A Study on Using “Kahoot” as a Tool for Teaching Prepositions for Tertiary Level ESL Learners

Abstract

The present research aims at investigating the use of the ‘Kahoot’ online game as a tool for teaching and learning prepositions for ESL learners at tertiary level. The quantitative method was used to gather information. Also, 40 participants who study first-year ‘English for Humanities’ course at the University of Kelaniya followed a series of lessons on prepositions These participants were divided into two groups as the controlled group and the experimental group, and each group consisted of 20 participants. After each lesson on prepositions, an assessment was conducted by using ‘Kahoot’ online platform for the experimental group, whereas the controlled group was given paper-based assessments after each lesson. A pre-test was conducted in the first week in order to evaluate the participants’ current knowledge on prepositions and a post-test was conducted in the fourth week to investigate the effectiveness of the usage of ‘Kahoot’ to acquire knowledge on prepositions. After this task, a questionnaire was administered in order to examine the perceptions of students about incorporating ’Kahoot’ to the learning process. After that, quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS 25. The ‘Likert’ scale was used to analyze data in the questionnaire, and a one way ANOVA test was run, followed by the Independence Sample T- test, to observe whether there are significant differences in the performance of those groups discussed above. The results showed that using ‘Kahoot’ online game was more effective than the traditional method of teaching prepositions for the ESL learners of University of Kelaniya. Therefore, this study concludes that students can be taught prepositions by using the ‘Kahoot’ online game as an innovative teaching technique effectively in ESL contexts.