**7. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research**

There are few limitations of this study. The students' sample that has participated in this study were only from applied linguistics and TESOL course at Newcastle university, therefore the results of this study are not generalised on all international students studying their postgraduate on Zoom. The observation data obtained was only from one SOL, therefore other factors could have occurred in other breakout rooms from different SOL and different teachers. Future research could obtain more than one breakout room observation data from different SOL that s taught by different teachers to compare between different teachers practices effect and different teaching contexts.

Another limitation that could have affected the results of this study, is that learners in the breakout room were aware of being recorded. This could be an explanation of why some international students have not participated and turned their camera off during breakout rooms. Further research is needed to explore the effective task type for encouraging learners' interaction in SOL. This research has shown that groups in breakout rooms has an effect on learners' participation. Therefore, future research should explore in which ways should teachers group international students for breakout rooms interaction. As the previous literature

on grouping learners are all related to PiP classroom, which could give different results in VLE.
