The Effect of Vlogging on Year 5 ESL Students’ Speaking Performance

Abstract

Speaking skill among English for Second Language (ESL) students has always been a concern yet it has been neglected in ESL classrooms. With the increasing integration of technology in the classrooms and the overwhelming interest of students in social media, it is believed that vlogging, which is a process of creating vlog, is able to make lessons more engaging and interesting, and even improve students’ speaking skills. This research reviews some past studies done on the effectiveness of vlogging in speaking skills and they evidenced that vlogging was indeed effective. However, there is very little research conducted in Malaysia and none was conducted for primary ESL students. Therefore, this study aims to explore how much vlogging helps in improving ESL Year 5 students’ speaking performance. A total of 15 students from a rural primary school were selected through convenience sampling method. The study was conducted qualitatively and the participants’ vlogs were analyzed thematically. Based on the data collected, it was found that the participants show improvement in terms of grammar, content, fluency and vocabulary but pronunciation was still a challenge for them. Therefore, it is hoped that this research could serve as a stepping-stone for vlogging being used as an effective way to improve students’ speaking performance. In conclusion, this research proposes a new alternative in teaching speaking during ESL lessons.