WHATSPEAK: Audiovisual Digital Assessment in Enhancing Confident and Independent Speaking Skills

Abstract

Fluent speaking skills in English are considered major requirements in the growth of universal civilization as the fluency of spoken words allow a person to be well understood in the designated area. Learners are expected to forward ideas confidently and independently. However, they faced challenges in managing simple English communication among their circle. Therefore, the implementation of WhatsApp based audiovisual tasks were infused action research to enhance learners' speaking skills. The research was conducted among learners aged eight in a rural primary school in the district of Cameron Highlands, Pahang, Malaysia. Results were collected from pre-test and post-test, observation and survey. Data revealed that learners were involved actively in collaborative speaking sessions by exchanging ideas confidently and independently. Significantly, their spoken Performance Level improved as they began to socialize and prompt proper language usage in the interactions through the aid of pictures, videos and audios. Researchers had suggested the incorporation of genuine learning and assessment of speaking skills via WhatsApp based audiovisual materials as an effective effort in eventually producing confident and independent English speakers.

How digital communications contribute to shaping the career paths of youth: a review study focused on farming as a career option

“…The growth in the use of digital communication tools in schools offers new opportunities to assist youth not only in achieving instrumental goals (e.g., improving learning performance) but also with career developmental goals (e.g., promoting career aspirations). The reported impact of school-based digital communications on instrumental goals is well established in the education and social psychology literature (Arulchelvan and Yunus 2020;Burnette et al 2013;Denton-Calabrese et al 2021;Akcaoglu and Green 2019). These studies provide insights on the positive effects of school-based digital communications on the career initiations of rural youth via their empowerment and learning skills, such as creating self-confidence, growth mindsets, increasing community engagement, promoting career aspirations; and improving cognitive skills (see Flynn et al 2022 for a review on rural youth).…”

The Usage of MALL in Learners’ Readiness to Speak English

“…According to the table, eight articles were selected from Scopus, two from WoS, five from ERIC and another five from Google Scholar. The majority of the research was conducted in higher institutions of learning such as universities and colleges focusing on various disciplines in education [54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67], followed by learners at school level [68][69][70][71], and teachers [72]. Students felt that it was less daunting than conventional presentations.…”

“…Based on Table 4, three research articles' findings reported motivation as the main affective variable in MALL that affects learners' readiness to speak in English [60,65,66]. However, there were six studies that had a mixture of the motivation variable and other variables such as confidence, anxiety, and learners' control [56,59,61,62,69,70]. Refs.…”

“…[59,61] reported similar findings in which learners were influenced by MALL to have both motivation and learners' control in the instruction of speaking skills, whereas refs. [56,62,69] showed factors related to both motivation and confidence that directly affected learners' readiness to speak English. On the other hand, the findings in ref.…”

“…WhatsApp [57,[61][62][63]69,71] Instagram [59] Facebook [63,73] Flipped Interaction Chat app [58] Social media podcast [55]…”