RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
RESULT OF THE STUDY
4. Students’ Learning Perception about Speaking
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Except conducting the pre-test, the researcher also conducted in-depth interview with the students. The purpose of the interview was exploring the students’ perception about speaking. The result of the interview could be seen in Table 4.4.
Table 4.4 Result of Interview
No. Questions Students
Response
Yes No
1 Do you think that the English is important nowadays? 91% 9%
2 Do you like learning English? 96% 4%
3 Are you able to speak English? 12% 88%
4 Is it difficult to learn English? 87% 13%
5 Do you like doing different activities in the speaking class?
100% 0%
6 Do you like the topics of the speaking class? 5% 95%
The result of the interview about the importance of English showed that there were two groups of students. The first groups, about ninety one percent of the students thought that English was very important nowadays. One of the student sated that learning English was very important, especially important for their future jobs. If they were looking for a job, understanding English was considered as having a plus ability for getting a job, which could also provide them a good position and got a higher salary in the company. Another student said that in many big companies, they might have many appointments or meetings with the foreigners; they could have a lot of opportunities to establish and deal business with them. It couldn't be denied that English was very important if they want to make a good living in the future.
On the contrary, the second group of students, about four percent of the total number stated that they did not like learning English. One student said that she had been studying English for many years, but up till now, she still could not speak English well, and she thought it was very difficult to learn the English. While the other students claimed that they didn’t like learning English because they felt bored and they didn’t like the way the teacher taught them and they also didn’t want to read the story or novel again
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since they had finished the reading in their dormitory. They felt it was useless to attend the speaking class.
Dealing with the questions about the ability of speaking, only twelve percent of the students claimed that they were able to speak; they didn’t think speaking was
difficult. While the rest of the students, about eighty eight percent stated that they were not able to speak English; they said that they could not communicate with their friends, and they always got stuck when communicated with their friends. The speaking was considered to be difficult for them.
The rest of the questions were about the topics and speaking activities conducted in the classroom. When asked whether they liked the topics or not, ninety-five percent of students said that they didn’t like the topics, and they thought it was not practical and useful; they wanted to learn something practical and related to their future jobs. The other five percent students liked the topics; they held the view that they would like to learn everything as long as it deals with English. When asked whether they liked doing
different activities in the speaking class, all of the students replied with one accord voice that they liked doing different activities in the speaking class. One of the students said that she liked playing, she didn’t like spiritless class.
Apart from the interview, the researcher asked the students to identify their speaking difficulties. She asked them to choose the most critical and crucial difficulty of their speaking. The result of the identification could be seen in Table 4.5
Table 4.5 Speaking Difficulty
No Speaking Difficulty Percentage
1. Vocabulary 48%
2. Psychological barriers: feel shy, afraid of make mistakes, lack of self confidence
32%
3. Pronunciation 28%
4. Fluency 21%
5. Comprehension 14%
6. Grammar 9%
The data were revealed in the following statement. There were forty-eight percent students who found difficulty in vocabulary and thirty-two percent of students who had difficulty dealing with the pronunciation. One of the students told the researcher that she
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always got stuck and stopped at the middle of her statement due to lack of the relevant vocabularies, and didn’t know how to say some words in English. Moreover, she also felt very hesitate to pronounce some seems familiar words. So, sometimes, she mixed both languages to complete her statement. Other students also mentioned that they didn’t practice the pronunciation in the class and they didn’t know how to pronounce the words correctly. They said that the teacher of the speaking class never led them to read the words or taught them how to pronounce the new words, not to mention to let them make practice. Besides the difficulty in vocabulary and pronunciation, there were thirty two percent students who had psychological barriers; they were shy; afraid of making mistake, and lacked of self-confidence. A student stated that when the teacher asked her to answer questions, she felt very nervous and afraid to say something wrong that made other students laughed and looked at her. In addition, there were twenty-one percent students who could not speak fluently; they complained that they could not fluently communicate with their friends; they could only speak two or three sentences at the beginning, after that, they would totally got stuck and couldn’t continue the conversation with their friends. Another opinion about the cause of speaking difficulty came from the student ML. She claimed that her speaking problems was dealing with the
comprehension; when she talked to her partner, she could not really understood what her partner said, and her partner always asked her to repeat what she said during the
discussion. There were also a few students who had difficulty in the grammar. The researcher had been told that when the students were speaking, they had made the grammar mistakes unconsciously.
After finding out the facts about the teaching and learning process, the student’s speaking level, and their problems in speaking, the researcher is convinced that the problem of low ability in speaking can be solved by applying Content-based Instruction (CBI) in the speaking class. CBI is an approach; it can apply different communicative activities or techniques to develop students’ speaking fluency, vocabulary mastering, promote interaction in the classroom and increase the students’ motivation based on the carefully selected content or topics which meet both the school’s requirements and students’ needs. Based on the pre-research, the researcher made a plan for implementing CBI in the teaching and learning speaking skill.
commit to user B. Research Implementation
Having identified student’s problem in speaking, CBI was chosen to be the solution of the problem. The implementation of teaching speaking by using CBI through Action Research consisted of two cycles.
The result of the first cycle became the consideration of the planning of the second cycle. Each cycle consisted of four meetings. Three meetings were for
presenting the material and one meeting for conducting the speaking test. Every meeting lasted for ninety minutes. The overall research implementation could be seen in Table 4.6.
Table 4.6 Overall Implementation of the Research
Problem Students had low speaking ability Solution Teaching speaking through CBI Students The second Grade
No of Cycle two
Cycle 1: M1: introducing products, M2: introducing company, M3: Receiving factory visitor(s)
Planning
Explaining the objective and the planned schedule for cycle 1.
Giving a task in each meeting, and each meeting consists of pre-task, task, and task optimization, Using pictures, flash cards, and short passage for the class
Action
M1-M3: discussing and explaining the topics, giving different activities or tasks based on the topics. Students performed and recalled what they had learned at the previous stages
M4: post test
Observation
Ss: Improved in vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, fluency and accuracy, but a few Ss still less achieved in fluency and
pronunciation.
Ss Could answer the teacher’s questions and felt braver to speak and actively performed with their classmates.
T: well prepared the worksheet, but lack of modeling and explanation of the context. Didn’t give much time to the students to make practice CS: alive, relax and enjoyable, but a little bit noisy, group works and pair works were more effective
Reflection
(+) Ss’ motivation and participation were raised. Ss mastery in words and expressions were high; Ss could answer the teacher’s questions;
and could communicate with their friends with little grammar mistake. They talked a lot in the class.
(-) The T lacked of modeling and practice of the words
pronunciation. Some Ss less achieved in fluency as they needed to take a look of the worksheet to find the related words and expressions
commit to user during their performance.
Cycle 2: M1: telephoning, M2: booking rooms in a hotel, M3: Ordering in a restaurant
Planning Revised plan is to help the students to achieve good pronunciation and fluency.
Action
M1-M3: discussing and explaining the topics; giving modeling and different activities to help the students to master the words and expressions, to achieve good pronunciation; giving different activities or tasks based on the topics; conducting performance review.
M4: post test Observation
Ss: much improved in words pronunciation and could fluently conduct the interactive dialog with their partner; became more self-confident
T: explained the context very clearly; more passionate Cs: more alive, fun and relax atmosphere increased
Reflection
(+) improvement in speaking ability, the students could fluently communicate with their friends with good pronunciation; the frequency of looking at the notebook reduced; effective pair works, more enjoyable atmosphere, relaxed classroom situation founded (-) there were still two or three students who needed to take a look or
read their notebooks when conducting their performance.
The implementation of the research in its cycles was described on the following section.
1. Cycle 1
Table 4.7 The implementation of Cycle 1
plannin g
Topics: M1. Introducing products, M2. Introducing company, M3. Receiving factory visitor, M4. Post-test
- Giving a task in each meeting
- Each meeting consists of pre-task, task, and task optimization - Using pictures, flash cards, and short passage
Action
First meeting – Third meeting (discussion meeting) - discussing about the words and sentence patterns - practice dialogue
- doing different activities about the topics - optimizing the language use
Fourth meeting (post test)
- conducting a post-test about the topics discussed
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Observation
The Students
- The learning motivation was improved in the class
- Students actively took speaking turns; braver and actively engaged in the speaking activities,
- The students improved in the words and grammatical forms.
- They could answer the teacher’s questions
- They could fluently perform the speaking task, but sometimes, some students forgot the new words, they needed to take a look at the worksheet to refresh their mind, and also mispronounced some words.
- A small part of students felt a little bit shy in individual activities The Teacher
- Well prepared with the worksheet
- Didn’t give enough modeling and practice to the students about the vocabularies and words pronunciation
- Didn't give sufficient explanation and discussion about the topic
- Lacked of monitoring of the rest students while the other students took activities
- Spoke too fast Classroom situation - Alive, enthusiastic
- Enjoyable for various types of activities - Pair and group works were more effective - Noisy
- CBI could accommodate various types of activities which are motivating the students to participate in the speaking tasks
- CBI could adjust individual, pair, and group works according to the content.
- Pair and group works in CBI could eliminate student’s psychological barriers and increase students’ self-confidence.
Weakness
- Some students still mispronounced some words.
- Some students still less achieved on fluency as they forgot some new words their just learned; they still needed to stop and take a look at their worksheet
- The teacher lacked of modeling about the words and expressions.
- The teacher lacked of discussion about the content
- The teacher gave less control to the rest students who were not in the speaking activity.
The process of Cycle 1 is described in the following section.
commit to user a. Planning
Planning was the first step in doing a classroom action research. Some important things were planned in order to run the research well.
1) Time allotment
The time allotment in each meeting was 90 minutes. There were four meetings in cycle one including the posttest. The detail schedule was as follows:
(1) Sunday, November 14, 2010 : The first meeting (2) Wednesday, November 24, 2010 : The second meeting (3) Wednesday, December 1, 2010 : The third meeting (4) Wednesday, December 8, 2010 : The Fourth meeting 2) Teaching Materials
The teaching materials were selected and prepared based on the students’ needs and interest and also meet the requirements of the college in advance. According to the major teaching plan constructed by the Dean Office of Business English Department, the teaching materials should focus on training the students’ potential communication ability, the materials selected should be standard, practical, and flexible; standard means that the teaching material cannot either be too difficult or too easy, it should match the students level; practical means the content knowledge conveyed by the teacher in the class should be used by the students both in the classroom and in the outside world or the real world;
while flexible means the material or content shouldn’t be monotonous or invariable, it should be flexible and can be adjusted by the teacher to meet the students needs and interest.
Moreover, before the treatment, the researcher conducted the interview with the students to get their information about their needs, interest and the problem in speaking.
The students were also given chances to discuss, to talk about, and to choose what kind of content they were interested in and wanted to learn. The result shows that the students are willing to learn something useful, practical, and related to their future jobs. Hence, based on the result above, the topics selected for each meeting in Cycle 1 are as
following, and at the beginning of each meeting, the teacher will ask the students if they want to discuss the topic or not:
Meeting 1: Introducing products
commit to user Meeting 2: Introducing Company
Meeting 3: Receiving factory visitor(s) 3) Teaching Medias
The available teaching Media, such as the computer and LCD in the classroom were used. In addition, the researcher also prepared pictures and flash cards to teach the students. The teaching media functions the role to help the students not only understand the meaning of the text better, but also to let the students know how it would be used. A more attractive content or text will appeal to the students and motivate them to speak, to perform. An attractive looking content or context is more likely to grab the students’
attention rather than a page full of type.
4) Lesson plan
In the first cycle, the researcher planned four meetings; three meetings for classroom discussion, and one meeting for conducting the post-test. Each discussion meeting had a topic and consisted of three phases namely pre-task, task, and task
optimization, while each phase consisted of many different activities based on the topics.
As mentioned previously, the students often mispronounce the words, they lack of relevant vocabularies, and they also make grammar mistakes. These are because the students seldom get chances to practice each component of the speaking. In order to help the students to master each component of the speaking skill, and also to prepare them to be well performed in the task phase, the pre-task phase was used to build the
vocabularies, grammatical forms, and also to achieve the students’ pronunciation. In the pre-task phase, the researcher would try to use many different kinds of activities to build the students’ vocabularies and expressions related to the topic, and to discuss the
grammatical form with them in order to well prepare them for conducting the activities in the task phase. In the task phase, the students were asked to conduct different activities, and to practice what they have learned in the pre-task. During the task, the students were hoped to speak a lot individually, in pair or in group. After the task phrase, it was
followed with the task optimization; in this phase, the researcher would optimize the task by underlining or reviewing the sentence patterns and vocabularies or expressions dealing with the language that the students just had learned, and asked the students to talk or practice the topic from different necessary aspects logically if there still had time left.
commit to user b. Implementing the Action
1) First Meeting a) Opening the class
It was a warm Sunday afternoon (usually there were no meetings on Sunday, but that day they had meeting in order to substitute the meeting on next Wednesday as the students would hold Sport Meet on next Wednesday). The bell rang at 14: 10, and the researcher entered the classroom with her collaborator, Miss Zeng, an English teacher of this college. The researcher greeted the students “Good afternoon everybody!” and the students replied “Good afternoon teacher.” eagerly. Then, researcher checked the students’ attendance list. There were nine students who were absent that day. The total numbers of the students in this class were thirty-eight students; thirty-six female students and two male students.
b) Main activity (1) Pre-task
The researcher started the class by asking the students some leading questions. She asked the students what kinds of aspects did they care about when they buying some items, such as stationary in the store or supermarket and how the people in the store introduced the items to them. The students listed vocabularies on many aspects while the researcher was writing them down on the blackboard. After the leading questions, the researcher introduced the topic that they were going to learn in that meeting. The researcher distributed the work sheets to the students and started the activity. She asked the students to read the new words after her in activity one first and then she asked them to look at the pictures on the worksheet or the screen to match the pictures with its right words. Most of the students did a good job; they could match the pictures with its right words and could easily identify which were office equipments and which were office stationeries. However, there were also some students who couldn’t match the shredder, sellotape stapler, stamp, and notepad with their right pictures as these words were new to them, one of the students also asked how to use the clipboard. The researcher explained to them respectively.
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After that, the researcher continued to Activity 2. At the beginning, she asked the students to read the new words after her again, and then she asked the students to speak out the new words according to the flash cards that she was showing to them. The
After that, the researcher continued to Activity 2. At the beginning, she asked the students to read the new words after her again, and then she asked the students to speak out the new words according to the flash cards that she was showing to them. The