Impact of Video Projector on Student's Public Speaking

As today is the era of technology, the use of video-project has strong connections with students’ speaking performance. Speaking skill is a real-time, aural, oral and productive skill (Bailey, 2003). The ability to speak consists of 4 competencies including discourse competence, grammatical competence, strategic competence and social-competence (Ahmad, Qasim, Khushi, 2019). Regarding the 4 competencies, video-project is a task given to students to perform speaking and perform the 4 competencies needed. It is because the students are involved to research the topic, write a script, practice the speaking, record, do directing, edit the video and perform their speaking (Henderson, et al., 2010).

Speaking remains the most complex skill to be mastered by EFL college students. There are still many problems that students are facing when speaking English. Previous study conducted in English Department UIGM revealed two students’ major problems in speaking. The result of the analysis showed that the students have problems in speaking concerning the psychological problems (include feeling nervous and being afraid to speak in English in front of the class) and the linguistic problems (include problems in speaking aspects like pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary) (Karunia, Anggraini, Hartono, 2018). Similar results to the study in UIGM, the study in one public university in Jambi also indicated four students’ speaking skill problem in terms of language barriers, psychological factors, learning environment and practicing the language (Abrar, Mukminin, Habibi, Asyrafi, Makmur, 2018). Grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, fluency, anxiety, lack of motivation and practicing the language are students’ speaking problems that need to be solved.

In this regard, video project be one alternative to solve speaking problems among college students. Video project constitutes an important role in enhancing students learning and developing their speaking ability more than other media does. Compare to voice-recording for example, video facilitate audio-visual media which allows students to show not only their voice but also their visual. The prior study found that video project in the classroom is a very feasible and excellent way to learn content and language (Carney Foss, 2008). The roles of video-project have been discussed in many research studies. (Aksel Kahraman, 2014) Conducted the study to determine the effectiveness of video project assignments on foreign language learning, and speaking skill is the most skill improved than other skills. Another study demonstrated how video project implementation benefits students’ learning experience by providing students with realistic situations, discussion, images, and adds an experiential flavor to the classroom instruction and found out that the most developed English skill in each phase of video project is speaking skill (Puspa, 2016).

Regarding the use of video project, perceptions of the students always matter to investigate since it potentially affects their speaking performances. Perceptions are likely to cause feeling (whether positives or negatives) and affect students’ attitudes towards learning, which consequently, influence their performance (Ferreira Santoso, 2008). The study concerning student’s perception conducted at Curtin University Japan showed that video-recorded facilitated students in learning by improving learners’ motivation and encouraging self-reflection (Gong, Kawasaki, Yeung, Zhang, Dobinson, 2019).

Studies on similar topic had been done by several researchers and had proven overall positive students’ perception towards video-project. In the latest study, 81 tertiary students were asked to record their video presentation to develop their speaking skill. The study revealed that the video project improves students’ pronunciation, reduces their fearful when speaking and enhances them to learn more vocabulary and pronunciation (Encalada Sarmiento, 2019). The study was conducted in Business English class at Esa Unggul University demonstrated that video-project was beneficial for the students speaking skill since it increases their speaking skill comprising, the comprehensibility, fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary, collaborative work and build interpersonal skill (Agustina, 2016).

The students mostly reached very good satisfaction on the use of video-project to enhance their speaking skill. The studies of EFL college students in IAIN Kediri, Indonesia identified that video projects is very good and interactive, it fosters students to improve English fluency, pronunciation, confidence and good collaboration and excitement in the speaking class (Hasanah, 2019). Since video-project is dealing with the real context, one study also shows a significance speaking skill improvements of the second semester students of Islamic Institute of Ibrahimy Genteng (Yusroh, 2019).

All of those studies above illustrate similar results that the use of video has positive effect towards the learning process of English, as well as improving students’ speaking skill. However, a less discussed topic is about student difficulties in creating the video. Despite the fact that video-project is beneficial to enhance learning, the difficulties that students face might bring issues on the process of the learning. One of important findings in (Encalada Sarmiento, 2019) revealed that students consider difficult to speak in self-recording video and showed that speaking practice through technological resources become a problematic activity for students. Although many students felt that performing in front of the camera was less intimidating than performing in class, they still experienced difficulties (Gong, Kawasaki, Yeung, Zhang, Dobinson, 2019). Nevertheless, the explorations of those difficulties have not frequently been reported.

To fill this gap, this study adds to current research on students’ perception regarding technical difficulties they experienced in the classroom. To distinguish the present research with the previous ones, this study aimed to investigate two main conditions related to students’ perception towards video project. The first one is what aspects in video project that students’ find difficult and the second is what are the effects of students’ difficulties on their speaking performance. Students’ difficulties can be another major obstacle to steady progress in learning. By identifying students’ difficulties, educators can fully utilize the use of video-project to enhance speaking skill.