Foreign language communication skills: Smartphone and internet approach applications

Abstract

Efforts to uphold and diversify Malay culture and language (BM) are often linked to teaching the language to international students as well as foreign speakers who visits to this country. Various strategies have been targeted by instructors in their respective teaching to ensure that language teaching is made more effective and achieves the targeted goals. This study takes into account the use of smartphones in the teaching and learning of BM for foreign students as one of the strategies to enhance students' communication skills. This study also examines the effectiveness of this technique on the students' written communication skills through this learning process. This study was conducted on international students at University Tenaga Nasional. The data were obtained through questionnaire and interview session to meet with the purpose of the objective of this study. The result shows that students are quicker to understand and master BM through the use of smartphones either through the functionality of the smartphone itself or with the use of internet which provides the availability of YouTube, Google Image, and various websites. Additionally, researchers found that reinforcement activities conducted in teaching classes also contributed to the improvement of communication skills of these foreign students. The study also found that this method can be used and applied at any level of teaching or at different target groups.