Impact of the gamification tool kahoot! on secondary school students' grammar proficiency

The aim of this study is to examine at the academic achievement of Kahoot! students in 6th grade, which is one of the most essential gamification tools in language teaching and grammar acquisition, as well as their opinions on the Kahoot! application. In the study, the effect of the Kahoot! application on the grammar learning success of the students was investigated and the opinions of the students regarding the application were taken. A total of 80 students, 40 in the control group and 40 in the experimental group, participated in the study. The study aims to find answers to two problem sentences containing both quantitative and qualitative data, and the quantitative data of the research were obtained by quasi-experimental technique and the qualitative data were obtained by semi-structured interview. Reliability and validity studies were conducted, and a pre-test and post-test consisting of 20 questions with high distinctiveness were prepared to evaluate the students' success in the determined grammatical subjects. Both groups were given the pre- and post-tests that had been prepared in advance. During the grammar learning process, traditional method techniques were applied to the control group and Kahoot! to the experimental group for 4 weeks. After the application was completed, a post-test was applied to both groups and it was investigated whether the Kahoot! application and content - based language teaching made a significant difference on grammar learning. Since the quantitative data are not parametric, Wilcoxon Matched – Pairs Signed Ranks Test and Mann Whitney U Test were used in the analysis of these data and the results were interpreted. After the application was completed and the post-test was administered, a semi-structured interview consisting of 5 open-ended questions was conducted with 10 randomly selected students from the experimental group in order to learn their opinions about the Kahoot! application. According to the results of the research, it was seen that the Kahoot! application made a significant positive difference on the grammar learning of the students. In addition, as a result of the semi-structured interviews, it was determined that the students had extremely positive views towards the Kahoot! application as an in-class material. Research findings are in agreement with many other studies in the literature. As a result, it is evaluated that Kahoot! can be used effectively for grammar teaching in the target language and it is suggested that more comprehensive studies can be done on this subject. Key Words: Kahoot!, gamification, computer assisted language learning (CALL), mobile assisted language learning (MALL), student response system (SRS).