Character Education in Teaching Speaking Assessing Speaking

36 student cannot think of what to say. Second, if the teacher may possibly forget the students’ performance it is helpful to record them. The third is the teacher can give feedback to the whole class by pointing those mistakes made by more than one person.

7. Character Education in Teaching Speaking

Character education is a national movement creating schools that foster ethical, responsible and caring young people by modeling and teaching good character through emphasizing on universal values that people share. Good character is not formed automatically. It is developed over time through a sustained process of teaching, example, learning and practice. It is developed through character education. Character values can be taught during the speaking class. Students communicate with others are not merely for the sake of speaking, but also for building a convenient conversation which is ethically appropriate. They should learn pragmatic competence functional and sociolinguistic and strategic competence. Students know the difference of Indonesian culture and western culture; how to start the conversation with foreigners and how to interrupt it; how to be a good listener; how to respect someone’s opinion and deliver it and so forth. During the cooperative learning, character values can be conducted when students learn how to work with different people; how to delegate duty to friends; how to respect one another and so forth. 37

8. Assessing Speaking

Assessing speaking is a challenging task as there are many factors that influence our impression of how well someone can speak a language and because we expect test scores to be accurate. In most language course testing takes place at the beginning and at the end of the course as well as during the course. Setting and marking a written test of grammar is relatively easy and time-efficient but a speaking test is not Thornbury, 2005. Thornbury 2005 also sets some types of spoken test commonly used. They are interviews, live monologues, recorder monologues, role plays, collaborative tasks and discussions. Additionally, Thornbury 2005 claims that in the CELS Cambridge Certificate in English Language Speaking Skills Test of Speaking, there are four categories to be tested: grammar and vocabulary, discourse management, pronunciation, and interactive communication. Grammar and vocabulary requires candidates to use accurate and appropriate syntactic forms and vocabulary in order to meet the task requirements at each level. Examiners are looking for evidence of the candidate’s ability to express ideas in coherent, connected speech in discourse management category. This task requires candidates to produce utterances in order to convey information and to express opinions. Pronunciation deals with the ability of the test-takers to produce comprehensible utterances in the form of individual sounds, the appropriate linking words, stress and intonation to convey the intended meaning. The last category is interactive communication. This category refers to the test- takers’ 38 ability to interact with the interlocutor and other candidate by initiating and responding appropriately at the required speed and rhythm to fulfil the task requirements. Thornbury 2005 also proposes two main ways to assess speaking performance. They are holistic scoring and analytic scoring. Holistic scoring is giving a single score for the whole speaking performance. This kind of assessing is time-efficient and enough for informal testing of progress. On the other hand, analytic scoring takes longer. However, it requires testers to take a variety of factors into account and it is fairer and more reliable. Four of five categories seem to be maximum testers can handle at one time. Speaking scores usually take the form of numbers but they also may also be verbal categories. If numbers are using to test speaking skills a rating scale will describe what the score means. However scales are difficult to write because of the lack of real evidence about language learning and because of the need to summarise descriptors into short statements to make them easy to use. He states that there are two interactive processes needed to assess speaking performance. The first is the test administration process where the participants interact with the examiner or with other participants to show their speaking skills. The second process is rating or evaluation in which the examiner applies the rating to the test performance that produces scores Louma, 2004. Considering those approaches of speaking test above, the combination of analytic scoring and rating scale will be suitable to assess speaking skills in this 39 research. The criteria of assessment may involve grammar, vocabulary, fluency, pronunciation, and interactive communication. The rating scale can be used to assess each criterion so that the score can represent studen ts’ strengths and weaknesses in each criterion.

E. Cooperative Language Learning

1. The Definition of Cooperative Language Learning

Cooperative Language Learning CLL is one of the most distinguished of all instructional practices. It has become a popular approach to the organization of classroom instruction as CLL provides students the opportunities to use the language in meaningful situation. Cooperative learning is based on the works of Jean Piaget’s and Lev Vygotsky’s developmental theories which highlights the importance of discussion and joint problem solving among peers. Some experts have defined the term cooperative in many different fields. Each of them gives emphasis to a particular aspect but all definitions, more or less are similar. Slavin 1995 proposes that cooperative learning refers to a teaching methods in which students work in small groups to learn academic content. The concept is that the members are discussing, arguing, and helping each other to accomplish a certain goal; higher-level students will help lower- level ones to improve their understanding of the subject. According to Slavin 1995, the idea of cooperative learning is that by giving a reward to a group rather than individual, the students will be motivated to help one another to master the materials. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning