Enhancing Speaking Skill among Students in ESL Lesson through Instagram

Abstract

Speaking skill requires readiness from learners in engaging to the situation given with the language knowledge they have learned. Hence, this component in language acquisition is mostly regarded lightly by many second language learners who are not ready to use the second language in speaking lesson. Unfortunately, this has made the learners incompetent with the second language even though there are many who garner better skills in writing, reading and listening. In order to enhance readiness among the learners in using the targeted second language, Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) is seen as a medium that could help learners to increase self-esteem in using the language orally. The aim of this paper is to investigate how social media, Instagram, could assist to enhance students' readiness in speaking English during ESL lessons. 30 students of age 11 and 16 years old had been selected from two schools in Malaysia to see their readiness to speak in English during speaking lesson through a survey using questionnaire. The post-survey result reflected improvement in their confidence level to speaking English and MALL could help to increase students' self-esteem to use the language orally. In conclusion, this finding could give a new option in conducting speaking activity during ESL lesson.