Enhancing English Speaking Skill by Using AFORN, an M-Learning Medium for Nursing Students

Abstract

Speaking skill is an English language competence that is very important for effective communication either in educational or professional environment. This skill is also required by students of Nursing Study Program to support their academic and professional development. However, students still have limited exposure to English materials related to their field of science. Active English for Nursing (AFORN) application, therefore, it was elaborated to support the students’ needs. AFORN is an Android-based application for learning English speaking skills as complementary learning media that are accessible at anytime and anywhere. The objective of this study was to observe how AFORN helped students enhance their speaking skills. This was an Action Research project. The subjects of this study were the second-semester students of Nursing Study Program. The data were collected by doing observation, interview, and tests. There were four stages in this study, namely planning, action, observation, and reflection. The focus of the Action stages was implementing AFORN as an m-learning medium to help students learn English based on their own pace. The result of this study shows that there was an improvement of students’ speaking skills in terms of vocabulary, grammar, language expressions, and pronunciations. Besides the students became more motivated to learn English after using the alternative learning medium i.e. AFORN which could be flexibly accessed through their Android-based gadgets.