Utilization of Educational YouTube Videos: An Approach in Enhancing Junior High School Students’ Oral Communication Skills

Abstract

Educational YouTube videos are considered as the portal where individuals can transmit and retrieve various kinds of information to any part of the world. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of Educational YouTube videos in improving the speaking proficiency level of students. A quasi-experimental research design was used to gather data as it sought to determine the effectiveness of the intervention. The respondents of this study were the Grade 9 students of one of the public secondary schools in the school year 2018-2019. The present study used purposive sampling in the selection of the respondents. The experimental group was exposed to YouTube videos, while the control group was exposed to pictures and prints. Descriptive statistics were used in describing the students’ speaking proficiency per criterion as well as the t-test for independent samples. The findings revealed that after the students were exposed to the intervention, the experimental group had an improvement in the level of speaking proficiency in terms of coherence; however, the result remained constant in the level of speaking proficiency in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. On the other hand, there was a slight improvement in the English-speaking proficiency of the students in the posttest of the control group in terms of vocabulary and coherence, and it was constant in terms of pronunciation and grammar. The results depicted that the approach employed by the researcher did not meet the desired outcome for this study. It can further be surmised that the oral communication skills of the students cannot be improved in a short time even when exposed to the intervention. Hence, the students have to undergo a longer time of training in oral communication to attain the expected skills.