1. 4 Assessing Speaking LITERATURE REVIEW
aim of AR is to improve the work quality of others. Practically, this research purpose is to improve the quality of the research subject. The subject of the
research may be a group of people or only an individual who have the same purpose which is to improve the quality of their work. Syamsuddin and Damaianti
2006 conclude that AR is more emphasize to the activity action by experimenting the ideas through the practice or the real situation in a micro scale,
and it is hoped that the activity may repair and improve the quality in a certain situation, teaching and learning process for the example. Parson Brown 2002
mention that AR can make the teachers to study about their own classes. It includes the method that the teachers use during the teaching and learning
process, study about the students, and study about the teachers themselves. AR is applied in the classroom to gain better understanding and to improve the quality
and the effectiveness of the teachers themselves. The research is focus on the unique characteristics from a population.
Action Research has some characteristics. Syamsuddin and Damaianti 2006 mention that the researcher is the active agent in the main activity. They
also mention that the researcher is the agent of change. Meanwhile, the participant of the research will have the benefit from the result of the action which was given
regularly by the researcher. Besides that, Stringer 2007 states that AR is democratic because it gives many chances for the people to participate. AR is
equitable because it gives value to every person’s work. AR is liberating because it provides the people’s freedom from pressure situations and weak conditions.
AR is life enhancing because it is able to show the expression of the people’s
potential. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
It is known that there are some advantages in doing AR. Syamsuddin and Damaianti 2006 state that when a teacher does AR, he or she does not need to
leave the place of work. The teacher can also feel the result of the action that he or she has been planned. Beside the teacher, the respondent will also feel the effect
of the action that has given by the teacher. Those advantages are the benefits that only belong to AR. There is no other research that can give those benefits. Mertler
and Charles 2011 also mention the importance of AR. There are some benefits in conducting AR in the classroom. First, it deals with your own problem in the
classroom, not with somebody else’s problem. Second, AR can be done anytime. It can be started now, or whenever you are ready, and it can also give direct
feedback. Third, AR gives more opportunities to the teachers to understand better and to improve their practice. Fourth, AR as a process may build stronger
relationship between teachers for they share the same problem and they try to solve it together.
There are some stages in doing Action Research. According to Kemmis and McTaggart 1998, the major author of AR, AR usually involves four broad
phases in a cycle of research. The first cycle may be continued into several cycles until a satisfactory result has been achieved and it is considered that it is the time
to stop the cycles. In a cycle of AR, it consists of planning, action, observation, and reflection.
The first stage is planning. In this phase the researcher should identify the problem or the issue during the teaching and learning process. After the problem
has been found, it is the duty of the researcher to develop a plan of action. The purpose of the action is to bring some improvements toward the problem that they
are dealing with. This is the phase where the researcher must consider about what kind of investigation which is possible in dealing the situation and what are the
potential improvements that considered possible in the situation. The second stage is action. In this phase, the plan should be carried out
carefully since there will be some interventions during the teaching situation and the researcher will put the action over an agreed of time. Those interventions will
be critically informed when the researcher questions the assumptions about the current situation and then later on the researcher must plan new and alternative
ways of doing something. In this case means that the researcher must be well prepared in conducting the plan because sometimes the plan is not doing well as it
has been planned before. The third stage is observation. In this phase the researcher must observe the
effects of the action systematically and the researcher also must document the context, actions, and the opinions of those who are involved in the research. We
can call it as a data collection phase where the researcher must use ‘open eyed’ and ‘open-minded’ tools to collect the information about the situation which is
happening during the research. The fourth stage is reflection. In this phase the researcher must reflect on,
evaluate, and describe the effects of the action during the research. The purpose of this phase is to make sense of what has happened and to understand the problem
that the researcher has explored more sharply. After doing the reflection, the researcher may decide whether he or she wants to continue the research into next
cycles or finish it and later on the researcher may share the result of the research with others as part of the ongoing professional development.