A study on the students' attitudes towards the use of YouTube materials in learning poetry / Noor Hidayah Ahmad

In Malaysia, the literature component is integrated in the English (KBSM) for the Form One to Form Five students beginning 2000. Despite the fact that this component is seen as a medium in improving the students' English proficiency, many educators come to realize of an issue where poetry has become the least favoured genre as compared to other literary texts such as novels. Realizing on the pressing need to change the students' attitudes towards poetry, this study was conducted onto 63 upper secondary students in SMK Meru, Klang which aims to investigate students' attitudes towards poetry learning, attitudes on the use of YouTube materials in poetry lessons and the extent the materials benefit students' understanding. Two sets of questionnaires and an achievement test were used as instruments onto a group of Control and Experimental students. Data obtained from the analysis indicated that the students displayed positive attitudes towards poetry learning but there was no significant difference identified within both groups. The students in the Experimental group were found to display a relatively strong attitude towards the use of YouTube materials in poetry lessons. However, a correlation result indicated that there was no relationship between their attitudes towards YouTube usage with their performance in the Achievement Test. Besides, it was also noted that there was no significant difference of the students' performance in the Achievement Test between both groups proving that YouTube usage does not necessarily benefit students' understanding in a larger scale.