Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face instructions suspended; numerous campuses worldwide closed and were forced to initiate emergency remote teaching (ERT). Thus, this study explores an existing pedagogical strategy to adapt to ERT in the Indonesian context. The study focuses also on the challenges of implementing ERT-based instructions to promote students' engagement during instructional practices. The researcher made a case study in which YouTube, Zoom, and SPADA platforms were employed for ERT-based instructions at a university. Seventeen pre-service language teachers joining the microteaching course in which English as a medium of instruction were voluntarily recruited during the study. The results indicated that ERT-based instructions were praiseworthy as a successful instructional mode to cope with the suspension of face-to-face instructions. However, the prominent challenges were that the low-achieving students were typically lack of self-discipline to engage virtually during the class and teachers had limited control over such students. It is advocated that teachers are supposed to find out the effective instructional strategies to cope with students' negative learning attitude and to ensure that ERT-based instructions are effective for achieving learning objectives.