Increasing Arabic Vocabulary Mastery Through Gamification; is Kahoot! Effective?

Abstract

Vocabulary (mufradat) mastery is decisive in the success of foreign language learning. Mastering many vocabularies can improve students’ listening, speaking, reading, and writing skill. Various strategies have been applied to improve vocabulary mastery, but the results are not satisfactory. They were only able to achieve an average score of 42, far below the minimum criteria of mastery leaning, which is 75. It was because the students are less motivated to master it. Quantitative research with experimental design was carried out to test Kahoot! media, one of the game-based learning methods to improve students’ vocabulary learning outcomes in class X MAN 4 HST. The results showed that students' learning outcomes in the experimental class which used Kahoot! Gamification method is significantly higher than the control class, which used reading aloud and guessing the meaning method. The average learning outcomes in the experimental class were 28,269 points higher than that of the control class. The average value of the control class N-Gain is 25.95, which is categorized as ineffective. While the average N-Gain value of the experimental class is 74.31, categorized as quite effective category. The results indicated that Kahoot! implementation can increase the average score of students in learning mufradat to 85.

Gamification for teaching the Arabic language to non-native speakers: a systematic literature review

“…Shahri et al (2019) corresponded these findings, arguing that gamification improved user understanding and retention of the game dynamics. Riwanda et al (2021) found that gamification is implemented to resolve learning problems by leveraging game mechanics and components in the learning context to empower learners' productivity, engagement, and motivation.…”

“…All six studies focused on game-based Arabic language learning, but the target group and research design of the studies were different depending on the nature. They followed pre-test/post-test design (i.e., 3/15) (Kotob and Ibrahim, 2019;Ritonga et al, 2022;Abdelhamid et al, 2023), quantitative approach (i.e., 8/15) (Sahrir and Alias, 2011;Yan Mei et al, 2018;Azmi and Zakaria, 2020;Putri et al, 2021;Riwanda et al, 2021;Bin Jaafar and Yusoff, 2022;Ismath et al, 2022;Noor et al, 2023), content analysis (i.e., 1/15) (Al-Bulushi and Al-Issa, 2017), experiment (i.e., 3/15) (Kenali et al, 2019;Al Hejaili and Newbury, 2023;Mazer and Al-Ajlouni, 2023), and qualitative approach (i.e., 1/15) (Ghani et al, 2019). The details of the research design are also shown in Figure 3.…”

“…Two out of 15 focused on learners' behaviors and attitudes toward online games for learning the Arabic language (Sahrir and Alias, 2011;Kotob and Ibrahim, 2019). Others focused on learning via mobile games through quizzes (Ghani et al, 2019;Kenali et al, 2019;Ismath et al, 2022;Mazer and Al-Ajlouni, 2023), classroom games (Al-Bulushi and Al-Issa, 2017; Azmi and Zakaria, 2020;Riwanda et al, 2021;Ritonga et al, 2022;Noor et al, 2023), and online games (Yan Mei et al, 2018;Putri et al, 2021;Bin Jaafar and Yusoff, 2022;Ritonga et al, 2022).…”

Students' Perceptions And Motivation towards Teaching Arabic Vocabulary Through Gamification

“…So, in the view of students, the application of Kahoot! and Wordwall is helpful in favor of learning vocabulary (Riwanda et al, 2021).…”

“…These efforts include the utilization of videos (Salahuddin, 2020), the development of Android applications (Kesuma et al, 2021) (Rosada, 2018), and the incorporation of gamification elements utilizing existing platforms like Quizziz (Putri et al, 2021), Kahoot! (Riwanda et al, 2021) (Fiani, Ahsanuddin, 2021) (Mubarok, 2020), Wordwall (Azizah, 2020) (Fakhruddin et al, 2021a) (Yahya et al, 2021). Implementing gamification systems for teaching Arabic vocabulary has become a prominent choice among educators and researchers.…”