Effectiveness of Japanese Multiplication Method on Improving Grade Two Malaysian Students’ Multiplication Computation Fluency

Multiplication is one of the arithmetic operations that is very useful in daily life. However, multiplication computation fluency found to be difficult to master by Malaysian students. To address this problem, this study is conducted to determine the effectiveness of Japanese multiplication method on improving grade two Malaysian students’ multiplication computation fluency. Quasi-experimental study is adopted as the research design of this study. A total of 30 students each was selected from two elementary school in Malaysia using multistage cluster sampling. The students in the control group were taught to perform multiplication using column method, whereas the students in the experimental group were taught to perform multiplication using the Japanese approach. The findings indicate that there is significant difference of mean post-MCFT scores between both groups after receiving the intervention and the effect size of the intervention is considered large. In other words, the finding indicates that Japanese Multiplication Approach is more effective approach in multiplication computation. Thus, this study suggests that Japanese multiplication method could be taught in mathematics classroom as the alternative methods to perform multiplication.