REVITALIZING ESSAY WRITING IN MALAY LANGUAGE THROUGH MOBILE-ASSISTED LANGUAGE LEARNING

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to design a mobile app that can help students learn how to construct an essay according to a specific format. The rationale of building this mobile app was to cater to students’ needs in the new normal era where online learning, as well as remote classes, have become mainstream. This project also sought to tap into the increasing usage of mobile phones in students’ daily routines by switching the conventional method of pen and paper to mobile technology. The target population for this research project was an intact class of students at a vocational school in the interior region of Sabah, Malaysia, whose oral proficiency in the Malay language was high but lacked the skills in writing a proper essay. The instruments used to collect data were document analysis, exit slips, and a rating checklist. The findings of this study might help the researchers gather feedback necessary in designing an effective mobile app that can improve the teaching of essays particularly in the Malay language by taking into consideration two learning theories, Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) and Information and Media Literacy (IML). The use of the mobile application in writing classes can help accelerate the integration of digital scholarship into school education as students can easily tap into the ubiquity of information and utilize multiple platforms to generate and circulate content. In order to create a mobile app with additional functionality and improved features, more studies are needed to convince stakeholders and tech companies to invest in the development of this app.