Exploring Opportunities and Challenges of Using WhatsApp in Teaching Reading: A Malaysian Rural Primary School Context

Abstract

Through the lens of COVID-19, the loss of learning in Malaysia was apparent as the rest of the countries in the world. In an effort to mitigate the loss, Malaysia announced the Movement Control Order (MCO) which helped to facilitate the home-based learning (HBL) system. As the schooling system migrates to online environments, teachers face significant barriers such as inavailability or lagging internet connectivity especially in the rural areas. Thus, asynchronous learning via WhatsApp was done throughout the MCO period. Cognizant to the foregoing issue, the aim of this study is to identify the technical and pedagogical opportunities as well as challenges of using WhatsApp features in teaching reading. Adopting survey research, this study examined 123 Malaysian rural primary English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers during the COVID-19 school closure. Descriptive analysis revealed that WhatsApp is advantageous as teachers are already using it and it can be used anytime and anywhere. It was also revealed that the lack of handphones and inactive students provide novel challenges in teaching and learning of reading via WhatsApp. This study contributes toward understanding the challenges teachers face in asynchronous ESL teaching and learning, besides discussing the implementation of WhatsApp as a means for instructional reading skills during the pandemic. The use of WhatsApp before and during the pandemic in ESL teaching can be explored as well. As asynchronous learning is implemented widely in areas with limited access to the internet during MCO, this study is pertinent to understand teaching reading via WhatsApp is possible and enables students to learn reading successfully.