‘Tense Up?’: A Collaborative Gamification Approach in Enhancing Lower Secondary Students’ Utilisation of English Tenses

Abstract

Grammar is one of the main building blocks of the English language and it comes with a multitude of elements which include tenses. In Malaysia, English is taught as a second language with attention given to all four language skills while grammar is a common component appearing in most of the Textbook units. However, students are still struggling to understand tenses and to use them accurately. Due to this, 'Tense Up?' has been designed to encourage a deeper understanding of tenses and a higher accuracy of its usage. It is gamification with collaborative elements aimed towards lower secondary school students. This paper aims to investigate tenses mastery via collaborative gamification towards lower form secondary school students by utilising the design and development research. Participants were chosen through purposive sampling, and data was collected from 31 Form 2 students from a sub-urban secondary school in Selangor through the use of a pre-test and post-test, survey questionnaire, and interview. Findings show that 'Tense Up?' improves students' tenses utilisation while allowing them to participate in a competitive, collaborative, and enjoyable gamified lesson. This research is hoped to provide an insight for educational stakeholders into how a collaborative gamification approach improves tenses mastery among lower secondary school students.