Abstract

Using the right technique to teach writing is very important to help students

This study deals with improving the reading comprehension of junior

This study investigated the effectiveness of using YouTube teaching materials with peer support on students’ mastery of subject content learning, motivation, obstacles, and benefits they acquired in learning through this media. This study involved 60 undergraduate students attending the English Language Teaching Method Course (ELTMC) at a university in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. The study used mixed methods: quantitative and qualitative. A quasi-experimental with pre-test and post-test design was used to see the effectiveness of using YouTube teaching materials with peer support and without peer support on students’ mastery of the course. The instruments used to collect the data were tests and an open-ended questionnaire. The findings revealed that using YouTube teaching materials with peer support significantly improved students’ mastery of the subject content of ELTMC compared to those without peer support. The study also reported that only 13 of 30 students had problems learning the subject via the media in the experimental group with peer support. The problems were the speed of speaking by the native speakers, lengthy videos, different English accents that were difficult to absorb, and unclear video sounds. Meanwhile, the benefits include the presence of the native speakers in the videos who are creative and accurate in the language being learned (i.e., English), the joy and positive challenges they got from watching the videos and having discussions afterward with peers. The availability of peer assistance enabled students to comprehend the teaching material delivered through actual media on YouTube on a deeper level.

Students’ learning outcomes of vocabulary mastery in reading comprehension at junior high schools in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, are relatively low. To tackle the issue, the Scrabble Game Technique (hereafter, SGT) is hoped to be a game-changer. This study aims to investigate EFL students’ learning outcomes through the use of the SGT in learning English vocabulary through narrative texts to seventh-grade students at a junior high school. The aspects assessed for each type of vocabulary included nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, and conjunctions. The research design was quantitative with pre-experimental research that used a one-group pre-test post-test design to measure the students’ learning outcomes after three treatments with the SGT. A total of 30 seventh-grade students were selected by purposive sampling. The instrument used to collect data was a test, comprising 30 questions in total, with 18 multiple choices, 6 fill-in-the-blanks, and 6 matching-the-word. The tests were further analyzed using the right-hand t-test after the pre-requisite test was met. It was found that the percentage of mastery of nouns and verbs in the post-test was better than the pre-test, with the improvement of nouns at 93%, verbs at 91%, pronouns at 84%, adverbs at 72%, adjectives at 71%, and conjunctions at 71%. Furthermore, the t-count was 19.68 with p = 0.05, dk = 29, and t-table = 1.70. It was concluded that students’ learning outcomes were better after being taught through the SGT.