Preserving Indigenous Semai Folktales as A Process of Educating 21st Century Learners Through Gamification

Abstract

Gamifying Semai folktales is a project which aims to preserve the Semai cultural heritage and values in the 21st century and the gamification idea is also in line with policy makers, the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, via its Minister, mentioned the importance of integrating gamification in Teaching &Learning of all levels of education. The project explores the idea of gamification in encouraging ESL students to read short stories from various genres and culture and it is also set to disclose the ramifications of language gamifications in ESL teaching and learning particularly in the choice of Orang Asli Semai folktales in the selection. To ensure the language learners’ understanding of the Semai folktales, the animated movie comes with online quizzes to help the language learners to comprehend the content of the story and are able analyse the short story elements. Applying gamification in teaching and learning will give a new dimension not only to the students but also to prepare more dynamic language educators in embracing the rapid change in teaching and technology. Since gamification has exciting elements which can be motivating to the students, the videos and online quiz questions created have great commercialization potential. The videos uploaded on YouTube will be able to garner followers and the online questions uploaded on Quizzes can be accessed by any ESL learners. The findings revealed that most students preferred language activities with gamification which are more relevant to the 21st century learners.