with Bell et al., (2017) that online learning

enables the members to interact through the web or application despite the different places.

Dealing with VCoP, Lindlof and Schatzer in Hafni (2021) confirm that a virtual community

is basically a self-funded community by people who have the same interests and come with

a certain goal. It is a good place for NNES to discipline themselves in practicing English in

the community system despite the leadership role.

In conclusion, the Clubhouse application can be used by English instructors to enable

their learners to have English-speaking practice in VCoP. The results of this study may be

advantageous for English-speaking course developers with contemporary channels practice.

Further research could be conducted which includes a wider population and motives of each

club in establishing clubs or community on Clubhouse instead of focusing on one club only.

The experimental method also could be done in future research to know the learners' English

proficiency before and after practicing at Clubhouse by using pre-test and post-test.

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Appendix 1

The Questionnaire Questions

Scale from 1-5.

1= strongly disagree

2= disagree

3= neutral

4= agree

5= strongly agree

RQ 1: (based on the main characteristics of Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner (2015)

1. Do you think the clubs on Clubhouse share the same domain of goal and interest?

2. Do you think it needs the commitment to develop the corresponding competencies in

the club?

3. Do you think the club members help each other, share information, and build

relationships to conduct collaborative learning?

4. Do you think the club members sustain the interaction in practicing?

5. Do you think the club members keep developing to achieve their goals?

6. Do you think the features of Clubhouse enable the club members to comfortably

practice in the club?

RQ 2:

7. Do you think the features of Clubhouse motivate non-native English speakers to

practice English in the community?

8. Do you think the club/community system of Clubhouse motivates non-native English

speakers to practice English in the community?

RQ 3:

9. Do you think the leadership role in the club influences non-native English speakers

to practice on Clubhouse as a virtual community of English practice?

10. Do you think the leadership role in the club helps sustain the club as a virtual

community of English practice?