Revealing EFL Students’ Perception towards the Implementation of Kahoot! in Learning Narrative Text at the Secondary School Level

Information and communication technology development has been massive in the last decades. This development allows teachers to utilize internet-based applications such as Kahoot! as a learning tool. This present study was conducted to reveal the perception of secondary level students about the use of Kahoot! in learning narrative text. The participants of this study are 66 students of a junior high school in Sidoarjo. The study uses the quantitative method to collect and analyze the data. This study shows that students see Kahoot! in a positive way. They find Kahoot! as a learning tool that may help them improve their activities in class with an engaging environment, resulting in higher academic achievement.


BACKGROUND
The emergence of learning English as an international language has made the Indonesian education curriculum includes English as a subject taught at almost all levels.At the primary school level, English is a local content or an additional subject to improve students' competence in English.Moreover, junior high school and senior high school students begin to receive English as a compulsory subject in the first year until the third year of school.Thus, the majority of Indonesian students learn English for six years.
Although Indonesian students have been learning English for more than six years, a survey of the English Proficiency Index conducted by Education First (2020) shows that Indonesia scores 453, 74th of 100 countries globally, and this score is in the 15th rank in Asia out of 24 countries.This score is not in line with the length of studying English in school years.One English material taught in secondary schools is narrative text.Secondary school students begin to learn this material in the third year of junior high school, divided into several topics (Permendikbud 37 Tahun 2018, 2018).Despite the given fact, students still find problems in narrative text.Several studies show that students find difficulties in reading narrative text because of a lack of language knowledge, motivation, and background knowledge.Moreover, students find difficulties in comprehending the intrinsic details of narrative text and making inferences from the story given (Khoirunnisa, 2019;Sari, 2019;Yuvirawan et al., 2021).
Teachers are expected to discover new and fun ways to create an engaging environment to study and overcome the previously mentioned problems.According to Wang and Tahir (2020), teachers may use several approaches to create an engaging learning environment for the students, including breaking the class into smaller groups, questioning the audience, using written material, organizing debates, guest talks, and reaction panels.
In the last decades, the development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been massive.This massive development encourages students to explore the internet independently.Therefore, students are considered digital natives, and they are born to be familiarized with technology and its further development.Cakrawati (2017), in her study about the use of online learning platforms, states that these platforms provide the students with the features which allow them to work independently yet share their ideas through group discussion.
Several studies have described the adverse effects of utilizing internet-based applications.Despite its development, the internet-based application also has adverse effects on students as individuals.A study conducted by Arkoful and Abaidoo (2015) shows that utilizing the internet as a teaching medium causes students to feel remoteness between teacher and student, lack of communication skills, inefficiency in practical skills, risk of plagiarism, and increased cost of accessing the material from the internet.Moreover, Dina and Ciornei (2013) also describe that internet-based learning leads to excessive learning individualism, deterioration of the teacher's role in learning, favoritism to the students with analytic thinking but not those with synthetic thinking, and hindrance for the students in developing creative ability and entrepreneur spirit.
Using digital technology to transform classrooms into an engaging environment is not new.The use of ICT in learning attracts students' attention, facilitates students' learning process, helps to improve students' vocabulary knowledge, and promotes meaningful learning (Yunus et al., 2013).Additionally, this technological tool opens up new potential due to its benefit since it offers a more personalized, instant, and engaging learning experience, such as Kahoot! in EFL classrooms.Despite its adverse effects, the internet provides numerous websites that English teachers may utilize to aid their teaching activities to increase student's engagement and motivation with the material taught.
Kahoot! is an internet-based application used in schools, universities, and other educational institutions.In 2012, Versvik, Brand, and Brooker developed this educational application as a project at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.Later, they collaborated with Professor Alf Inge Wang and Åsmund Furuseth to establish the improved version of Kahoot! (Wang & Tahir, 2020).Kahoot! has successfully emerged as a website that provides many facilities for its users.
Kahoot! offers its users to create quizzes, share them with other users, and use existing quizzes created by others.Kahoot!users may also modify the shared quizzes.The games may be played individually or in a team using their personal computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets.Teachers may use Kahoot!during the class activities with the students.Teachers may set students' activities to do outside the classroom.The goal of Kahoot! activities help students understand the material given by answering with the correct answer as quickly as possible to get as many points as possible.
This development of teaching using internet-based applications shows a positive perception from the students.Several researchers have studied the effects of Kahoot! on education, which shows that Kahoot!improves the academic results, improves class attendance, fewer late arrivals to class, higher course material downloads, improves classroom dynamics, and higher final grades (Fotaris, Mastoras, Leinfellner & Rosunally, 2016;Sarkar & Manzo, 2017) The use of Kahoot! also motivates the students to pay more attention in class, provides the students with an enthralling class experience, allows students to take a break from long-hour classrooms, stimulates students to interact with the teacher and their peers, and improves material preparation before class (Licorish, George, Owen & Daniel, 2018;Wang & Tahir, 2020) Nowadays, EFL teachers maximize internet-based applications such as Kahoot! as their teaching aid to promote learning activities and students' enthusiasm for learning English.For example, in a university's Chinese EFL reading class study, the participants show positive attitudes toward implementing Kahoot! in the EFL reading class (Chiang, 2020).
In the Indonesian context, research on the use of Kahoot! for teaching English shows that after using Kahoot!for teaching, the students are very enthusiastic about joining the class; they are more excited about coming to the class, and they pay more attention to English and are interested in learning more about what they have learned and want to tell others about it (Budiati, 2017).
Gender difference plays a role in the diverse perception between male and female students.Because of the different perception between male and female, teachers are expected to strengthening the students' character by utilizing technology (Darmaji et al., 2022).A study conducted by Ismail and Mohammad (2017) shows that gender difference is found in Malaysian medical education.Moreover, the study found that both genders show different perceptions of Kahoot! in promoting students' motivation.However, another research conducted by Chiang (2020) reveals that gender difference is not found.Both male and female students share the same perception of using Kahoot!.
The previously mentioned studies about Kahoot! reveals that only a few researchers study secondary students' perceptions.Thus, the author conducted this research based on the curiosity of knowing secondary school students' perception of Kahoot!.Moreover, the English teacher in a state junior high school in Sidoarjo had not yet implemented Kahoot! in classroom activities.This evidence was obtained from the author's experience during the teaching internship program, in which students stated they were not familiar with this web-based application since their teacher had not implemented it yet.
Additionally, to create a new learning atmosphere, the author used Kahoot! in teaching narrative text and focused on students' vocabulary.The author utilized this application for teaching during the teaching internship program to promote students' enthusiasm and boost their understanding by creating a fun learning atmosphere.
This study finds out students' perceptions towards Kahoot! as a medium to teach the narrative text.In addition, the present study also finds out the students' enthusiasm during the teaching process.The research is limited to the students' perception of Kahoot! as a teaching medium.
The author conducted the research based on the following research questions: (1) How is the students' general perception of Kahoot! as the media for achieving effective learning and creating engaging content in learning narrative text?; (2) How is the students' perception of using Kahoot! in learning narrative text towards their enthusiasm, motivation, and interest?; (3) Is there any gender difference in the students' perceptions of Kahoot!?

RESEARCH METHOD
This study employs survey research by using online questionnaires.Survey research is conducted in six steps; planning, defining the population, sampling, constructing the instrument, completing the survey, and processing the data (Ary et al., 2014, p. 405).
The research population was 216 third-grade students of a state secondary school in Sidoarjo, consisting of twelve classes in the 2021/2022 academic year.The author chose the population based on the student's experience after using Kahoot! in learning narrative text.
This research used purposive sampling to determine the participants for this study.Purposive sampling is a probability sampling in which the participants are randomly chosen from a population; hence each participant has the same opportunity to be the sample (Ary et al., 2014, p. 169).As seen in Table 1, the participants consist of 38 female students and 28 male students.Therefore, the sample of the research is 66 students from different classrooms.The author collected the data through questionnaires in Google Forms filled by the participants.The questionnaires include statements about how they perceive Kahoot! and their level of enthusiasm.It is presented on a five-point Likert Scale.The total of questions, adapted from Chiang (2020), is 19.They filled out the questionnaires based on their agreement scale from the statements given.There are five scales (1) Strongly disagree; (2) Disagree; (3) Neutral; (4) Agree; (5) Strongly agree.Furthermore, the author used SPSS to analyze the collected data to obtain accurate results for the study.

DISCUSSIONS A. General Perception of Kahoot!
This part of the study analyzes general perception data from the participants.Table 2 shows students' perception that correlates with practical learning and engaging content presented by Kahoot!.Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, and 9 represent students' perception of Kahoot!In promoting effective learning.Additionally, items 6, 7, 10, and 11 represent students' perception of Kahoot! in providing engaging content.As seen in Table 2, compared to the traditional teaching method, participants agree that Kahoot!promotes success in learning narrative text (͞ x=4.44,SD=.611)and effectiveness in learning narrative text (͞ x=4.23,SD=.675).Moreover, students also show a positive perspective of Kahoot! in terms of stimulating cooperative learning (͞ x= 4.44, SD=.636), cultivating students' confidence in participating in classroom activities (͞ x=4.44,SD=.568),and achieving active learning (͞ x=4.48,SD=.561).
Students agree that Kahoot!provides engaging content for the students with richer thematic content (͞ x=4.35,SD=.568), the use of pictures to ease learners (͞ x=4.44,SD=.682), and the use of videos (͞ x=4.39,SD=.579).They also agree that the button color harmony is apparent (͞ x=4.44,SD=.637).Moreover, students also agree that Kahoot!helps them to understand the theme of the course (͞ x=4.38,SD=.651).The students strongly agree that Kahoot!helps them to think quickly (͞ x=4.58,SD=.583).
This study reveals that students give positive feedback on the general perception of Kahoot! as the media for effective learning and creating engaging content in learning narrative text.These students agree that learning narrative text by using Kahoot!helps them promote their academic result by achieving effective learning.Moreover, Kahoot! also promotes students' participation in the classroom.This result supports previous studies, which show that Kahoot!helps students achieve high final grades and improve class dynamics (Fotaris et al., 2016;Sarkar et al., 2017;Licorish et al., 2018).This finding lies in one possible reason; the students feel confident in themselves since they are digital natives who have been used to using technology from an early age.

B. Students' Perception of Enthusiasm, Motivation, and Interest in using Kahoot!
This part of the study presents analyzed data on students' perception of enthusiasm, motivation, and interest in using Kahoot! in learning narrative text.Item 12 represents students' interest in the topic.Items 15, 18, and 19 represent students' enthusiasm for using Kahoot!for learning narrative text.Lastly, items 13, 14, 16, and 17 represent students' motivation in learning the topic by using Kahoot!.
As shown in Table 3, the participants agree that Kahoot!increases interest in curriculum topics (͞ x=4.29,SD=.696); in this case, the curriculum topic used is narrative text.Moreover, these students agree that Kahoot!helps them retain learning for a longer time (͞ x=4.44,SD=.611).The present study shows students' perception of enthusiasm, motivation, and interest after teaching-learning activities using Kahoot! at the secondary school level is positive.Kahoot!increases students' interest in the topic given.Students accept that Kahoot!makes the activities more fun and exciting for them.Kahoot! also promotes learning persistence in classroom activities and helps students retain learning for a longer time.These findings align with the previous study that indicates the use of Kahoot! motivates the students to pay more attention in class and improves classroom dynamics (Fotaris et al., 2016;Licorish et al., 2018;Wang & Tahir, 2020).The possible reason for this finding is that these students, as digital natives, had a high interest after knowing that they learned narrative text by using Kahoot!, therefore, their motivation and enthusiasm in learning narrative text are also significantly increased.

C. Gender Differences
The author uses t-tests to analyze the gender difference in the participants' perceptions of Kahoot!.The result of this analysis is considered significant if the p value is less than 0.05 (p < .05).The p value is symbolized as (p) to simplify the result.
Table 4 shows gender differences between male and female students in their perception for each item.It shows that gender difference is seen in item 19.The p value from item 19 is .045,which is lower than 0.05.On the other hand, item 1 to item 18 shows that there is no significant difference in both male and female students' perception since the p values for these items are higher than 0.05.Ismail and Mohammad (2017) shows a significant gender difference between male and female students.

CONCLUSION
To sum up, this study aims to reveal secondary level students' perception of the use of Kahoot! in learning narrative text as a material in the English subject.Gender differences and students' enthusiasm are also discussed.This study shows that students give positive feedback towards the use of Kahoot! in both general perception and their enthusiasm.
Gender differences discussed in this present study also show no statistically significant difference between the perception of female and male students.Both female and male students have almost the same perception regarding the use of Kahoot! in the classroom.
This study is limited to small-scale purposive sampling in a secondary school in Sidoarjo.The author suggests a broader sampling for a generalized result.Moreover, the author also suggests a further interview of students' perceptions to understand their hindrance in using Kahoot! as a language learning tool.

Table 1 .
Participants of the Study

Table 2 .
Students' General Perceptions of Kahoot!: Effective Learning and Engaging

Table 4 .
Gender Differences males and females in EFL college students.In contrast, a study conducted by