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STUDENTS` SELF-CREATED YOUTUBE VIDEOS: A 21st CENTURY

SPEAKING ASSESSMENT

Muhammad Rajulain
MAN 1 Kota Bima
email: rajulain@madrasah.id

Abstract
(Title: Students` Self-Created Youtube Videos: A 21st Century Speaking Assessment). The
Regulation of the Minister for Education and Culture Affair number 69 2013, which regulates
the Basic Framework and Curriculum Structure of High School/ Islamic High School, has
regulated English subjects meeting which is now trimmed to 2 hours meeting in a week
which was 4 hours meetings prior to the implementation of this regulation. The teachers,
therefore, are expected to adapt to this new regulation in improving their students` speaking
skill. Information and Technology rapid advancement has allowed the teachers to apply it in
teaching and learning process. This paper is therefore aimed at describing the employment of
Information and Technology (YouTube) in assessing students` speaking skill.

Keywords: speaking skill, youtube, assessment.

INTRODUCTION The impact of technology in education is


Technology has affected the way we undeniable. The World Wide Web which was
perceived life nowadays. It unlocks numerous first commenced for public in 1990s (Cakir,
opportunities as well as shuts others. Prior to 2016) has consented other web services to
technology advancement, people used to meet emerge which finally brought to the globally
face-to-face in the market for purchasing the connected world. In English teaching and
items they needed. Then, we are introduced to learning process, this rapid advancement of
online shopping, in which people utilize technology provides more chances for teachers
various electronic systems in trading (Lohse as well as learners to utilize the benefits that it
and Spiller, 1998 in (Schultz & Block, 2015, provides in maximizing the teaching and
p. 99)). In Indonesia, online shopping has learning outcomes. English teachers and
contributed to IDR 75 trillion (US$ 5.3 scholars have been familiar with the term
million) (Nababan, 2017) and is expected to Computer Assisted Language Learning
increase to IDR 144 trillion (US$ 10 million) (CALL). According to Beatty (2003 in Oz,
this year (Abdurrahman, 2017). Furthermore, Demirezen, & Pourfeiz, 2015, p. 360), the
the current progress of technology also affects general definition CALL is “any process that
the way people interact these days. People are requires learners to use a computer in order to
now able to communicate and see each other improve his or her language”. Prior to the
by employing video calls as well as using World Wide Web, in 1970s – 1990s, Computer
pictures in their messages instantly. Assisted Language Learning (CALL) merely

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employs mainframe and Personal Computers one billion people learning English around the
in its application. On the other hand, its world. About three quarters of that number,
employment is far more complex in the present which is approximately 750.000.000 people,
day as it relies on Internet (Bax, 2003). live in non-English-speaking countries.
In the Teachers` Regulation of Indonesian Therefore, every country requires English
Government Number 74, 2008; teachers are teachers to meet the high demand for English
defined as professional educators who has teaching and learning (James, 2010).
seven main responsibilities, i.e., educating, According to Mistar (2005), English teaching
teaching, guiding, directing, coaching, in Indonesia was initially carried out in 1600s
assessing, and evaluating the students during the Dutch colonialization in the Meer
(Republik Indonesia, 2008). On the other Uitgebreid Lager Onderwijs (MULO), which
hand, there has been a number of amendments was junior secondary schools established by
in educational process standard in recent the Dutch. After Indonesia`s independence
years. According to the Regulation of the proclamation in 1945, English was chosen as
Minister for Education and Culture Affair the international language which functioned
number 69 2013, which regulates the Basic as a complement to Bahasa Indonesia as the
Framework and Curriculum Structure of High language of the state.
School/ Islamic High School, there has been a There are four basic skills in language
reduction for English subjects meeting which which are viewed as the core fragments of
is now trimmed to 2 hours meeting in a week language, i.e. listening, speaking, reading, and
which was 4 hours meetings prior to the writing. Without disregarding the role of other
implementation of this regulation. As one of skills, speaking is considered as the most
the teachers` basic responsibilities, the important skill which needs to be taught and
assessment process requires adjustments, learned (Egan, 1999). Furthermore Brown &
especially in assessing students` speaking Lee (2001) argued that speaking is considered
performance. In a class of 30 to 40 students, as the most important skill since people who
encouraging them to speak for about 2 to 3 know how to speak a particular language is
minutes will spend almost the whole weekly considered as knowing that particular language.
meeting. Therefore, this paper is aimed at Another reason for positioning speaking skill as
proposing the employment of the YouTube our main priority is based on Thornbury (2005)
platform in assessing students` speaking argument, saying that listening and speaking
performance. are the most frequently employed skills for
communication. In daily interaction with other
DISCUSSION people, we rarely employ two other skills
Review of Related Theories (reading and writing) since oral communication
Speaking Skill and Its Assessment or speaking is the most common type of
In interacting with other people from communication in our daily life. However, in
other countries, people mostly use English, language teaching and learning process, those
due to its roles as the international language four skills should be integrated, since the
that people use in politics, science, business integration allows the students to distinguish
and communications. According to the data the differences and interrelationships among
from The British Council, there are more than those skills (Brown & Lee, 2001).

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In classifying types of speaking, Douglas to every single procedure which requires the
(2004) provides 5 categories of basic speaking learners to utilize a computer in order to
types, i.e. imitative, intensive, responsive, improve their language. Warschauer (2000 in
interactive, and extensive. Imitative types of Bax, 2003) proposed three stages of CALL i.e.
speaking refer to speaking performance ability Structural CALL (1970s–1980s),
wherein students imitate a word, phrase or a Communicative CALL (1980s–1990s) and
sentence. Listening is provided prior to this Integrative CALL (21st Century).
speaking activity to provide the students with In terms of technology employment,
the opportunity to obtain a sample word, those three phases use slightly different mean
phrase or sentence which must be imitated. of technology. Structural CALL (1970s–1980s)
Intensive type of speaking requires the employs mainframe, that is “a large powerful
students to produce short stretches of oral computer, usually the centre of a network and
language which are aimed at demonstrating shared by many users” (Oxford Advanced
competence in a restricted grammatical group, Learner’s Dictionary, 8th edition, 2010). Due
phrasal, lexical, or phonological relationships. to the lack of resources and technology
The third type speaking, responsive, includes development in this first stage of CALL, one
interaction and test comprehension which is computer acted as the epicenter or main server
limited level to very short conversations, of the network, while the users access or use it
standard greetings and small talk, simple at the same time. Technology advancement in
requests and comments, and similar activities. the second stage of CALL (Communicative
Interactive type is almost similar to responsive CALL) allowed the learners to use their
type. However, interactive speaking is longer Personal Computers (PC) wherein the
and has the interaction is more complex, software, which were mostly could be accessed
wherein it includes multiple exchange and offline, installed on their PCs in assisting them
multiple interactions. The last type of speaking, with language learning. On the last stage of
extensive type includes speeches, oral CALL (Integrative CALL), technology
presentations, and story-telling. evolution provides the language learners with
the opportunity to employ multimedia and
Technology in Education internet.
Remarkable changes on how people act According to Prensky (2001), students
and the employment of the technology have nowadays are referred as “digital natives”, due
been the main noticeable phenomena in the to the fact that they have spent their lives
twenty-first century. According to Cakir besieged by and employ tools of the digital
(2016), the introduction of the World Wide age, e.g. videogames, computers, , digital
Web in 1990s triggered large number of web music players, video cams, cell phones, etc.
services to be created and employed This suggests that students these days are
worldwide. Prior to the World Wide Web, the familiar and have better digital competence as
application of computer, especially in language they use and are surrounded by digital devices.
learning has been widely referred as Computer- However, these digital natives often lack the
Assisted Language Learning (CALL). This essential skills to shift from being passive
term, according to Beatty (2003 in Oz, receivers of visual media messages (Lundy &
Demirezen, & Pourfeiz, 2015, p. 360), refers Stephens, 2015). Teachers, therefore, are

Students` Self-Created Youtube Videos: A 21St Century ... (Muhammad Rajulain)


18

required to exploit students` digital skills to Bardine, 2011). There have been several
assist them from being passive receivers to researches on the application of YouTube for
active creators of visual media messages, one educational purposes. A study conducted by
of them is by integrating technology in (Orús et al., 2016) on “The effects of learner-
teaching and learning process. generated videos for YouTube on learning
The main reason for integrating outcomes and satisfaction” examined 125
technology in education is due to the its benefit university students for Introduction to
which allow the enhancement of traditional Marketing course for the degree in business
teaching models as well as facilitate the management and administration at a major
application of new teaching and learning university in Spain. Those students were then
paradigms which were not previously possible grouped into 3 to 5 students for each group.
(Benbunan-Fich & Stelzer, 2002, p. 86). An They were assigned to create and upload
example of this statement can be seen on how videos to YouTube related to the theoretical
technology has allowed the application of concepts covered in the course. This study
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in reveals that videos which are cerated by the
education. MOOCs are “distance-learning learner-generated content and the use of
courses that are open to any learner who YouTube as a teaching media has a positive
registers” (Weingarten, 2016 in Gameel & impact on students’ learning outcomes and
Wilkins, 2019, p. 1). The technology, or satisfaction.
internet to be precise, offers the possibility for Another research on the employment of
thousands of learners all over the world to YouTube on “The potential of YouTube for
learn, collaborate, share and discuss the teaching and learning in the performing arts”
particular lesson which will help them to was carried out by DeWitt et al., (2013). This
understand and eventually apply the study was aimed to obtain the consensus on
knowledge they have learnt in real life. the advantages of YouTube application as a
Furthermore, the integration of technology tool for teaching and learning in the performing
can facilitate students’ active learning (Esteve arts, and for maintaining students’ interest and
Mon & Gisbert Cervet, 2011 in (Orús et al., achievement in learning. In addition, it was
2016). One fragment of popular technology also purposed to determine the suitability of
which can be helpful in teaching and learning using YouTube as a tool for teaching the
process nowadays is YouTube. performing arts in future. The Fuzzy Delphi
technique was employed to obtain consensus
Youtube for Educational Purposes among 20 instructors and lecturers in seven
YouTube, a famous video sharing areas of specialization from the Academy of
platform allowing people to create and share Arts, Culture and National Heritage
any types of videos online, was not first (ASWARA). The finding reveals that YouTube
designed for educational purposes. However, is potential to be applied as an instructional
as people also share and create educational tool in the performing arts.
videos and share them, it can therefore be Those two researches confirm the
exploited to facilitate teaching and learning possibility on the employment of YouTube in
process, especially in English teaching and teaching and learning process. However, those
learning process (Ghasemi, Hashemi, & two researches were carried out in higher level

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of education i.e. university level. Therefore, it asked to memorize the text, prior to creating
would be highly acceptable to attempt applying their videos. Although the memorization of
the employment of YouTube in lower level of the texts refers to the classical method i.e.
education, i.e. Senior High School. Grammar Translation Method, this method is
considered as the most popular method applied
The Application of Youtube in Assessing in the language teaching and learning and “is
Speaking sometimes successful in leading a student
The significance of requesting students to toward a reading knowledge of a second
create their own video and upload it to language” (Brown & Lee, 2001, p. 19).
YouTube is due to Lindstorm`s (1994 in Once the students have finished
DeWitt et al., 2013) argument in which the memorizing, teacher moved to next stage,
highest level of students` understanding of a namely main activity stage. The students were
particular subject is achieved when students asked to record themselves by using their
create materials during instruction, i.e. 75%. it camera or smartphone. Students are
is higher than the level of students` encouraged to give some description on their
understanding when they only see and hear videos prior to uploading them. If it is
during instruction, which contributes to 20% necessary, teacher can also request students to
and 40% respectively. Furthermore, learning create some hashtags so that other people can
activities is sown to be more effective when find their videos easily in addition to promote
multimedia elements, such as videos are the organization or the students` school.
employed (Krauskopf, Zahn & Hesse, 2012; Teacher also set some rules during this stage,
Zahn, Pea, Hesse, & Rosen, 2010 in DeWitt such as the minimum length of the videos,
et al., 2013) clothes that the students should wear during
In applying YouTube in speaking recording, how the video should be shot, and
assessment, there are three stages of activities, other guidelines. In avoiding students’
namely pre-activity, main activity, and post- cheating during the video recording, they were
activity. During pre-activity, students were asked to face to the mirror and shot the videos
requested to write their unforgettable by using their smartphones` rear cameras.
experience at home in a form of recount text. Thus, teacher can ensure that students were
Previously, they were taught this kind of text. honest. Furthermore, ensuring the students to
They were then asked to submit their writing be honest is in accordance with the guidelines
and teacher examined and give feedback of of Subject Syllabus issued by Kementerian
their writing. The feedback was mostly in Pendidikan Dan Kebudayaan (2016, p.3) on
written feedback, in which teacher gave some the graduates competence which highlights
correction on their writing, either grammatical the importance of the high school graduates to
error, misspelling, miss-punctuation, and other acquire honesty. Afterwards, the students were
kind of mistakes. It is important to provide asked to upload the videos on YouTube and
feedback on students` assignments since share the link to the teacher for the assessment
feedback is one of the keys to a successful purposes.
language learning (Brown & Lee, 2001). Once During this second stage of the activity,
the students` writing and feedbacks were teacher introduced the students with the
distributed back to the students, they are then assessment criteria, thus the students have

Students` Self-Created Youtube Videos: A 21St Century ... (Muhammad Rajulain)


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guidelines in creating the videos. The determining students` video score in avoiding
assessment criteria is given in a form of rubric, teacher`s subjectivity.
which is “a scoring tool that lays out the On its application, teacher found several
specific expectations for an assignment” strong points as well as difficulties of this
(Stevens & Levi, 2013, p. 3). It is important to method. Most students were enthusiastic in
introduce the students with the scoring rubric creating their videos and the videos quality
so that students are well-prepared and were satisfactory. They were able to enhance
understand what they are expected to do in the their videos by applying interesting additional
assignment. The rubric applied in this paper is opening videos as well as interesting music.
shown in Table 1. However, few students who have lack digital
The last stage of this procedure is post- abilities create poor quality videos.
activity. Teacher watch the videos that the It is also important to highlight, these
students have created and uploaded. The self-created videos contribute to the positive
reward on their uploaded videos was in thumbs content videos as they provide the educational-
up smileys on YouTube. It is due to these based content for other teachers as well as
“digital natives” who mostly wish to be other students to reflect on. Those videos will
rewarded for everything that they do (Teo, also beneficial to reduce the negative-content
2013). However, the assessment result as well videos appearance on the internet. They might
as the feedbacks of their videos was given on be small in numbers, yet as more teachers and
their messaging platform, i.e. WhatsApp or students create more positive-content videos,
Short Message Service (SMS). The feedbacks other generations will be benefited as they
were their pronunciation, video qualities, and negative-content videos are shown less on the
other aspects of speaking that needs to be internet.
assessed. The speaking rubrics were applied in

Table 1 Assessment Rubric


Score Fluency Pronunciation Video Quality
4 Speaks with fluency Proper use of word and Video is bright, the speaker`s
characterized by few (1-5) sentence stress. Errors in face can be seen clearly,
starts, stops, pauses and pronunciation and speaker`s voice can be heard
hesitations. intonation are rare clearly
3 Speaks with some fluency but Mostly demonstrates proper Video is quite bright, the
has occasional pauses (6-10). use of word and sentence speaker`s face can be seen
stress. Errors don’t interfere clearly, speaker`s voice can be
with understand-ding. heard and understandable
2 Speaks with hesitations and lots Pronunciation is intelligible Video is quite dark, the
of pauses (10 – 15 pauses) most of the time. speaker`s face can be seen
clearly, speaker`s voice is hard
to listen to.
1 Speaks with lots of hesitations Errors are frequent in Video is dark, the speaker`s
and pauses (more than 15 pronunciation and leads to face cannot be identified,
pauses) lack of understand-ding. speaker`s voice is not

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Limitation then be applied in determining students`


Due to time as well as resources weakness and strength which can be utilized
constrains, this study is limited to apply in providing appropriate assistance on their
YouTube as a means for assisting teachers in speaking skill in the future.
assessing students` speaking performance. In This paper is limited at proposing the
addition, this method corresponddingly tackles application of YouTube in assessing students`
the reduction of English subject which was speaking performance without utilizing any
reduced from 4 hours to 2 hours meeting in a statistical procedure to determine the progress
week due to the implementation of The of their speaking skill prior to the application
Regulation of the Minister for Education and of this method and after the method is applied.
Culture Affair number 69, 2013; which limits Therefore, it is suggested that next researchers
the time in obtaining the information on to apply statistical procedure to determine the
students` speaking skill in addition to the measurable progress of students` speaking
opportunity for students to perform their skill prior and after the method is applied.
speaking skill. Therefore, this paper provides
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tool to save grading time, convey effective https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkJhAicq


feedback, and promote student learning. kxI&list=LL8aa4TmjU3fSmK4wVby8-
Stylus Publishing, LLC. xg&index=21&t=26s
Teo, T. (2013). An Initial Development and
Validation of a Digital Natives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY9fpIC
Assessment Scale (DNAS). Computers L4sI&list=LL8aa4TmjU3fSmK4wVby8-
& Education, 67, 51–57. xg&index=24&t=79s
Thornbury, S. (2005). How to teach speaking.
Longman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL9PaW
Rw&list=LL8aa4TmjU3fSmK4wVby8-
xg&index=19&t=17s
APPENDIX:
Several Youtube Link of Students` Videos https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=mNJpJW-bv3c&t=16s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LawF1uq https://www.youtube.com/
NA8I&list=LL8aa4TmjU3fSmK4wVby8- watch?v=HEgzsRr8EFg
xg&index=29&t=0s
https://www.youtube.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7j1q0g- watch?v=laPVOi2vB3M
SDs&list=LL8aa4TmjU3fSmK4wVby8- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPHrV-
xg&index=27&t=15s gpttA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB7uER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf_dUR
NhjbU&list=LL8aa4TmjU3fSmK4wVby8- kImP8&list=LL8aa4TmjU3fSmK4wVby8-
xg&index=16&t=120s xg&index=12&t=36s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmQE6e https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_9wCO
3JrB0&list=LL8aa4TmjU3fSmK4wVby8- JjTe8&list=LL8aa4TmjU3fSmK4wVby8-
xg&index=17&t=54s xg&index=13&t=0s

Students` Self-Created Youtube Videos: A 21St Century ... (Muhammad Rajulain)

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