English Mingle Game To Improve Speaking Skills

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

It has been understood that the objective of learning a language is to be able to communicate in the target language. In this condition, the target language is English. Thus, the teaching and learning of English should be emphasized at helping students to be able to communicate in English, both in written and spoken form. English has become one of the compulsory subjects which should be taught to the students in schools now. The ability of having some skills in English is much needed nowadays. English teaching and learning should be focused on four major skills that have to be mastered by the students. They are listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills.

The problems found in the school were very complex. Unfortunately, the interview result in the classrooms seems that the English teaching and learning are focused on helping the students pass the final exam. Students were taught about grammar, structure and written communication, while the oral one is put aside. The teacher often limits the things that the students should speak because in the semester exam the students answer the question with writing and reading. Other things are students do not have a self confidence even to speak a single word correctly, the students cannot produce many sentences because they have limited vocabularies. They also do not know how to use parts of speech in a correct order.

That is what happens in SMP N 14 Yogyakarta. The students learn something unrelated to the curriculum. They learn English sentence structure focused on writing and reading. They learn just a little speaking and listening. Moreover, there is less speaking activity during the English classes so that the students don’t have any chance to develop their communication skills. Therefore, to cope with the demand of having speaking skills in the real life and also its relation to teacher’s responsibility to improve the students’ speaking skills so we need a solution. Teachers are expected to monitor and assess the students’ speaking products. This fact shows that the current English teaching and learning doesn’t reflect the communication English teaching, in which the students are expected to have experience in using the language or in producing the language.

These phenomena raise to some questions for the English teacher and the researcher on how to solve the problems. After some discussions with the teacher, the researcher observed the problems during the English lessons in seventh grade in SMP N 14 Yogyakarta. The writer tries to find the effective solution to increase the speaking ability of students at SMPN 14 Yogyakarta by using mingle game as a technique of teaching speaking, which is the subject the research.

Based on the reason above, the writer would like to conduct a study: "USING ENGLISH MINGLE GAME TO IMPROVE SPEAKING SKILLS OF SECOND GRADE STUDENTS AT SMP NEGERI 14 YOGYAKARTA IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2012/2013 ".

Identification and Limitation of the Problem

According to the background to the study of this research, it can be underlined that there are some problems related to students’ speaking skills in SMP N 14 Yogyakarta. Based on the observation, the researcher found some problems that arose at grade VII in SMP N 14 Yogyakarta. They include:

Firstly, the students had low motivation in learning. They spend their time with friends by playing, feeling sleepy, and doing something unrelated to the English lesson.

Secondly, the students’ dictionary quality. In this school the students use low quality dictionary and also the students sometimes do not bring the dictionary. It is impact to the speaking quality of the students.

Thirdly, the teacher took only a little role in her teaching, modifying a little activity to improve the performance of students language skills. This problems makes the learning activity boring because they are monotonous and less challenging for some students. Teacher technique cannot accomodate the students to communicate with and learn the language effectively.

Besides that, media in the classroom like course book, projector, etc are very limited. In this school only have one language laboratory and the teacher cannot operate this facility. It is happen because the school only build the laboratory but the school never teach the teacher how to use that laboratory.

While talking about the students’ English skills, the student are lack of confidence in speaking activity. Sometimes the students asked or answered the questions with lack of confidence. Input quality of the students can be main factor of this problem. SMP N 14 Yogyakarta is the second lowest rank concerning the input of the students in the city of Yogyakarta.

Based on some problems above, the researcher focus the study on the efforts of finding ways to improve the speaking skill through mingle game for grade VII of SMP N 14 Yogyakarta in academic year of 2012/2013 through action research.

Limitation of the Problem

This research activity concerns on improving the English speaking learning process through mingle game.

Formulation of the Problem

Based on the explanation of the problems that have been mentioned in the identification and limitation of the problem, the problem is formulated as follows: How the mingle game can be used effectively to improve the process of teaching and learning speaking?

Objective of the Study

The study aims at improving skills of speaking of Second Grade Students at SMP Negeri 14 Yogyakarta in the Academic Year of 2012/2013 through mingle game.

Significance of the Research

This study is expected to be beneficial for:

English teacher in SMP N 14 Yogyakarta; the findings of this study are expected to become a source of information about the ways to improve the teaching and learning quality.

Other teachers in Yogyakarta; the findings of this study are expected to become an evidence, that represents students’ ability in learning foreign language.

Institutions that hold the English teaching program; this study is expected to become an input in empowering the teachers of English to improve the students’ speaking skills in teaching and learning processes by using mingle game.

Other English education students of Yogyakarta State University; the findings of this study are expected to become one of the considerable source or reading material either to enrich their reference in writing their thesis or to improve their knowledge in English teaching and learning processes.

The researcher himself; this study is expected to increase awareness of the contribution of games to improve the student’s speaking skills in teaching and learning processes and gives the experience in doing the research and working with other people as well.

Theoretical Review

In the literature review, the researcher discusses some theories and research studies which are relevant with the topic. It has been mentioned, in the previous that the aim of the study is to improve students’ speaking skills. Thus, in this section the discussion will center around review on four language skills, speaking, teaching speaking, problems in teaching speaking, some solutions, media and games. In addition, review on related research studies will be highlighted.

Four Language Skills

In general, there are four language skills which the language learner should master either through the process of learning or acquisition. They are reading, speaking, listening, and writing.

Along with the development of theories of language teaching and learning, there are several terms used for these skills which are conventionally accepted by most of language teacher as what Donald and Kneale (2001:14) say that:

"Language teachers conventionally distinguish between four aspects of language which are mastered by means of the "four skills": listening, speaking, reading, writing. Listening and reading might be taught as primarily ‘passive’ ‘receptive’ or ‘input’ skills, while speaking and writing are their ‘active’ ‘productive’ or ‘output’ counterparts (Donald and Kneale, 2001:14).

In additions, Brown (2001:232) states:

"Despite our history of treating the four skills in separate segments of a curriculum, there is a trend toward skills integration. That is, rather than designing a curriculum to teach the many aspects of one skill, say, reading, curriculum designers are taking more of a whole langguange approach whereby reading skills, then, will also deal with related listening, speaking, and writing skills."

In summary, these four language skills should be carried out in a meaningful way so that by focused on a certain skill means emerging the other language skills as well.

In real communication, these skills are often manifested integratively. For example, when learners got emails, they read what people send to them and then reply instantly. In this case, both reading and writing skills are employed fairly.

Speaking

According to Brown & Yule in Nunan (1989), spoken language consists of short, often fragmentally utterances in a range of pronunciation. It deals with the ability to convey meaning through words that has to be pronounced. There is often a great deal of repetition and negotiation of meaning between one speaker and another.

Speaking is a productive skill. It involves the speaker to use speech to express meanings to other people (Spratt, Pulverness, & Williams: 2005). Some people think that if they want to be able to speak fluently in English, they need to be able to pronounce phonemes correctly, use appropriate stress and intonation patterns and speak in connected speech. However, speaking is more than it.

Speaking is a productive skill that can be directly and empirically observed (Brown, 2001:140), involving two people who are engaged in talking to each other (Harmer, 2007:67), using language to express meaning so that other people can make sense of them (Cameron, 2001:40).

The productive skill is the skill that is used by learners to produce language. In this casethe speaker performance can be directly observed and empirically measured in the speaking process. This situation of involving two people who are engaged in talking to each means share the understanding with each other.

The main point of speaking activity is language express meaning. The speakers express their intended meaning to the listeners so that the listeners can make sense of the speakers. The participants have the same knowledge so that the speaker’s intended meaning will be easily delivered.

Micro Skills of Speaking

Brown (2001:271-272) proposes a list of micro skills for oral communication skills. They are mentioned as:

Produce chunks of language of different lengths.

Orally produce different among the English phonemes and allophonic variants.

Produce English stress patterns, words in stressed and unstressed positions, rhythmic structure, and intonational contours.

Produce reduced forms of words and phrases.

Use an adequate number of lexical units (words) in order to accomplish pragmatic purposes.

Produce fluent speech at different rates of delivery.

Monitor your own oral production and use various strategic devices-pauses, fillers, self-corrections, backtracking-to enhance the clarity of the message.

Use grammatical word phrases (noun, verbs, etc), systems (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization), word order, patterns, rules, and elliptical forms.

Produce speech in natural constituents-in approach phrases, pause groups, breath groups, and sentences.

Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.

Use cohesive devices in spoken discourse.

Accomplish appropriately communicative functions according to situations, participants, and goals.

Use appropriate registers, implicature, pragmatic conventions, and other sociolinguistic features in face-to-face conversations.

Convey links and connections between events and communicate such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification.

Use facial features, kinesics, body language, and other nonverbal cues along with verbal language to convey meanings.

Develop and use a battery of speaking strategies, such as, emphasizing key words, appealing for help, and accurately assessing how well your interlocutor is understanding you.

Teaching Speaking

Harmer (2007: 345-348) gives some important points related to the teaching of speaking. They are the reluctance of the students to speak and take part and the teacher’s role. He adds some useful ways to minimize the students’ reluctance in speaking, including:

Preparation: giving enough time to think in their head about how they will speak, or it may mean letting them practice dialogues in pairs before having to do anything more public.

The value of repetition: allowing them to approve on what they did before, getting chance to analyze what they have already done, and getting them to draft them to draft and re-draft their writing.

Big groups, small groups: making sure that they get chances to speak and interact in big or small groups.

Mandatory participation: allowing the students to equally engage in a task without knowing who gets the turn first and who gets the next.

Brown (2001:275-276) proposes some principles for designing speaking teaching techniques. They are presented as follows:

Use techniques that cover the spectrum of learner needs, from language-based focus on accuracy to message-based focus on interaction, meaning, and fluency.

Provide intrinsically motivating techniques.

Encourage the use authentic language in meaningful contexts.

Provide appropriate feedback and correction.

Capitalize on the natural link between speaking and listening.

Give students opportunities to initiate oral communication.

Encourage the development of speaking strategies, such as:

Asking for clarification (What?)

Asking someone to repeat something (Hub? Excuse me?)

Using fillers (Ub, I mean, well)

Using conversation maintenance cues (Ub bub, Right, Yeah, Okay, Hin)

Getting someone’s attention (Hey, Say, So)

Using paraphrases for structures one can’t produce

Appealing for assistance from the interlocutor (to get a word or phrases, for example)

Using formulatic expressions (at the survival stage) (How much does ___ cost? How do you get to the __?)

Using mime and nonverbal expressions to convey meaning.

Problems in Teaching Speaking

Brown (2001: 270-271) claims eight elements that make speaking taste difficult such as:

Clustering

Redundancy

Reduced forms

Performances variables

Colloquial language

Rate of delivery

Stress, rhythm, and intonation, and

Interaction

Rivers (1981:187) adds, such features as picth intonation, stress and duration, assimilation, juncture, elisions, liaisons at word boundaries, and expensive features like tone of voice and gesture’ are often all but ignored. Teaching speaking problems mentioned as follows:

Students’ motivation,

Students’ reluctance to involve themselves,

Grouping the students,

Teaching media,

Classroom management,

Assessment techniques, etc.

Some Solutions

According to Littlewood (1981 : 17-18), to cope with the problems mentioned above, the teachers may refer to the communicative activities, such as:

To provide "whole-task practice"

Whole task practice allows the students to practice the language not only in the part of skills, but also in the total skill. In this session, the teacher provides the learners with various koinds of communicative activities, organizes them into in order to suit the ability level of the learner.

To improve motivation

As learners’ final objective in learning a language is to participate in communication with others, their motivation to learn is more likely to be maintaned if their classroom learning can help them to accomplish this objective with increasing success.

To allow natural learning

Because many aspects of language learning take place through natural processes, it operates well then the learner uses in the real and natrural communication.

To create a context which supports learning

Activities which provide opportunities for positive perdonal relationship between the students and the teacher and create an environment that can support individual effort in learning are those that enable the students to communicate well. Communicate activities are ones to be mentioned to fulfill those requirements.

Teacher also need have knowledge and an understanding the role of the teaching speaking includes setting, students motivation, learner’s factor, media, etc. The teaching-learning process needs cooperation between the learners’ and the teachers’. Teachers’ should be creative and also modify their teaching technique if it is possible. The teachers must be make the students higly motivated in learning English.

The Mingle Game

The mingle game is a language game which students stand up and walk around asking questions to match people to information they have been given on their cards or handouts containing columns and prompts to help the students do the task based on the topic (M. Samsuli, 2011). In this case, the mingle game which was applied in teaching speaking skills is "find someone who", especially in performing short dialogues and oral reports to the VII grade students of SMP N 14 Yogyakarta.

The mingle game is an activity in which students move around and talk to each other to get some information needed. This game is often designed to practice question asking and answering (Yates, 2008 in Samsuli, 2001). In the mingle game, the students should wander around the classroom then mingle with their classmates by finding a partner they have not worked with, ask questions to each other and record the answers they get. They usually carry out this mingling activity until students have a chance to talk to some students. The mingle game requires students to tell each other what they really think about a given topic. By asking and answering questions on cards, the students get the opportunity to say what they really think about something, to discuss a topic in depth and to express their emotions. The teacher may need to pre-teach certain vocabulary items and/or a specific structure, but once the activity begins, it is up to the students to express themselves.

Case (2008) admits that the mingle game isone of the most popular TEFL games. It is a good to get students up and move around and ask questions to match people to inform that they have given, so that it loosens their inhibitions and wakes them up. He also lists 15 variations of the mingle game which make students to get equally involved.

I’m Unique

Students have to find out something that is true only of themselves in the class, e.g. an ability only they have ("can"). They go round asking the same question (e.g. "Have you eaten crocodile?") until they have asked everyone. If at any time they find out that it is also true of someone else, they should quickly think of another thing and start again.

I’m the Same Too

In this case, students stand up and try to find people who have things in common with them, e.g. the same number of sisters. As in most of these variations, it is important that they change partner after just one question. This is good for auxiliary verbs practice (So do I etc.).

I’m the same too Two

In this slight variation on I’m the Same Too, students can’t move onto another partner until they have found one thing they have in common with the person they are talking to. Every time they change partners they have to ask different questions- they can’t get one point for "We are both Spanish" each time!

I’m the same too Three

In this case, students have to find things that they have in common with the other students with a different short answer each time, one "So do I", one "So am I", one "So can I" etc.

Guess and find

Before students stand up and start asking questions, they have predict what will be true, e.g. how many people each of the statements on their worksheet something is true for ("_____________ people can play the guitar" or "5 people can _______________")

Find what I’ve written

Each student writes one or more true statements about themselves on slips of paper. The slips of paper are then taken in and distributed so that people have statements about others. Students stand up and race to find the people who wrote those things (or anyone else the same thing is true for).

The snowball game

This is a variation on "Find what I’ve written". When students have written their true sentences, they screw them up into balls and when the teacher says start throwing them around like snowballs, including pick up other people’s "snowballs" and throw them. After one minute, students pick up snowballs close to them and go around trying to find who each statement is true for.

Find the question find someone who

In this variation of Find What I’ve Written, students only write a very short and vague piece of information about themselves, e.g. "three" or "London". Students then have to guess what the question might be for the piece of information they receive, e.g. "How many sisters do you have?" and go around asking that question or change to other questions until they find the right answer. The people answering shouldn’t say whether they wrote that or not, but just ask the question they are asked.

Shouting find someone who

Any of the variations can be played this way, which just involves giving them an activity where they have to speak to everyone in the class but not letting them stand up.

Shout or stand find someone who

If you have a class which is reluctant to speak loudly or to stand up, give them the choice of deciding which is the lesser of two evils by telling them they have to speak to everyone but not telling them how. Most classes will start by speaking to their partner, speaking slightly louder to someone further away etc. until they are standing up without any protests.

Say hello wave goodbye

Like introducing "So do I", this variation adds both more language and more fun. Students have to do the Find Someone Who activity whilst pretending they are at a cocktail party or similar and starting and ending each conversation with suitable language.

Don’t say goodbye

In this variation on Say Hello Wave Goodbye, all the students are given roleplay cards with their Find Someone Who tasks on, but some people’s tasks only say "Keep your partner speaking for as long as possible". Anyone who starts speaking to that person then has the additional challenge of politely ending the conversation so that they can move onto speak to someone else.

You’ll never find someone who

In this variation, students set each other Find Someone Who tasks. This can either be something they think is not true of anyone in the class, or something they know is true but they think is difficult to guess who.

You’ll never guess who

In the gossipy version, people have to try to find the answers to as many of their questions as they can whilst speaking to the minimum number of people. They do this by passing on all the information they have found so far, including things they don’t need to know but they found out because they know someone else was looking for it. You can also get them to trade pieces of information.

If you tell me who

In this variation on You’ll Never Guess Who, students exchange information so they can find the information on their role cards as quickly as possible, but only giving people information they need if they can trade it for different information they are looking for.

To sum up, through well-prepared communication output activities such as the mingle game, the teacher can encourage students to experience the language, and create a supportive atmosphere that allows them to make mistakes without fear of embarrassment. This will contribute to their self-confidence as speakers and to their motivation to learn more. However, the mingle game can also be exploited in many other communicative activity types, such as, interview, question and answer, comment-response, sharing, task completion, even information gap activities.

Reviews of Related Study

The use of language games in teaching speaking has been investigated by some previous researchers, especially for the purpose of improving the speaking skills of the students.

Ihtiara (2011) who conducted her research using games on improving the speaking ability of the students at SMKN 1 Godean finds that the use of games in the language teaching and learning can improve the students speaking ability. In her research, she used some games to increase the students’ ability of speaking.

Syamaun (1999) implements the use of language games to improve the speaking ability of the second year MTs students. The game that is applied in his research is a guessing game. The finding shows that the game chanllenges for the students to share the ideas in speaking activities. The students also have positive responses in learning speaking in terms of asking and answering as well as in producing comprehensible sentences in which they could speak continuosly without using many pauses during the speaking activity.

Conceptual Framework

Learning a language is not only learning about its structure or functions. It should involve the four language aspects of language, namely the four language skills. In the teaching and learning of English these skills should be propotioned in balance. English teachers should not neglect ceratin skills because they were not required in the final exam. Unfortunately, the fact is far from the ideal one.

Teachers in general only emphasize on what the learners need to face the final exam. They focus on teaching written language and neglect the oral one. As a results, students lack experiences in using or producing the language orally. They even have difficulties to communicate in English although they have learnt it for years.

Speaking is the basic means of human communication. In the EFL teaching and learning, it have been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills. Ther are many factors that might cause speaking difficult according to the students and the teachers. Some of them are related to the students’ limited encounter with English spoken language and opportunities in practicing it orally. Most of the students lack vocabulary mastery. They are also often unsure about the pronunciation of some words. The lack of grammar makes them inaccurate in their speaking. Moreover, they are afraid of making mistakes when they want to produce their English orally. This makes the students become passive and unmotivated in the speaking teaching and learning process.

The students are reluctant to speak English because they are shy and are not predisposed to express themselves in front of other people, especially when they are being asked to give personal information or opinions. Frequently, too, there is a worry about speaking badly and therefore losing face in front of their classmates.

They are some benefits in using games in teaching and learning process. They are:

They spur motivation and students get very absorbed in the competitive aspect of the game.

They lower students’ stress of the game.

Students learn without realizing that they are learning.

Improving students’ proficiency (Deesri, 2002)

From the observations, the researcher also found some problems. They are related with students’ motivation, involvement, attention span, lacked confidence in speaking, the teacher role and media. The researcher and the English teacher decided to use mingle games as one of the best solutions to those problems.

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHOD

As mentioned in the background and literature review, the objective of this research is to improve speaking skill of grade VII students of SMP N 14 Yogyakarta in the academic year of 2012/2013. The details of the research method will be explained below:

A. Design of the Research

In the goal of this research, to improve the speaking skills of the students through the use of conversational assessment, this research is an action research study. It tries to find the problems during the English teaching and learning process especially in teaching speaking and tries to find the solutions of the problems.

The Subjects of the Research

The subject of this study will be Grade VII students of SMP N 14 Yogyakarta. The choice of the class is based on the information from the English teacher that Grade VII students have difficulties in study English. It can be happen because the input of the students in this school are the second lowest in Yogyakarta. Therefore, the quality of the students to understand what the teacher teach in English still need more solutions.

The Target Community Setting

The setting of this research is SMPN 14 Yogyakarta that is located in .... . this school has ... classrooms, ... teachers’ room, one room for the school principal’s office, laboratories for computer, one for the official administration. It also has a basketball court, toilets, canteens, parking area, and a library. For the ... students, ... teachers and ... staffs, these facilities give them some contribution to the teaching and learning process.

In this school, English is taught in ... x ... minutes per week. Moreover, this school also has extracurricular activities such as ...

During the English classes, the students usually listen to the teacher’s explanation, work on the exercise given, discuss the answers, and so on. The materials given in the English classes are sometimes unrelated with the curriculum. For example, the teachers gives the materials only reading and writing, the teacher used that skills because in the semester examination just reading and writing task.

Place and Time of the Reseach

This research was done in SMP N 14 Yogyakarta with the VII grade students in VII ... class as the participant. They were those who were in the second semester by the academic year of 2012/2013.

This research was carried out during the English class which is held twice a week in each class. The scheduled classes were on ... and ... at ...:...-...-... pm. The action lasted in 2 X 40 minutes per meeting from .... (month) until ...

Procedures / Steps of the Action Research

The structural steps done referred to the steps suggested by Kemmis and Mc Taggart (1988) in Burns (1999:32) that action research occurs through a dynamic and complementary process, which consists of four essential moments of planning, action, observation and reflection.

Planning

In this step, the lesson plans, the materials, and the research instruments were prepared. Lesson plans were used as scenarios of the teaching and learning process. The materials designed were in the form of copied hand out and others were written in the whiteboard. While the research instrument such as the interview guideline, the pretest scoring rubric and its criteria, the questionnaire were designed by considering the kinds of data needed.

Action and Observation

These research actions were carried ou in two cycles. Each cycle was done in three weeks. In the action stage, the lesson plans and the materials and other teaching media were used in the classroom. In this stage, the English teacher acted as an observer (Abbreviated S), while the researcher acted as the action taker (A), and the collabolator from the Yogyakarta State University acted as an observer (N). Students acted as the subjects of learning (Ss). In this writing these abbreviations would be used in the tables, field notes and interview transcripts.

In this stage, the plans were carried out in the classroom. Besides, the researcher also made some changes and revisions in the use of ... (metode) and the grouping techniques as solutions of the problems. The implementation of the teaching and learning process was observed by the teacher and the collabolator to give the researcher feedbacks on her teaching techniques.

Reflection

Since this research was done collaboratively, the reflection session was carried out collaboratively too. It means that the research team come to the deep thinking on how to improve the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process so that the improvement desired by the researcher and the teacher can be achieved. The reflection session was expected to be useful in revising the plan and actions so that the efforts could be done in a better way.

While the evaluations were done in three ways, the first was short term evaluation which was done in every meeting and the second one was long term evaluation which was done in every cycle/every three weeks, and the last one was the evaluation of the overall practices which was done in the end of the cycle. The evaluations involved the researcher, the collabolator, and the English teacher.

Instruments and Data Collection Techniques

Observation

Observation of the implementation of the teaching and learning process provide useful information. There are various observation techniques that can be applied in the classroom setting. Some of there techniques provide a detailed description of what is occuring in the classroom. They include running transcripts, grids, tally sheets, lesson plan, time notation, dialogue, recording, and videotapes. The observation data can be useful in giving the teacher feedbacks on her instructions. Observations also validate information collected through teacher interviews.

In this research, the researcher applied structured observation by using observation checklists in each meeting to focus on the information about the teacher’s instruction, the students’ behavior and the classroom situation. Furthermore, field notes were used to gather information about the teaching and learning process in general as one of the unstructured observation techniques.

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Interview

Interviews can be valuable instruments, as they provide, with the interviewer’s ability to probe for answers, more in-depth information than do questionnaires (Kutner et al, 2007 : 25).

Interviews can be done with or without guidelines. However, guidelines may help the interviewer to focus the conversation on several items or data needed in the study. The questions may include both close-ended and open ended questions.

Interviews can provide information gathered through the students’ own reflection, observations, and interactions with the teacher. Students responses to interviews may also provide their perceptions on what occurs in a classroom.

The researcher analyzed by addressing the data into some categories containing certain patterns indicating students’ perception, behavior, observation, etc. Data gathered from students with other data collection instruments could be used to validate findings.

In this research, interviews were used to gather the data about the students’ feelings during the teaching and learning process, their reflections on learning, their observations during the classes, their success and difficulties in learning and their perceptions on the instructional materials.

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Questionnaire

Questionnaire have an advantage of being easier and less-time-consuming to administer than interviews, and the responses of larger numbers of informants can be gathered ( Burns, 1999 : 129 ).

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Test

Tests provide a picture of students’ achievement at any given point, although there are more authentic assessments suh as portfolios and observations. Kutner et al (2007:33) suggests that to determine whether change or growth has taken place, however, some sort of pre- and post- measured are required. He also suggest that to determine accurately the success of an instructional sequence, instructors must pre-test students at the outset, and using the same or a similar instrument, test them at specified intervals throughout the instructional process. Those measures will reveal what students have actually learned from instruction. In this research, pre-test and post-test were used to gather the data about students’ improvements in speaking.

Analyzing the pre-test and post-test result, the students’ performances on the pre-test on the criteria such as context, delivery, language, eye contact, body movement, cooperation and risk taking were indicated by numbers, calculated and were compared with those in the post-test result.

Data Analysis

To analyze the data, the researcher referred to the stages of data analysis suggested by Burns (1999:157-160). They are:

Assembling the data

In this step, the researcher assembles the data such as field notes, questionnaires, interview transcribes, and so on and scan the data in a general way to show up broad patterns so that can be compared and contrasted. Thus, the researcher can see what really occurs in the field. In Burns’ words it is useful to note down thoughts, ideas or impressions as they occur .... (Burns, 1999 : 157)

Coding the data

After scanning the data, developing catagories and codes are used to identify the data more specifically. As what Burns ( 1999: 157) suggests, coding the data is a process of attempting to reduce the large amount of data that may be collected to more manageable catagories of concepts, themes or types.

Comparing the data

Once the data have been coded, the researcher needs to see whether the patterns are repeated or developed across different data collection techniques. Besides identifying relationships and connections between different sources of data, the other things that the researcher can do is mapping frequencies of occurrences, behaviors or responses.

Building interpretations

The fourth stage is the point where the researcher should deal with a great amount of creative thinking in describing, catagorizing, coding and comparing the data to make sense their meaning. It enables the researcher to come back to the data several times to pose questions, rethink the connctions and develop explanations of the bigger picture underpinning the research (Burns, 1999:159).

After that, discussions with the collabolator are needed to make it possible for the new discoveries or interpretations as well as noting down questions and thoughts that occur behind surface descriptions.

Reporting the outcomes

The last stage of data analysis process is presenting an account of research for others. The researcher should ensure that the report covers the major processes of the research and support the findings and outcomes with examples from the data. In general, the report includes the original issue or questions underlying the study, describing the research context, outlining the finding and the context, and suggesting how the project has been feed back into practice so that it could lead to other areas for research.

Validity and Reliability of the Data

To maintain the validity of the data, five criteria proposed by Burns (1999:161) are employed. Those five criteria are:

Democratic Validity

Democratic validity is related to the point that the research is truly collaborative. To fulfill the democratic validity, every participant was given enough opportunity to give their opinions, thoughts, feelings, concerns, and expectations during the research. The process was through some discussions involving the head master, the English teacher, the collabolator, and the researcher. The first discussion held on .................. to plan the actions. During the research, some discussion held to progress of the research.in the end of every meeting, the English teacher, the collabolator, and the researcher had a discussion to reflect the actions of that day. Meanwhile, in the end of every cycle, the discussion held to evaluate the actions that have been conducted and to formulate the actions in the next cycle. They held twice on ..... and on .....

Outcome Validity

Outcome validity is related to the concept of actions leading outcome. That are successful in the research context. To fulfill the outcome validity, indicators that show the improving of the English speaking learning process were:

The students were able to answer the questions and did tasks from the teacher by doing the ........ (metode)

The students had high motivation in the speaking learning process.

The students did not feel shy or reluctant to speak English.

The students reduced the anxiety by real-time doing interaction.

The teacher used various and appropriate technique in teaching speaking.

There are various materials and activities in the teaching and learning process.

The used of maximal media in the speaking and learning process.

Process Validity

Process validity is raises questions about the depend-ability and competency of the research. To gain the process validity, the researcher collected the data by doing observation and taking note during the research, it means that everything that happened in the teaching and learning process were noted by the researcher.

Catalytic Validity

It allows the participants to depend their understanding of the research by monitoring other participants. The researcher fulfilled the catalytic validity by interviewing the collabolator and the students and asking the students to give their feedback abot the action that have been implemented.

Dialogic Validity

It is related to the notion that the research was conducted through reflective dialogue with critical friends or other practitioner researcher fulfilled the dialogic validity by having discussions with the English teacher and collabolator.

While using those principles, the reability of the data was gained by giving genuine data, such as the field notes, questionnaires, interview transcripts and other records. The triangulation (Burns, 1999 : 163–164) techniques used in this research were:

Time triangulation: in which the data were collected over a period of time to get a sense of what are involved in the processes of the changes. In this research, the researcher gathered the data about the improvement on speaking skills through having pre-test and post-test. Furthermore, the portraits of the classroom situation were recorded in the observation checklists and field notes which were taken in every meeting.

Investigator triangulation: more than one observer was involved in the same research setting to avoid biases. In this research the collabolator (C) and the English teacher (T) were in charge of observing the teaching and learning process so that both observers contributed much in the making of the current field notes and observation checklist.

Research Procedure

The research used the procedure of Action Research proposed by Kemmis and Mc Taggart with some modification. The procedure is as follows:

Reconnaissance

In this step, the researcher carried out the research collaborately with the English teacher and also another research member. Moreover, in this step, the researcher found out information concerning on the English speaking learning process. The researcher observed the English teaching and learning process and interviewed the English teacher and the students to identify the existing problem on the English speaking learning process. Then, the researcher selecting some feasible problems can be solved in the research. After that, determined some plans related to the problems on the English speaking learning process.

Planning

After doing the observation in the reconnaissance step, then the researcher made some plans to select the actions that were feasible to be implemented in the field. In planning the actions, the researcher worked together with the English teacher of grade VII SMPN 14 Yogyakarta. The aim of the action was using the (mediaku) technique.

Acting and Observing the action

The action plan was implemented in the two cycles. Those cycles were done in three meetings. The meetings were held on every (........ and ..............). The topics used were adapted from (... book?, etc). Besides implementing the action plans, the researcher also observed and recorded the students’ reactions during the activities and did interviews with some students of grade VII ... after the actions had been done. The English teacher and the collabolator helped to observe and note the process of the teaching and learning process. Based on the observation, field notes and interviews, the team discussed the implemented actions and analyzed the result. The result of the discussion served as an evaluation to be used to improve the next actions.

Reflection

Based on the observation, the researcher and collabolator made a reflection of the action. The reflection was conducted by interviewing the students and the collabolator about their responses to the actions. The reflection was useful to show the effectiveness of the action conducted in the teaching and learning processes. At the end of the actions, the researcher and the collabolator discussed the results of the action and define the effective and ineffective implementation during the actions. The collabolator gave contribution to the reflection on the action that was taken. It was aimed to find out whether the actions were succesful or not. The successful actions were used and reapplied in the next cycle, but those which were unsuccessful would be changed or improved into the suitable one.