The Impact of KaniMani Storytelling Mobile Application (KM-SMA) on Tamil Students’ Speaking Skills and Motivation in Learning Tamil

Abstract

The research aims to delve into the KaniMani Storytelling Mobile Application (KM-SMA)’s impact on Tamil students’ speaking skills and motivation to learn Tamil through the use of mobile applications. Thirty-six Tamil students aged between 7 and 8 years old were chosen based on their performance on a Classroom Assessment (CA) and randomly assigned to one of two groups (one experimental and one control) of 18 participants each. All the students were from three national primary schools, in the Pasir Gudang district, Johor, Malaysia. Two instruments were employed to examine the speaking skills of the participants before and after the experiment: speaking tests as pre-post tests and a motivation questionnaire. In addition, paired t-test was employed to examine the data. We found that following treatment, KM-SMA participants performed better than the control group regarding motivation and speaking skills. The results showed the importance of language instruction through mobile applications; it is a crucial element and we advised that it be considered in the Tamil language curriculum.