33
and encourage them to participate in assessing their friends’ performance. The best pair performance would receive a prize. This aimed to motivate the students
to do their best in making and performing their dialogue. The best performance was chosen by class.
g. Students’ Reflection
In this stage, the researcher planned to distribute reflective questions to the students at the end of this cycle. There were three questions. Namely: what did the
students get from the topic material? Were there any new experiences or things that the students got from the lesson? and how did the students feel during the
lesson? Reflective questions aimed to help the students reflect on what they had learned.
2. Action and Observation
The action and the observation in cycle one were conducted in two meetings on Wednesday, April 11, 2012 and Thursday, April 12, 2012. The
researcher asked for help from an outside observer and the English teacher of the class to observe the teaching-learning process during the implementation.
a. Constructivism
In this stage, the researcher began the class by greeting the students. The students responded the teacher’s greeting enthusiastically. The researcher asked
the students about the topic of previous lesson. Some of the students answered that they had learned about describing people. Then, the researcher tried to recall
the students’ knowledge about describing people. After that, the researcher
34
complimented some students on their appearances and their surrounding things. Some of the students looked happy because the researcher gave them some
compliments like “you look beautiful with your glasses”, “you look good with your new hair style”, and “your pen is cute”. They responded to the compliments
well. However, some of the students looked as if they did not know what to do when the researcher gave them compliments. They just shook their head. After
that, the researcher asked the students to guess what they were going to do today. The students answered it enthusiastically.
b. Inquiry
In this stage, the researcher showed 3 pictures of famous artists. The students were happy because those artists were their favorite artists. Then the
researcher asked the students’ opinion about the pictures. The students gave their opinion enthusiastically. Most of the students could state their opinion about the
pictures. However, some students who sat at the back could not state their opinion well because they could not see the pictures clearly. Those students were doing
something else which was not related to the topic material. The researcher asked the students to imagine those artists were in front of them, and then the students
were asked to give compliments to those artists. The students were very happy to give compliments to the pictures. They were very active giving compliments to
those artists. After that, the researcher and the students discussed the aim of learning expressing and responding to compliments. The researcher asked the
students about why we needed to give compliments and respond to the compliments well. The students looked confused. The researcher could assume
35
that the students had not known about why they needed to give compliments and respond to the compliments well.
This stage was continued in the second meeting of the first cycle. The researcher explained about cultural differences between American and Indonesian
in giving and responding to compliments. The researcher told them about her past experiences dealing with Americans. Americans tended to express admiration by
giving compliments and accepting the compliments. For Indonesians, it was common to see people refusing compliments. Based on the observation, the
students paid attention to the story.
c. Learning Community
