Implementing Talking Chips in SMP

discussion with others since they were not accustomed to it. Later, they cannot speak fluently. Then, related to the learning strategies, the teacher did not use effective technique to build the students ’ motivation in the teaching and learning process. In addition, the materials given by the teacher were not interesting and less variation. As a consequence, the students were not interested to involve in the teaching and learning process. Considering the facts that the students and the teacher need an appropriate strategy in order to arouse students’ speaking skill in teaching and learning process of speaking, the researcher used Talking Chips as a strategy to improve students’ speaking skill. Talking chips is designed to be implemented in the English teaching-learning process, including speaking. Talking chips is believed to be effective to improve the students’ speaking skills. Talking chips provides a wide range of opportunity for students to be more confident to interact and communicate with other students in teaching and learning process since the activity consists of a group discussion. Before the students speak up, they have to put the chips one by one every time they want to speak up. In summary, it is expected that Talking Chips is able to improve the students’ speaking ability. The implementation of Talking Chips in the teaching and learning process is hoped to solve the speaking problems encountered by the VIIA students’ of SMPN 1 Trucuk. 35

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD

A. Research Design

This study was categorized as classroom action research. In this study, the researcher was involved in improving students ’ speaking skill. This action research aims at portraying the process of the improvement of students ability in speaking. The nature of this action research is collaborative which involved the English teacher as the collaborator and the researcher herself. The researcher and the collaborator tried to improve the way in teaching speaking especially using Talking Chips in the teaching process. This research is categorized as action research because it essentially gives an emphasis on solving the problems that obtained in the teaching and learning process based on the preliminary observations and interviews. Thus, action research also improved the quality of the teaching and learning process of reading. Burns 2010: 3 states that action research is part of a broad movement that has been going on in education generally for some time. Therefore, in action research, the teacher becomes an investigator or explorer of the personal teaching context, while at the same time being one of the participants in it. So, one of the main goals of action research is to identify the problematic situation or issue that the participants who may include teachers and students which consider worth were looking into more deeply and systematically.