Chroma Key Enhance Students’ Verbal Participation During Form One English
Language Lesson
Nur Fariza Alia Hamzah1, Maria Shu Hong Bee Abdullah2*
1,2*Faculty of Languages and Communication, Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia
mariashb@fbk.upsi.edu.my2*
Article History: Received: 10 November 2020; Revised: 12 January 2021; Accepted: 27 January 2021;
Published online: 05 April 2021
Abstract: Technology in the ESL classrooms is not something new.Using Chroma Key helps in making lesson more
interactive, enjoyable and interesting.With the combination of physical and virtual technology, Chroma Keyorfrequently known as GreenScreen,creates a platformformeaningful learning. This study reveals how the use of Chroma Keyempowersa class of Form One, lower secondary school students to accomplish tasks and provides a comfortable environment to enhance students’ verbal participationsduring ESL lesson in Malaysia.
Keywords: Chroma Key, Verbal Participation, virtual, meaningful learning, speaking, ESL 1. Introduction
In Malaysia, English Language is the second language in all the national school classrooms. Since kindergarten, at the tender age of four, children have been exposed to the use of this second language. Unfortunately, the decreasednumber of students who are fluent in speaking the language is alarming. There are many factors affecting the ability to speak fluently in English, however, the most prominent factor in Malaysian ESL classrooms is the lack of motivation to speakin English Language confidently.
Evidently, students canconversewith their teacher using limited English Language when they are not in the classroom. They speak in simple English among their close friends. The problem arises during English Language lesson, while performing language activity, students prefer to speak in their mother tongues or remain passive or silent. This is not because they do not understand verbal instruction in English, but these students can comprehend the language but are not confident to present and express ideas effectively. When asked if they are not interested in learning the language, they disagree and majority of them really like the language. They were reluctant to speak because they are not confident and feel shy to participate in verbal presentation in front of their classmates.
In this action research, the teacher investigates the use of Chroma Key in helping to boost English language students’ motivation in speaking. Chroma Key is a tool that helps students to enjoy the lesson and improve their English language verbally. It is helping students to gain their confident by allowing students to present in front of the camera. The students can record and view their own presentation so students can evaluate and reflect. It also creates fun elements in learning because students are required to perform solo presentation using the virtual screen. In traditional classroom, students are reported to feel reluctant to speak because they were shy to present in front of their classmates. The students need someadditiontool to help motivate them to speak while presenting freely in the class. From this study, Chroma Key is a good motivational tool to be considered in ESL classroom to enhance students’ verbal participations.
2. Literature Review
In the classroom, speaking skill is important because by speaking, teachers can evaluate students’ speaking proficiency. There are a lot of factors that affect students’ ability to speak in class. Based on research by Savaşçı (2013), factors causing students in feeling reluctant to speak English include lack of vocabulary, sense of perfectionism and focusing too much on grammar. When this happens, students’ self-esteem will decrease too. Therefore, another way is needed in helping students to be more confident and motivated in language learning especially speaking skill.
Sol Cruz (2018) added in his article that the benefits of digital tools in classroom for primary school students are like personalization of teaching and learning and digital literacy. For personalization of teaching and learning, Sol Cruz (2019) wrote about how a teacher can use digital tools and customize them accordingly to suit students’ needs, interests or level of proficiency. Although the findings imply to primary school students, it is still relevant for students in secondary school. Next, he stated that the use of digital tools will increase students’
With the 21st century learning, technologies of many kinds were implemented in schoolssuch as the use of
television, mobile phones and gamification. These tools help in making lessons more enjoyable and interesting. It also works as attention grabber to gain students’ interest in especially in ESL classrooms.
Our education system is changing from traditional classroom to 21st century learning. The 21st century
classroom emphasized more on students therefore the role of a practitioner is not merely a teacher but also a motivator, role model and counsellor. Students on the other hands are becoming more independent as a learner. They can learn a lot of things on their own with the use of technology guided by teachers and parents. Sometimes, students have more expertise in comprehending the use of technology as a learning tools that makes teacher roles in using technology as a pedagogical tool much simpler.
According to Pisapia (1994) and Dias (1999) as cited by Tan & Wong (2003), technology integration is when teachers start implementing the technology in classroom activities. The purpose of technology integration is not merely as a reward for students to behave in the classroom or making them use the computer without any follow up activities under pedagogical context.Morever, Roblyer,Edwards, and Havriluk (1997) as cited by Tan & Wong (2003) stated that technology in classroom should not exist because of the trend but exists due to its educational opportunity and usefulnessto suit the needs of students.
Chroma Key or the lay term, Green Screen, is still quite a bizarre term to the teaching and learning industry in Malaysia. It is the art of using Green Screen/Blue Screen to create a new setting or virtual environment to ease the process of learning. Chroma Key is much used in filming industries and photography fields. Introducing Chroma Key in an ESL classroom is seen as using a big virtual PowerPoint with one green background colour. In this study, the teacher prepared and provided the lower secondary ESL students with the opportunity to explore the content while performing the activity using Chroma Key.
3. Methodology
This action research has been conducted on 32mixed proficiency between the low-intermediate and the intermediate level Malay students from a Form One classroom in a secondary school in the state of Perak, Malaysia. The students with the average age of 13 years old comprised of 15 males and 17 females of Form One classroom performed some speaking skill tasks during English Language lesson and they were selected through purposive sampling. The main reason for this selection is because majority of these students can comprehend and were able to speak in English Language informally with their friends but refused to speak or engage in any verbal participations during the English Language lessons. They preferred to speak and express their ideas in the Malay Language. It is due to the reason of being uncomfortable and too shy to speak in front of their classmates. Therefore, the teacher selected thisclass of students to experience language learning using Chroma Key to help motivate them in speaking confidently.
This study was conducted to investigate on these research questions:
1. How effective is the use of Chroma Key in motivating students to speak during English language class? 2. What are the factors affecting students’ readiness in using Chroma Key during English language class? 3. What are the benefits of Chroma Key in enhancing students to speak during English language class?
The instruments used in this study are Chroma Key, questionnaire, video recording and an interview. The teacher decided to implement Chroma Key during English Language speaking skill lessons. Taking the fact of the problems faced by these participants of this study, the teacher prepared a script as an initial guidance for the participants to perform the tasks by implementing Chroma Key to enhance verbal participations. The teacher only provided the script and regarding the what and how the students performed were based on their own initiative and creativity. This can be referred to Siddiqui (2004) which stated that technology can help to foster the development of HOTS among students.
The participants, parents and the school authority were briefed on the research procedures, and students have given their consents to audio and video recordings of the lessons and all findings will be used for educational purposes.The video recordings were essential for both lessons to compare students’ verbal participations between the lesson with Chroma Key and the lesson without Chroma Key. A checklist was usedto monitor students’ participation during video recordings in order to get more reliable data. As for the questionnaire, students were given a set of the questionnaire as to survey on their interest, level of proficiency, external support and factors affecting students to speak in English Language confidently. The final step is the interview sessions whereby students were interviewed immediately after the Chroma Key lesson. The audio recording of the interview and
video recording of the lesson were transcribed qualitatively. The data were collected and analyzed systematically.
In a prepared English Language lesson, with the topic of Life and Travel, the teacher introduced a lesson on the Seven Wonders of The World by implementing Chroma Key. The teacher set up a small studio like in the class by hanging a piece of green cloth at the classroom whiteboard as Green Screen or Chroma Key. A camera was placed to video record the whole lesson. Students were paired and were given a dialogue script to practice before they performed the verbal tasks. In pairs, students performed the gap filling (prepared script) in front of the Green Screen or Chroma Key and the whole session were recorded. The script was about two students indulging in conversation regarding the place of visit. The students were required to role play and used the script as the guidance to perform the task. At the end of the presentations, students viewed the recordings. The interview was carried out after the lesson followed by the questionnaires.
4. Results and Findings
The findings of this action research showed that when the video recording was viewed by students, they were amazed that the Chroma Key was a virtual tool that shows a place of visit. The students became excited that they were like actors in a movie and the students enjoyed the lesson tremendously. Majority of them wanted to retake their roles to correct their pronunciation and role plays. The initiatives taken by these group of students were amazing because they were full of excitements and the students performed so well by adding their own sentences to the guided script.
The results of the checklist used by the teacher while observing the students as they performed the verbal participation based on lesson with and without Chroma Key.
Table 1. Checklist on Students Participation during Production Stage
No Types of Participation
Lesson A
(without Chroma Key)
Lesson B
(With Chroma Key)
1 Students Asking Questions 3 -
2 Students Answering Questions 9 1
3 Students Involved with Presentation 4 32
4 Students Speak During Presentation 4 19
As in Table 1 above, the number of verbal participations increased after using Chroma Key in Lesson B (with Chroma Key). Number of students who spoke during presentation did not even exceed 5 and it rose to 15 students when Chroma Key was applied in the lesson. Students’ involvements also showed the highest with the implementation of Chroma Key in class. However, students barely asked nor answered many questions during Lesson B. The reason for that was because students were comfortable, confident and they comprehended well on the task during practice stage.
Based on Appendix 1, the questionnaires were divided into fourparts.First part was on students’ interest. Results obtained from this part shows that more than 25 students were interested with English language even when they do not favor to read or speak. 21 students loved listening to English songs and 10 studentslearntEnglish through other sources. They disagreed with anything related to learning English in the classroom. In the second part, students were asked about their own perceptions toward their level of proficiency. Most of them were not confident on their speaking skills. Part three was to survey on students’ external support such as family. Some of the students in this research mostly came from families that do not speak English at home however the families want them to excel in using the English Language. They were also encouraged by teachers. Lastly for part four, the researcher was trying to find potential factors affecting students to speak. The result shows that majority of students were shy however they would like to speak if the class or the topic is interesting. The students stated that they wanted to speak but they lacked the English vocabularies, they failed to find the words to speak or express theirideas.An open-ended question was added to the questionnaire to probe on students’ other sources in learning the language. The data suggested that the choices students selected were online gaming,listening to English songs and Korean songs.
For the interview session, 6 students were interviewed after the lesson with Chroma Key. From the analysis, these three pairs agreed that they liked and enjoyed learning language with technology. When asked to describe about the experience, all of them said they were having fun and very excited about it. From the students’ perspective, Pair 1 believed that the best thing about using Chroma Key was they were able to be or go anywhere
was a virtual tool that could be changed or portrayed different places of interests. As for Pair 1 and Pair 3, they were happy with the application, Pair 2 stated that the best thing of Chroma Key was that they did not have to deal with fear to perform in front of the class. All three pairs did not face any difficulties except Pair 1 who felt awkward presenting in front of the camera and the recording were viewed by their peers.
Students were asked if they became more interested with language learning using Chroma Key and six of them agreed to it. They explained that a lesson with Chroma Key 1) it was something new to them; and 2) it was fun since they were required to move around. It was suggested by this study that kinesthetic students will be at an advantage with Chroma Key. According to the students, the benefits of using Chroma Key for language learning were that they couldlearnt new thing in a more enjoyable environment and Chroma Key encouraged fun learning. It created positive learning vibes for students. With the script provided by the teacher to help them to speak in the Chroma Key lesson, a student in Pair 2 said it has helped him to speak confidently and he felt it was very rewarding to be able to speak well for the first time in his schooling days.
When asked if they wished to add any other elements or changes to the lesson with Chroma Key, Pair 2 suggested that due to shyness,theyrequested not to be video recorded in the presence of their peers. As to the question on using other types of technology in the classroom, Pair 1 suggested for karaoke randomly while a student from Pair 3 suggested that he wished to see a hologram used with classroom learning especially during the English Language lessons.This is according to Valle (2013), by using Chroma Key in her Spanish class, the teacher provided her students to explore places in Spain using Chroma Key. The study by Valle (2013) proved positive reactions and she stated that she had never seen such excitement from her students for the past 27 years of teaching. In addition, findings by Hughes et al. (2017) show that 67.7% of students considered green screen as an acceptable substitute to an in-person demonstration and 85.5% responding students said green screen modules conducted by Hughes et al. was helpful for their learning.This indicated that green screen has the potential to make learning more enjoyable hence increase students’ motivation to speak in English language confidently.
5. Conclusion
Chroma key is an interesting tool that can cover various topics especially the speaking skills. Students can do storytelling, role-playing, poetry recitation and even simulation on things they are great at, such as gaming. We often see and play game on mobile phones but if teachers apply such activities using Chroma Key, the lessons will be educative, interactive and rewarding.
The limitation of this study is the inadequacy of time to apply Chroma Keys in other topics and the results and findings were derived only from two separate lessons on the same topic. Also, students had limited chance to operate the Chroma Key themselves. If students were given chance from the phase to select and determine the theme of Chroma Key or Green Screen backgrounds to the end result of video production, students can perform their problem solving and decision making skills and implement a flipped classroom approach in language learning successfully.
For future research, it is suggested that it will be more beneficial for lessons with Chroma Key, if students were given the priority or opportunity to set up everything on their own, from the initiation of idea, to selecting the team, handling the project and finally to produce their own videos. A wider and longitudinal research can be carried out to see the differences on factors affecting students’ verbal participation in English language from schools across Malaysia.
Lastly, from this action research, Chroma Key has highlighted its benefits as an effective tool in motivating students to speak. Students’ verbal participations increase in lessons with Chroma Key. From the observations, students are more confident to use the language in the lesson that was using Chroma Key compared to the lesson without using Chroma Key. Students are motivated and are willing to try using the language during presentation stage. This shows that Chroma Keys brings fun-learning elements into the classroom and make students enjoy the lesson while using the English language confidently in English language classroom.
References
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Appendices
Appendix 1
QUESTIONNAIRE
Please tick (/) at the following statements according to the number below.
1 – Strongly Disagree 2 – Disagree 3 – Not sure 4 – Agree 5 – Strongly Agree
NO QUESTIONS 1 2 3 4 5
Section A
1 I really like English language. 2 I think English is a difficult subject. 3 I like to read English books.
4 I want to learn more about English language. 5 I speak in English with my close friends. 6 I prefer not to speak in English.
7 I always pay attention when my teacher teaches English. 8 I learn English from other sources.
9 I love listening to English songs. 10 I love watching English movies.
11 I sometimes speak in English when I am alone.
12 If given a chance, I do not want to learn English language, Section B
13 I can speak in English very well. 14 I can speak in English moderately. 15 I can speak simple English.
16 I can understand every English wordwhen I listen to others. 17 I will ask if I do not understand any English words. 18 I can speak to foreigner in English.
19 I will only speak in English when I am asked to by teacher. Section C
20 My family speaks English at home. 21 My friends love to speak English with me.
23 My family does not like English language Section D
24 I think I speak better than I read and write in English. 25 I am too shy to speak in English in front of my classmates. 26 I am very confident with my English language speaking skill. 27 I need to look at my notesas to help me speak better in class, 28 I will only speak when the topic is interesting to me. 29 I like to speak if the class is fun and interesting.
30 I want to speak in English, but I lackthe vocabulary skill. 31. Do you know any other methods to learn English? If you do, please write it down below:
Questionnaire Data Indicator No. Of Questions Strongly Disagree
Disagree Unsure Agree Strongly Agree
1 2 (6%) 23 (72%) 7 (22%) 2 2 (6%) 9 (28%) 21 (66%) 3 19 (59%) 4 (13%) 9 (28%) 4 8 (25%) 11 (34%) 13 (41%) 5 7 (22%) 5 (16%) 6 (19%) 14 (44%) 6 3 (9%) 6 (19%) 7 (22%) 16 (50%) 7 1 (3%) 23 (72%) 8 (25%) 8 4 (13%) 8 (25%) 12 (38%) 8 (25%) 9 18 (56%) 14 (44%) 10 18 (56%) 7 (22%) 7 (22%) 11 21 (66%) 5 (16%) 6 (19%) 12 19 (59%) 8 (25%) 4 (13%) 1 (3%) 13 9 (28%) 12 (38%) 7 (22%) 4 (13%) 14 3 (9%) 15 (47%) 13 (41%) 1 (3%) 15 2 (6%) 6 (19%) 22 (69%) 2 (6%) 16 6 (19%) 14 (44%) 9 (28%) 2 (6%) 1 (3%) 17 2 (6%) 19 (59%) 9 (28%) 2 (6%) 18 12 (38%) 13 (41%) 2 (6%) 5 (16%) 19 30 (94%) 2 (6%) 20 15 (47%) 9 (28%) 2 (6%) 5 (16%) 1 (3%) 21 10 (31%) 8 (25%) 12 (38%) 2 (6%) 22 28 (88%) 4 (13%) 23 1 (3%) 18 (56%) 13 (41%) 24 17 (53%) 7 (22%) 2 (6%) 6 (19%) 25 1 (3%) 3 (9%) 1 (3%) 20 (63%) 7 (22%) 26 3 (9%) 15 (47%) 8 (25%) 6 (19%) 27 2 (6%) 27 (85%) 3 (9%) 28 9 (28%) 8 (25%) 5 (16%) 10 (31%) 29 29 (91%) 3 (9%) Highest Score Lowest Score Shared Lowest Score
30 18 (56%) 14 (44%)
Appendix 2
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
1. Do you like learning with technology?
2. Describe your experience with Chroma Key. Do you enjoy it? 3. What are the best things about using Chroma Key in our lesson? 4. Are there any difficulties/challenges in using the Chroma Key?
5. Do you think you are more interested in the lesson when we use Chroma Key? 6. In what way do you think using Chroma Key will benefit you for language learning? 7. Any part of this lesson that you think we can improve to make it more enjoyable? 8. If given a chance, what other technology would you suggest we use in our classroom?
