CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
A. Conclusions
This research has the aim of improving students speaking skills through communicative activities. In line with the discussion in the previous chapter, it
can be concluded that: 1.
The communicative activities improved the students‘ speaking skills. They improved not only the quantity in producing the language but
also the quality in speaking in English. It can be seen through many aspects; they could use the language more fluently and accurately,
there is a willingness to practice to use the target language, they never felt afraid of making mistakes in using the language. Having a
lot of speaking practices supported by media, they were enthusiastic in joining the teaching and learning processes and encouraged to
produce the language. In addition, they had a high self-confidence in participating in the class activities. They tried to be active, attentive,
and responsive toward the teaching and learning processes. 2.
This result creates some changes toward certain actors that involve in the learning and teaching process. The changes are :
a. The teaching and learning process
The teaching and learning process was found effective when it was well-designed since the very beginning. At the beginning, the objectives of the lessons through
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asking and answering activities accompanied by media stimulated the students to learn. The sequences of activities must be well-prepared and well-designed to
ensure that the teaching and learning processes could run smoothly, systematically and effective.
By having effective learning processes, the students could find the class easy to follow and they could accomplish the learning objectives more easily and it could
also help them to understand the lessons as well as the directions and goals of the lessons. Ef
fective and interesting class activities could also increase the students‘ attention toward the lessons.
To be able to conduct the communicative activities, the students needed to understand the linguistic forms. It was reached through pre-communicative
activities in the forms of language-focused and comprehension-focused activities. These activities included the vocabulary enrichment and the pronunciation
drilling. The vocabulary exercises could help the students enrich their vocabularies which were relevant to the topic of the following communicative
activities that they would have. The drilling was also important as reinforcement when the students wanted to speak in English.
Grammar explanation was given by using certain context and the written exercises focusing on their accuracy and their ability to construct sentences were also given
after. By understanding the linguistic forms, the students understood the procedures of communicative activities in the forms of various information gap
activities and games through repeated explanation accompanied by media, examples and pictures. Modeling real situations was also done in conducting the
communicative activities because it was effective to help the students in accomplishing the tasks. Therefore, they were ready to have communicative
activities. Classroom English accompanied by gestures, movement and body language was
effective to make the students understand the English words and expressions as well as to help them understand the content of the explanation. Explanation was
delivered using simple sentences and by giving a lot of examples to the students, so that the students could understand not only the explanation but also the
language use of the expressions in certain contexts in their daily life. By using simple sentences in explaining the materials the research could not only anticipate
the complexion of the students‘ understanding process which might arose but also encourage them to speak up and use the language expressions being taught.
Grouping the students was done in various ways such as by considering the students characteristics or simply by counting or making lottery. When I mixed
the students in such ways, the fast learners could help and also encouraged the slow learners to understand better and to improve the English production. It could
also prevent the boredom among students when I changed their partners regularly. Moreover, the students were more motivated to involve in the class
activities when it was done in groups or in pairs. b.
The students‘ behavior Being taught using communicative approach, the students became more
responsive in joining the teaching and learning processes. The students became more confident in expressing themselves using English. They could actively
volunteer themselves to accomplish every activity in the class. They were active in discussing the tasks, giving feedback to each other and constructing
grammatical expressions in different language functions and contexts. They were also more aware of the words‘ pronunciation so that they made fewer mistakes in
accuracy and pronunciation after having a lot of grammar exercises, vocabulary enrichment and pronunciation drilling and a lot of speaking practices. The
students were happy and enthusiastic in joining the activities which were conducted individually, in groups, or in pairs when I gave them rewards. The
rewards which I gave successfully motivated the students to learn. Encouraging the students and making the learning processes at ease were effective
to improve their involvement in the class activities. The students became confident and comfortable to produce English due to the supporting and warm
atmosphere. Giving feedback could help the students improve their speaking skills, especially
their accuracy and pronunciation. However, this was done carefully and the class atmosphere was very important to make students not feel humiliated. The
atmosphere was encouraging and the students seemed to enjoy the speaking activities very much. The students became motivated not to make the common
mistakes that they usually produced when speaking. c.
The English teacher Being involved in this research study, the English teachers got lots of experiences
of how to teach English, especially teaching speaking. He got more knowledge in using the classroom English during the teaching and learning processes,
conducting various activities, using media to support students‘ learning and managing the class. He got better understanding of how to design appropriate and
interesting materials, media and activities. He became more aware that conducting communicative activities for speaking practices was important to do to improve
students‘ speaking skills. d.
The researcher After conducting this research, my professionalism as a student-teacher
improved. I got better understanding about the nature of teaching and learning processes. I experienced to teach students with different characteristics. There
were some students who learnt very fast and some who learnt more slowly. Thus, it was important to consider individual differences in teaching and learning
processes. After conducting the pre-communicative and communicative activities, I got more knowledge on how to prepare the students to do the tasks, how to make
them understand how to expose them to speak up, how to handle the students during the activities and how to give appropriate feedback. I became more aware
that the students needed lot of encouragement, motivation and exposures as well as a good atmosphere to make them involved in class activities and be able to use
the language fluently and accurately. It also made me realized that the class could be successful when there was a good preparation. Thus, it is very important to be
creative in designing the class activities which could create a good experience of leaning English. After experiencing the process of designing the appropriate
materials for the students, I became more aware that I needed to conduct various
activities which could make the learning enjoyable for the students. I became more reflective since he must reflect to herself to change the students to be better.
B. Implications
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