IYSJL, Volume 4, No.

2, December 2021

IYSJL (2021)

INTERNATIONAL YOUNG SCHOLARS

JOURNAL OF LANGUAGES

Vlogging as the Tool to Improve Speaking Skills among Vloggers

in Malaysia

Nur Faizah Mohd Kamaruzaman¹

¹Kulliyyah of Languages and Management, International Islamic University
Malaysia
*Corresponding author’s email: faizah.kamaruzaman@live.iium.edu.my

ABSTRACT
Vlogging, an audio-visual technology has become one of the activities that
manage to gain people’s attention and a trending hobby among youngsters
nowadays. This study would like to explore the implementation of video
blogging as learning media to improve vloggers’ English speaking ability. The
research question to reciprocate to this research objective is by answering how
do vloggers implement video blogging as learning media to improve English
speaking abilities. In our current world, there are various vloggers with various
backgrounds and they are expected to have good speaking skills in order to
create good content videos. However, studies show that the vloggers still do not
have enough confidence to speak English and lack speaking skills. This research
is a qualitative study, and there are three respondents involved. This study uses
Braun and Clarke’s Six Phases Thematic Analysis (2006) to extract and interpret
the data. There are three ways that answer the research question which are: gain
more confidence, review the vlogs to improve in the next vlog as well as do
rehearsal and practice. It is hoped this study will inform practitioners and
educators about the effect of vlogging towards ones' speaking skills.

Keywords: learning media, vlog, vlogger, speaking skill, thematic analysis

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INTRODUCTION
Using technology and social media hand in hand would be one of the best
combination tools in aiding people in learning. One of the tools that everyone
has the access is YouTube. People learn from YouTube either by watching the
video itself or creating the content for the YouTube video post. This has been
proven by Habes et al.’s (2019), saying that the students who utilize the social
media technology efficiently would excel in their academic performance as well
as increase their motivation in digital learning. Video blog or vlog manages to
attract people’s attention especially the youth. A vlog is a video form where the
content could be about the person’s life schedule, sharing on makeup, food or
cloth review, cooking tutorials, and so on. According to Hou (2019), the
researcher divides the type of vlog’s content into three main aspects, which are
tutorial, consumer review, and consumption exhibition.
Speaking skill is undeniably one of the most vital skills in our daily life.
This skill is needed to create good communication, and the message could be
successfully delivered. According to Dewi, Kultsum, and Armadi (2017), to
encourage people to speak confidently, the successfulness of the communication
should be observed by the encoding and decoding process instead of the
syntactic structure. If people are abiding by the syntactic rules, it would be
difficult for them to speak and, at the same time to make sure that they do not
make any grammatical mistakes. According to Göktürk et al. (2020), there are a
few features that can look at in ones’ speech to analyze ones’ speaking skills:
pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, and accuracy. Vlogging activity that
involves a lot of verbal interaction has a strong relation to speaking skills.
Hence, this study would like to explore the implementation of video blogging as
learning media to improve vloggers’ English speaking ability.

PROBLEM STATEMENT
Under the Malaysia's Ministry of Education, English is a compulsory subject to
be taught in both primary and secondary schools, and the mastery of the subject
and the language is assessed through important examinations, such as Penilaian
Menengah Rendah (PMR) and Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM). According to
Miskam and Saidalvi (2019), even though there are English exams conducted at
pre-university levels like MUET (Malaysia University English Test) or other
English language test, it is found that there are still graduates that have a grave
lack in speaking English. According to Clement and Murugavel (2018), English
is one of the huge factors that influence to the employment interview and at the
workplace. They added that English and employability work hand in hand which
verify the importance of English in the working sector. According to the Li,
Zhaoa and Han (2020), people that are proficient in English would contribute to

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the economic globalization as they will help in expanding business around the
world. Employees that good in English communication and speaking skills are
the ones that become the mediator between big companies to expand their
business outside the country. This also has been supported by Jobstreet (2017)
that conducted a survey among 472 clients, managers and senior managers
across industries in Malaysia figured that a poor proficient of English is one of
the main five factors fresh graduates are unemployed.
In our current world, the influence of technology plays a vital role in
people's life. This is supported by the accessibility of technology and social
media by almost everyone. Chen and Dermawan (2020) said that digital audio
and video technology helps to catalyst the number of short clips and videos to
several social media platforms. This has become more serious when they found
that the content creators or the YouTube vloggers are now more powerful when
they could influence one's perception and lifestyle (Folkvord, 2019). According
to Valimbo and Hartati (2019), vloggers create and have more opportunity to
speak up compared to other people. It is not easy to have the opportunity as
people can improve in various aspects such as pronunciation, grammar as well
as vocabulary. Valimbo and Hartati added that on top of the improvement on the
mentioned aspect, the vloggers could indirectly improve their interaction with
people around them as well as improve their soft skills like communication
skills and public speaking skills. According to Wulandari (2019), technological
media have been hired in language classes during the last six years to achieve a
higher amount of speaking practices outside the class. Therefore, it can be seen
that the numbers of people involved and exposed to the media technology
especially vlogging and involved in English language class have arisen in
number. However, their English proficiency does not work parallel and hand in
hand with involvement of media technology. Hence, this study would like to
investigate whether vlogging could be one of the possible ways to improve
speaking skills.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Video Blog (Vlog)
Video blog manages to attain the attention of people from all walks of life to
create the vlog and watch the vlogs. This is supported by Fidan and Debbağ
(2018) by saying that vlogs are a tool that can attract more audience compared to
other platforms due to its features that include various types of media, for
instance, sounds, displays as well as text.
The education sector also takes this opportunity to utilize vlog as the tool
to help the students as well as the educators in teaching and learning the lesson.

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There are a lot of YouTube vlogs that provide education lesson for free that
covers various fields and subjects. In addition, there are also language teachers
that use vlog as the teaching aid to improve the students’ speaking skills. This
proves that vlogs are not only help the vlogger but also contributing the benefits
to the viewers. Fidan and Debbağ (2018) added that giving the tasks to the
students to use vlog as their class assessment could help the students in many
ways. For instance, the students manage to enhance their individual as well as
social development. They supported this statement by saying that the students
can view their videos again and detect their strengths and weaknesses to
improve their vlogs in the future.
Speaking Skills
Speaking skills is one of the most important skills in our daily life. According to
Leong and Ahmadi (2017), speaking skills for the foreign language would be
regarded as one of the most challenging and difficult aspects of being an expert.
The statement by Usmonov (2020) is really interesting when he said that many
people misunderstood that proficiency of speaking skills is the outcome of
language learning while Usmonoz stated that speaking skills are one of the
language processes. Everyone should embrace this idea of being proficient in
speaking skills is not a destination but it is a journey that there will be always
room for improvement. Through speaking skills, people manage to express their
emotions, share their thoughts, persuade people to act according to certain
actions, change their decision, and give information. According to Leong &
Ahmadi (2017), having good speaking skills can help people have good
resilience towards psychological challenges. They supported this statement by
saying that those who conceive a good speaking skill can voice out whatever is
running on their head and what they feel as they can easily reach out for help
whenever they need it.
The Efficiency of Vlog in Enhancing Speaking Skill
Fidan and Debbağ (2018) stated that by giving the task for the students to do
their own vlog and uploaded it on YouTube, it is found that this activity
manages to reduce the anxiety to speak among the students. They also found that
the students who are consistently doing the vlogs are not only managed to
improve their speaking skills but also their social interaction. This is due to the
process of creating an interesting vlog, and they are required to act as if they
were having a face-to-face conversation. According to Susanti (2019), some
people use vlogging in YouTube platform to do business and to sell their
products. It is found that the engagement through vlog is more convincing as the
vloggers applies various skills in their presentation such communication skills,
speaking skills as well as persuasive skills. She added that the respondents
confirmed that their motivation and confidence in speaking improve as the time

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passes. According to Maldin and Rezeki (2017), in the early beginning of the
vlogging phase, vloggers are not really good in promoting and find that it is kind
of awkward moment for them talking alone in front of the camera. However,
through practices and vlogging for several times, they manage to build the skills.

METHODOLOGY
This research used the qualitative exploratory research design. According to
Rahman (2020), qualitative research was also used to find trends in thought and
opinion, as well as to go deeper into the topic. The exploratory research design
also worked in seeking detailed information such as feelings, emotions, opinions
and thoughts of the respondents. By using qualitative and exploratory research
design, the researcher managed to gain specific insight and a deeper
understanding of the topic.
The interview consisted of 6 open-ended questions and one semi-
structured question. The questions for the interview were adopted from Sari
(2017). The research by Sari was conducted to analyze whether vlogging could
help in students’ speaking skills. Sari’s respondents involved a total of 40
students aged from 14-18 years old. The research used mix method used by Sari,
which involved a questionnaire to all the 40 students and an interview for five
selected students. In her research, the students’ speaking skills and English
proficiency were analysed before they were asked to do a vlog. Through her
research, the topic of the vlog was not being specified, and the students were
given the freedom to do vlogging once a week for a month. Their speaking skills
and English proficiency were tested after a month of vlogging.
The table below is the questions that were adopted from Sari’s study and
used in the interview session with the selected three respondents. This research
only includes three respondents due to the time constraint. However all of the
respondents gave adequate information and well used in this study. The
interview sessions were recorded with the consent of the respondents for the
purpose of analysing the data. Table 1 shows the questions that are used in the
interview session.
Table 1: Questionnaire for the interview session adopted by Sari (2017)

No. Questions During the Interview Session With the Respondents

1. How do you start doing vlog and how long have you been vlogging?

2. What are the challenges that you face in vlogging?

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3. What motivates you to keep vlogging despite of the challenges that you face?

3. After doing vlog in YouTube channel, do you think that you improve your
speaking skills? Explain your answer.

4. After doing vlog in YouTube channel, do you think you are more fluent to
speak English? Explain your answer.

5. In what way do you think that making vlog in YouTube Channel could help
you improve your English speaking skills?

6. Which one do you prefer to do: the usual speaking activities in a formal system
or doing vlog in YouTube Channel? Explain your answer.

In this research, there were four criteria that the researcher looked for in the
recruitment of the participants. The first criterion that was being looked for is
the vlogger need to be a Malaysian youth aged between 18-30 years old. The
second criterion was that the vlogger needs to have subscribers at least 20,000
subscribers. Their number of subscribers also plays a vital criterion that needs to
be fulfilled as this indicates that the respondents frequently upload the video
content on YouTube, and from the number of the subscribers, it portrayed a
rough idea of how much the viewers could see the vlogger’s video. The third
criterion was that the vlogger needs to use English in their vlogs. This was
mutually vital to the other criteria as this research would like to explore English
speaking skills among vloggers in Malaysia. The last criterion was, the vlogger
needed to post the video vlogs frequently. The researcher set the frequency of
the vlog upload should be at least twice or thrice a month. This was to make sure
that the researcher can truly detect whether vlogging can influence vloggers’
speaking skills.
Throughout this research, ethics had been put into consideration and
become one of the concerns to the researcher to emphasize on. Respondents who
were willing to be the interviewees had been given participant information sheet
which explained that their identity, information given, and the answer will
strictly be confidential, and they will be kept anonymous. In addition, they were
compulsory to sign the consent form to take part in the research. Hence, both
researcher and the respondents were aware of their rights in giving and having
the information.

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RESULT AND DISCUSSION

RQ: How Do Vloggers Implement Video Blogging as Learning Media To
Improve English Speaking Abilities?
This research found that there are three ways on how vloggers implement video
blogging as learning media to improve English speaking abilities which are; (1)
by doing revision on the topic that will be recorded, (2) by reviewing the vlogs
to improve in the next vlog and (3) by doing rehearsal and practice.
Doing Revision on the Topic That Will Be Recorded
One of the vloggers’ insights on the use of English vlog in improving their
speaking skill is that vlogging could help the vloggers increase their vocabulary
and enrich their understanding of certain issues. The keywords that have been
analyzed that are referred to as the indication to this point are, learn new
thing and also comprehensively. According to Agustina (2019), she found that
vloggers that have specific content in their vlogs, such as beauty, health, travel
and so on, tend to know a variety of terms or vocabs and have a deeper
understanding of the specific context. The vloggers need to do some research
and readings on the topic that she or he would like to talk about; hence the vlogs
would be relevant, and viewers could have a different perspective on the issue.
Vloggers would take time to improve their vocabs towards certain topics as they
need to be exposed to the issue and read many sources to produce a good vlog.
They (parents) motivate me to work hard and to create more contents
frequently. Through research on cooking recipes for my content vlog, I
started to learn new things in my life that I have never known before.
This has motivated me to do more and better
-Participant B
This statement has been supported by Zein (2020), saying that students who are
exposed to audio-visual activity are more prone to improve their vocabulary,
specifically on nouns.
Meanwhile, participant B also shares the same opinion with participant A.
Participant B added that she manages to convey the message to her viewers in a
better way with various vocabularies.
It helps me to convey the factual information in
very comprehensively strong content. So, I think if I watch my video
ML Studios from 2018 until now I can say that I improve a lot especially
in the aspect of narrative
-Participant B

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This has been supported by Boyer (2017), saying that vocabulary and
comprehension work hand in hand to assist one’s conveying message to the
listener as well as to help people understand the message easily.
Do rehearsal and practice
It is stated that vlogging plays its role as the tool to improve speaking skills as
vloggers always make preparation, rehearse and practice before they record the
vlog. All three respondents support this statement. In this part, the researcher
manages to extract four excerpts from the interview sessions, and they are being
represented by words like practice, rehearsal, and repeat. According to Abrar,
Mukminin, Habibi, Asyrafi, and Marzulina (2018), practising the languages
involves a lot of self-practice, practising the language with tutors and peers,
practising the language with media and technology, and maintaining a positive
motivation.
Participant A gives responses that support the idea that she improves her
speaking skill by having practice and rehearsal as she said in the interview
session.
Yeah, vlogging requires a lot of practice. When we (participant A and
her friends) talk along, they realize that they are getting better in (in
talking in front of the people)
-Participant A
Sometime, I did rehearsal. It also depends on the content. If the content
is more on daily life content or informal videos, I think I do not do
any rehearsal but if it is a formal video that I want to share tips or
tutorial videos, I would do a rehearsal and prepare a script if I needed
to. So you can see the differences between well prepared video and
spontaneous video
-Participant B
According to Mega (2019), students who do rehearsal turn out to have better
result in their speaking test. He also added that having rehearsal or practising
speaking skills is more effective than the conventional method.
Review the Vlogs to Improve In the Next Vlog
One way vlogging can impact the speaking skill to the vlogger in Malaysia is by
learning from their vlog. They review their uploaded vlogs to analyze and detect
any part of the videos that can be improved in their next post. There are a total
of 4 times that the vloggers stated that they review their vlog to improve
speaking skills. In this part, the researcher manages to extract three excerpts

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from the interview sessions, and they are represented by words like look
again and watch old videos. According to Amir (2019), it is vital to videotape
ourselves as we can't know how the audience views us until we see it. Recording
ourselves is the best way to target the areas where we can improve.
I always watch and look again my vlog from year 2012 and my videos at
ML Studios from 2018. I found out that I have improved especially in
the way of how I deliver the speech as well as in the context of narrative
- Participant A
The good thing I learn from vlogging is one from it is to improve my
English, my speaking skills because sometimes when we record our
video, we tend to watch old vlogs and look again at the video and check
what are we trying to say, what are we going to deliver to the viewers.
So from there, we start to recognize the errors that we did in recording.
From there, we started to improve our speaking and gain more confident
to record in English
- Participant B
According to Amir (2019), a video of oneself allows us to perceive how
comfortable or not comfortable we look while presenting. Watching our own
recorded audio-visual videos will permit us to understand where we may
struggle with opinions, ideas or gestures, where we may improve, and how we
can better.

CONCLUSION
An overall, this research study answers the research question; how do vloggers
implement video blogging as learning media to improve English speaking
abilities? All three respondents fulfill the criteria that required making sure that
their response would be relevant to this research. The keywords and excerpts
present from the transcription of the interview sessions were interpreted and
analysed by applying Braun and Clarke’s Six Phases of Thematic Analysis
(2006). This study has several limitations that can be investigated further in
future studies such as small numbers of respondents, limited aspect of speaking
skills that have been focused on in this research. The findings of this research
can benefit English learners, especially English for Foreign Language (EFL)
learners, to find an engaging yet effective way to improve speaking skills. In
addition, this study also offers to fulfill the research gap in finding the vlogger’s
insights on the use of English Vlog to improve speaking skill and ways vlogging
can influence speaking skills. There are a few improvements and suggestions
that can be done in future studies relating to this topic. One of the improvements

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that can be done for future research is making sure that the period of the
vloggers’ experience in vlogging is not too much different. In this research, the
first respondent experience vlogging for almost ten years, while the other two
respondents involved with vlogging for not more than five years. For future
research, the period of the vloggers’ experience in vlogging should not have a
huge gap between one respondent to another. Other than that, further studies
should use a more extensive sample with more diverse races to get a more
reliable result. Since this study only involves youth vloggers from 21 until 27
years old, vloggers others from this range of age could gain different
perspectives.

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