Can YouTube Be Used Effectively as A Learning Medium for Teaching English?

YouTube is a site that gives people the same opportunity to voice and share with people what's within the world through videos. It is a website that provides a place to share any kind of video; short clips, documentaries, anime, movies, news, vines and comedy, historical footage, etc. Thanks to its founders, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, the convenience that YouTube grants has enormously changed how society works. In the second quarter of 2022, YouTube's active users reached 2.41 billion in total—this number makes YouTube the biggest video-based social platform in the world. Among 2.41 billion people, there are millions of YouTubers—people who create content on YouTube—with miscellaneous content, including educational content.

As just mentioned, YouTube changes the way society work, then what kind of enormous changes is it? Well, did you realize that we are no longer buying a newspaper to read the news? That we are no longer relying on the lecture we get in school. Why? Because all those are available on YouTube, and that's one thing. YouTube also helps open a field of job opportunities for several professions like videographers, experts, editors, researchers, entertainers, artists, sales marketing, and educators. Educational YouTubers such as Kok Bisa (?), EnglishTestBlog.com, Loic Suberville, Rachel's English, and Jennifer ESL have widened their wings of movement by spreading their learning videos on YouTube. However, does YouTube a reliable tool for it?

To measure the reliability of YouTube as a learning medium, below is a scoring rubric as a benchmark:

Based on the scoring rubric above, YouTube will be scored through its relevancy for learning, feedback feature, role in thinking skills, ease of use, engagement rate, ease of sharing, accessibility, and cost:

1. Relevance: YouTube's primary purpose is to give the same amount of chance to voice the voiceless and share things about the world. Then, YouTube is not mainly intended as a learning media since its diversity of content. But still, disseminating knowledge through YouTube is also a part of the primary purpose. Thus, A score of 2 will be given for its irrelevancy to student learning.

2. Feedback: Most learning applications like Duolingo, Memrise, Bunpo, Grammarly, etc. provide specific feedback—a correct answer/solution—when you answer the questions given incorrectly. Meanwhile, YouTube provides room for viewers to give feedback, in the comment section. However, the feedback in the comment section is not specific as the learning application gives and is not 100% accurate. Unless the teacher himself presents it, it's considerably detailed feedback. Therefore, a score of 3 for the feedback feature is quite fair.

3. Thinking Skills: YouTube can be used to drag out students' creativity by making a video. Then, watching a learning video is like listening to the teacher in a classroom. Students need analyzing and evaluating skills to comprehend the whole learning material precisely. A score of 4 respectably suits this aspect.

4. Ease of Use: The amount of YouTube users—2.41 billion—indicates that YouTube is easy to use. Mainly students in this generation can open and operate a smartphone and its applications independently. Therefore, an excellent score of 4 will be awarded for its ease of use. 

5. Engagement: Based on personal experience, student's motivation to learn through YouTube is unstable. If the learning video presented by the teacher is lengthy and tedious, the learning aims will be hard to achieve. So the teacher has to ensure that the learning video has to be concise, attractive, and comprehensive. For school purposes, a score of 2.5 is quite suitable for the Engagement aspect. But it will be a perfect 4—student is highly motivated to use the app if this application is used outside of school purposes.

6. Sharing: YouTube has three options after the users upload their videos. They can set their video to the public (everyone can see it), link-based (limit the viewers to the people who have the link of the video), or private (no one can see it except the uploader). YouTube also attains a feature to share a video. Therefore, a complete score of 4 will be given for this aspect.

7. Accessibility and Cost: Students do not pay anything to access YouTube unless they want to join a membership to a channel or avoid ads—YouTube Premium—while watching YouTube videos. Then, a score of 3 will be appropriate to have.

In total, YouTube got a great score of 22.5/28. Does that score sum up that YouTube is a great learning medium? Undoubtedly. For teaching English? Hold a minute. To decide that, we need to look at the analysis result below:

1. Teachers can apply YouTube to ELT (English Language Teaching) by making learning videos, sharing other learning videos to intensify language exposure, and giving a video-based assignment to be uploaded on YouTube.

2. The existence of YouTube impacts the way people study language, especially the English language. As explained in number 1, YouTube and other learning applications help to share language exposure and add more learning references.

3. The biggest weakness YouTube has as a learning medium is YouTube itself. Contents on YouTube are tons and diverse, which leads to learning distractions. When students are instructed to watch a learning video, they will try hard to focus on it because other videos have perched there and waited to be viewed. Also, students need a stable connection to stay watching the video. Otherwise, they will lose focus immediately.

4. YouTube is a suitable medium for teaching speaking, listening, pronunciation, and grammar. Teaching writing skills is limited only to conveying theory and general knowledge.

In conclusion, YouTube is a tremendous breakthrough in the history of learning medium. It adds more options for teaching and widens the learning references. And to ensure that teaching using YouTube can reach the learning aim, teachers have to deal with the distraction within YouTube and students' boredom.