THE EFFECT OF MOBILE LEGENDS: BANG BANG (MLBB) ON A2 PRE-DIPLOMA STUDENTS' WRITING SKILLS: A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL STUDY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35631/IJEPC.1164043Keywords:
Digital Game-Based Language Learning (DGBLL), Instructional Scaffolding, L2 Writing, Low-Proficiency Learners, Quasi-Experimental Design, Sociocultural TheoryAbstract
The writing skills of pre-diploma students in Malaysian universities are generally not up to the A2 level for academic advancement. Traditional remedial teaching is not always effective when the learning object is abstract and not related to student's interests. This study aimed to investigate whether a short-term writing intervention based on content from Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) could enhance the writing performance of A2 learners with the background of playing this game. The study employed a quasi-experimental design with one group pretest-posttest design and followed 29 pre-diploma students who studied English at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Johor Branch. Participants took a pretest, received five writing sessions integrated into a MLBB, and then took a posttest, which was an identical test to the A2 Key (KET) Writing paper. Writing scores rose from a mean of 21.00 (SD = 4.93) at pretest to 23.69 (SD = 4.71) at posttest, yielding an average gain of 2.69 points. This improvement was statistically significant, with a large effect size (Cohen's d = 0.82) and a paired-samples t-test confirmed this (t(28) = -4.39, p < .001). The intervention was based on the Sociocultural Theory and incorporated culturally relevant content from the MLBB to ease the cognitive load of idea generation. Observations in the classroom showed that the students were not keen on writing but by the second session they were very involved. The scaffolding was two-stage, starting with a game-based prompt and ending with a parallel real-world task, which made the transfer of writing skills explicit. The results indicate that familiar digital game content, even if students do not play the game in class, can be used as a good scaffolding in A2 writing learning. The study is a part of the body of research on game-based language learning, which has been expanding, and provides evidence of the potential of popular digital content to be integrated into the writing curriculum of low-proficiency learners.
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