Effects of Using Online Approach on Speaking Skills Among Malaysian University Students

The role of the university has gone far from just producing students with excellent academic achievements to producing students with tremendous communication skills such as speaking in English to enable them to compete in the global market. However, many university students in Malaysia are still struggling to acquire the English language comprehensively that matches the employers’ expectations. Hence, the importance of spoken English should be emphasized more by creating more interesting platforms and using online approaches such as vlogs to enable the students to use the language more profoundly. Thus, a pilot study was conducted to identify the effect of the vlog approach on the speaking skills of 50 students from a Malaysian Technical University. This study employed a quantitative method. A survey was conducted using a self-developed questionnaire which was distributed through Google Form. The questionnaire comprised 3 sections: student demography, speaking ability, and vlog effects. The data were analyzed using the mean score, standard deviation, Linear regression, and ANOVA. The results revealed that the use of online vlog activities had significantly helped the respondents to improve their speaking skills. Meanwhile, there was no significant difference in the use of vlog activities among the male and female respondents with regard to improving speaking skills in English. Therefore, it was concluded that using online vlog activities was a useful platform to practice and improve speaking skills in English among university students and more of these types of online approaches could be employed to help the university students to enhance confidence to speak in English.