-The Six Thinking Hats (STH) is an interesting strategy, which requires students to think and discuss an issue from different points of view. The objectives of this study were to find out the students' speaking achievement after being taught by the STH, the interaction effect of STH and critical thinking on students' speaking achievement and speaking achievement among the students who had high, mid and low levels of critical thinking. Factorial design was used in this study, which involved experimental and control groups. The sample of this study covered 48 students that were equally divided into experimental and control group. The result showed that the experimental group had better improvement in speaking achievement than the control group. However, there was a partial significant interaction effect of the STH and students' critical thinking on speaking achievement, which was on pronunciation aspect. Besides, the results also showed there were significant differences among the levels of students' critical thinking in the experimental group especially in comprehension, pronunciation, and fluency aspects.

The objectives of the study were (1) to find out whether or not there was a significant correlation between accreditation and students’ English achievement of public senior high schools in Palembang, and (2) to find out whether or not there was a contribution of accreditation on students’ English achievement. The population of 18 accredited public senior high schools in Palembang in 2016 with 3556 students of 12th grade were selected to be the sample of the study by using the purposive sampling technique. The data of the accreditation list and students’ English national examination scores were taken from BAP S/M (The Education Accreditation Board) and Ministry of Education and Culture of Indonesia. To analyze the data, Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient to find out whether or not there was a correlation between the two variables. The result showed that (1) there was no significant correlation between school accreditation and students’ English achievement (r-obtained 0.406 and p-value 0.095), and (2) there was 16.4% contribution of school accreditation on student’s English achievement.

Since the rapid spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government of Indonesia through the Ministry of Education and Culture has shifted the assessment mode from face-to-face into online assessment following the policy of online teaching and learning process. This conversion can essentially encourage the lecturers in higher education to reflect on and improve their assessment methods that are novel, stimulating, and practical for them. On the other hand, various kinds of challenges are likely to encounter by lecturers in carrying out the online assessment. This study aims to find out the challenges of online assessment in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic disruption, and the solutions to meet these challenges. Qualitative method in a case study design was used to achieve the objectives of this study. The data were collected through in-depth interview and observation from two EFL lecturers at a state university in Palembang as the participants. The data were analysed by using thematic analysis. The findings revealed five primary challenges of online assessment: uneasiness, technical problems, time-consuming process, late submission, and academic dishonesty. Each of the challenges in the findings was followed by the solutions to deal with those challenges done by the participants. Keywords:   Challenges of online assessment; Online assessment amidst Covid-19 pandemic; The voice of EFL lecturers.