Students’ Attitude on the Implementation of the Presentation Technique at the English Education Department of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta
Students’ Attitude on the Implementation of the Presentation Technique
at the English Education Department
of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta
A Skripsi
Submitted to the Faculty of Language Education in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for Degree
Sarjana Pendidikan
Anis Astriani
20120540084
English Education Department
Faculty of Language Education
Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta
2016
vii
TABLE OF CONTENT
COVER
i
APPROVEL SHEET
ii
AUTHOR’S DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY
iii
DEDICATION
iv
MOTTO
v
ACKNOWLEDMENT
vi
TABLE OF CONTENT
vii
TABLE OF FIGURE
ix
TABLE OF TABLE
x
ABSTRACT
xi
Chapter One Introduction
1
Background
1
Statement of the problem
3
Limitation of the problem
4
Question of the research
4
Objective of the research
4
Significance of the research
5
Outline of the research
6
Chapter Two Literature Review
7
Attitude
7
Active Learning Strategies in Higher Education
11
Presentation
14
Conceptual Framework
24
viii
Chapter Three Methodology
27
Research Design
27
Research Setting
27
Research Participant
28
Data Collection Technique
30
Data Analysis
32
Chapter Four Finding and Discussion
33
Findings
33
Discussion
44
Chapter Five Conclusion and Recommendation
56
Conclusion
56
Recommendation
57
References
Appendix 1. Interview Guideline
Appendix 2. Selective Coding
59
i
STUDENTS’ ATTITUDE ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE
PRESENTATION TECHNIQUE AT THE ENGLISH EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF UNIVERSITAS MUHAMMADIYAH YOGYAKARTA
Abstract
This study aims to investigate students’ attitudes on the implementation of
the presentation technique at English Education Department of Universitas
Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta in terms of cognitive attitude (beliefs) and affective
attitude (feeling) aspects. Total number of participants of this research was six
participants in academic year 2012/2013. The researcher employed qualitative
method with descriptive research design. Besides, it utilized an interview as data
collection method.
In addition, there were two major findings in this reserach. First, regarding
the aspects of cognitive attitude (beliefs), the participants believed that the
presentation technique offered some advantages such as increasing their selfconfidence, training their public speaking skill, training them to manage time,
practicing their teamwork, increasing self-responsibility, developing English Skill,
training their body language, enhancing critical thinking, and enhancing
creativity. Moreover, there were participants who also revealed the disadvantages
of implementing the presentation technique such as it was a formality, it was a
waste of time, it did not contribute to any skill, it disadvantaged the low selfconfident students, and it stimulated students’ anxiety. Second, in terms of
students’ affective attitude (feeling), the participants also revealed happy and
unhappy feeling in implementing the presentation technique. They felt happy
since it enhanced their English proficiency. It also helped the students to delegate
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the materials in equitable way. Besides, they were unhappy with the
implementation of the presentation technique since it made them nervous, and the
lecturer gave short time to prepare the presentation.
Keywords: Attitude, Presentation technique, Oral presentation
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Chapter One
Introduction
This chapter explains the background of the study which discusses the
curiosity of the researcher to conduct this research. Besides, it discusses the
statement of the problem, limitation of the problem, questions of the research,
objective of the research, significance of the research, and outline of the research.
Background
Nowadays, teaching and learning using technology is very popular. It
happens since technology offers a new way in learning activity. It also provides a
good visual aid. Hence, using technology will attract students’ attention in
learning process. Further, it makes the students easier to understand the materials.
Maddux and Aberasturi (2008) argue, “the use of technology is becoming
increasingly popular as a teaching and learning tool in education (p.1)”.
Moreover, technology is used as a tool in teaching and learning process.
One of the techniques which use technology as a tool is the presentation
technique. The presentation technique is a process to deliver a content of a subject
and it is exposed in a class (Vinci, 2009). In line with that, according to the
researcher’s experience, the presentation technique provides free space for the
students to express their feeling and opinion in public area. Nicklos (2003) states,
“an effective presentation happens as a consequence of four related activities such
as plan, prepare, practice and present your presentation (p.3)”. As a presenter, the
students have responsibility to search the materials which will be presented. After
that, they have to read all the materials related to their topic and write the main
points of the materials in the slide such as power point presentation. Likewise, the
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students have to practice the way to deliver the materials and present the materials
clearly. Hence, technology plays an important role to support the students in
delivering the material since it can be employed to attract audiences’ attention.
The technology which is commonly used in the presentation technique is
known as presentation software. According to Maddux and Aberasturi (2008),
presentation software has become an accepted lecture aid in higher education. In
line with that, there are some presentation softwares that are generally used in the
presentation technique such as prezi, power point presentation, magiclantern,
sparkol, power point express, and oxygen office impress. These softwares are
frequently found in the teaching and learning at university level.
One of the universities that implement the presentation technique in
teaching and learning process is English Education Department of Universitas
Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. The students of this department have employed the
presentation techniques since they were in the first year. Mostly, each lecturer
offers teaching and learning activity by using the presentation technique. The
researcher believes that this department still continuously uses the presentation
techniques since it might have a positive impact for the students such as
improving their speaking skill, increasing their self-confidence, arranging their
time management, or building a good critical thinking. However, those kinds of
things do not run well for some students. Sometimes, they are not aware in
preparing their presentation. The students’ awareness on the advantages of the the
presentation technique has not been built yet. According to the above statement,
the researcher is interested in investigating students’ attitude on the
implementation of the presentation technique.
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Statement of the problem
The researcher believes that the presentation technique is one of the
effective techniques which can be used in classroom activity to build a good
learning process. In fact, it provides enough space for the students to build their
self-confidence, arrange their time management, and organize their way of
thinking. Unfortunately, it is not always effective for some students because it is
not as easy as they think. It requires a long time to create a good presentation. As
the result, some of them might not get the advantages of the presentation
technique in teaching and learning activity.
According to the researcher’s experience, there are some problems that are
faced by the students at English Education Department of Universitas
Muhamadiyah Yogyakarta. First, when the lecturer asks the students to make a
group presentation, there will be students who cannot be responsible with their
tasks. In other words, they are dependent to other members. When the other
members prepare the presentation, it seems that they do not have interest in
joining the group members to prepare the presentation. This has caused the
trouble in the group itself.
The second problem is their time management. Some students seem to
have limited time to prepare, whereas the time allocation for the presentation task
had been given way in advance. In fact, students tend to procrastinate to do the
task. Those problems enhance the curiosity of the researcher in revealing the
students’ attitude on the implementation of the presentation technique.
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Limitation of the problem
Presentation has several areas to be studied. Many researches have been
conducted in the area of the advantages of individual and group presentation, and
presentation as a way to enhance students’ self-confidence. Here, the researcher
only focuses on investigating students’ cognitive (beliefs) and affective (feeling)
attitude on the implementation of the presentation technique. The researcher does
not involve behavioral attitude since it requires more technique to collect the data.
In addition, revealing behavioral attitude need to be done by using direct
observation when the students are doing presentation. This research will be
conducted at English Education Department of Universitas Muhammadiyah
Yogyakarta. The participants of this study are the students of English Education
Department Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta academic year 2012/2013.
Questions of the research
1. What are the students’ cognitive attitudes (beliefs) on the implementation
of the presentation technique at English Education Department of
Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta?
2. What are the students’ affective attitudes (feeling) on the implementation
of the presentation technique at English Education Department of
Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta?
Objectives of the research
1. To reveal the students’ cognitive attitude on the implementation of the
presentation technique at English Education Department of Universitas
Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta.
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2. To reveal the students’ affective attitudes on the implementation of the
presentation technique at English Education Department of Universitas
Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta.
Significance of the research
In this part, the researcher is going to discuss about the advantages of the
study. The advantages of this study are classifying to lecturers, students,
institution, and the researcher.
Lecturers. The result of this research offers information for the lecturers
to improve their teaching strategies especially in the presentation technique.
Presentation is one of the techniques that can be used to create an autonomous
learning since it proposes some steps such as plan, prepare, practice and present.
Thus, presentation will help lecturers to create an effective classroom activity in
teaching and learning process.
Students. The results of this study have several advantages for the
students. It can be used for the students to organize their thinking in which it can
be useful for their future life. Furthermore, presentation also trains them to have a
good time management and enhance their self-confidence.
Institution. This research provides several advantages for the institution
such as offering information which is related with presentation and telling the
advantages of presentation. Likewise, it can be used for the institution to add
some supported facilities related to presentation such as internet bandwidth, LCDprojector, and computer for each class.
The Researcher. After conducting this research, the researcher knows the
beliefs of the students towards the the presentation technique. In addition, the
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result of this study also provides information which is related with students’
affective attitude towards the implementation of the presentation technique.
Therefore, it can help the researcher to improve her teaching strategies in learning
process since the researcher is one of the future teachers.
Outline of the research
This research consists of five chapters. The first chapter discussed about
background of the research. Further, the researcher also talked about statement of
the problem, limitation of the research, research question, significance of the
research and outline of the research. The second chapter, the researcher focused
on the literature review. It discussed about the theories which support this
research. It was divided by three main points such as attitude theory, active
learning technique in higher education, and presentation. Hence, it will be
explained more specific for each point. The third chapter was methodology. The
main idea of this chapter was about research methodology which was used in this
research. The researcher used qualitative research. It also used interview to find
data collection method.
The fourth chapters were focused to talk about the finding and discussion.
All the data of research that have been gathered were discussed to answer the
research questions and the final result of the research was discussed in this
section. The last chapter was conclusion and suggestion. In this section the
researcher concluded that the implementation of the presentation technique was
still an effective way in teaching and learning process. Beside that the researcher
also gave some suggestion about the beneficial of classroom presentation.
Therefore, it can be used continuously for teaching and learning process.
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Chapter Two
Literature Review
This research was conducted to investigate students’ attitude on the
implementation of the presentation technique. In this chapter the researcher is
going to discuss about some supporting resources which are related to the study.
There are some points to be discussed such as the definition of attitude, three
components of attitude, the importance of attitude, active learning strategies in
higher education, definition of presentation, effective of presentation, types of
presentation, the process of making good presentation, goals of presentation, the
advantages of presentation, and conceptual framework.
Attitude
Attitude is one of the factors that influence foreign language learners in
learning process. Another factors which influence learning process included
motivation, anxiety, aptitudes, learning achievements, age, personalities and
intelligence (Gardner; Lehmann as cited in Abidin, Mohhamdi and Alzwari,
2012). Further Fakeye argues that the most important factors that impact on
language learning are learners’ attitude (as cited in Abidin, Mohhamdi and
Alzwari, 2012).
Definition of Attitude. Attitude in general meaning defines as someone’s
point of view or it is like feeling to achieve something. Moreover, attitude based
on Cambridge International Dictionary defines as, “a feeling or opinion about
something or someone, or a way of behaving that is caused by this”. Gardner
(1985) points out that attitude are an evaluative response to some referent or
attitude object, inferred on the basis of the individual’s beliefs or opinions to
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achieve something whether in academic or non-academic ways. Montano and
Kasprzyk (2008) also add:
Attitude is determined by the individual’s beliefs about outcomes or
attributes of performing the behavior (behavioral beliefs), weighted by
evaluations of those outcomes or attributes. Thus, a person who holds
strong beliefs that positively valued outcomes will result from performing
the behavior will have a positive attitude toward the behavior. Conversely,
a person who holds strong beliefs that negatively valued outcomes will
result from the behavior will have a negative attitude. (p. 71).
Henceforth, according to Melhim (2009) positive and negative attitude are defined
as:
Positive attitude is taking decision of acceptance or reaction that agrees the
attitude we met or it is the attitudes that reveals the advantages of the
subject to take up its value. However negative attitude is defined as
revealing the advantages of the subject to dismiss it and to weaken its
strong attitude. (p.683).
Based on the definition from experts above, the researcher concludes that
attitude is someone’s beliefs or point of view towards an object which is
influenced by the desire of that person whether they want to achieve or not. Those
experts above have similar definition about the attitude. It focuses on their way of
behaving, reacting and feeling towards the object.
Three Components of Attitude. Learning process is viewed as a positive
change in the individual’s personality in expressions of the emotional (affective),
psychomotor (behavioral) as well as cognitive fields (Kara, 2009). In addition,
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Vogh and Vaughan note, “attitude is relatively enduring organization of beliefs,
feeling, and behavioral tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups,
events or symbols (as cited in Melhim, 2009, p.150-151)”. Attitude concept can
be viewed from these three factors which are called as cognitive, affective, and
behavioral.
Cognitive Attitude. This aspect of attitude involves the beliefs of the
language learners about the knowledge that they receive and their understanding
in the process of language learning. It is also supported by Melhim (2009),
“cognitive attitude is a cognitive evaluation of the entity that constitutes an
individual’s belief about the object (p.684)”. In short, cognitive attitude is beliefs
about the attitude object. Jain (2014) also express that “belief is information a
person has about an object; information that specifically links an object and
attribute. The cognitive component is the storage section where an individual
organizes the information (p.7).”
Therefore, cognitive attitude has an impact for the students. Chaiken and
Trope (1999) describe that the effect of beliefs can change people’s beliefs about
the object of the message. Additionally, Abidin, Mohamadi and Alzwari (2012)
also state that cognitive attitude can be classified into four steps of connecting the
previous knowledge and the new one, creating new knowledge, checking new
knowledge, and applying the new knowledge in many situations.
Affective Attitude. Learning process is an emotional process. Feng and
Chen state it is affected by different emotional factors (as cited in Choy and
Troudi, 2006). It can help the learners express whether they like or dislike the
objects or surrounding situations. Choy and Troudi (2006) explain it is agreed that
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the inner feelings and emotions of foreign language learners influence their
perspectives and their attitudes towards the target language. Affective attitude can
be assed more quickly rather than behavioral attitude and cognitive attitude since
“feeling is first. Besides, emotional evaluations are seen as more diagnostic of true
attitude than non-emotional ones (Peters and Slovic, 2007). Verplanken, Hofstee,
and Janssen point out, “participants responded more rapidly to their feelings than
their thoughts about attitude objects” (as cited in Peters and Slovic, 2007, p.301).
In sum, affective attitude is feeling about the attitude object.
Furthermore, a common question which often faced is how should the
affective component of attitudes be conceptualized and measured. Here, there are
three studies compared measures based on different conceptualizations (Peters and
Slovic, 2007). Affective attitudes can be holistic reactions to objects or responses
derived from spontaneous images of the objects. It can be bipolar or unipolar in
structure or it also can be discrete emotional evaluations (e.g., angry, happy) or
more general valence evaluations (e.g., good, bad).
Behavioral Attitude. The behavioral aspect of attitude deals with the way
one behaves and reacts in particular situations. In fact, the successful language
learning enhances the learners to identify themselves with the native speakers and
acquire various aspects of behaviors which characterize the members of the target
language community (Abidin, Mohammadi and Alzwari, 2012).Hence, Kara
(2009) also states that positive attitudes lead to show the positive behaviors
toward courses of study, with learners absorbing themselves in courses and
motivating to learn more. To sum up, the influence of attitude towards behavior is
bigger rather than the influence of behavior towards the attitude.
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This research will only focus on investigating students’ cognitive (beliefs)
and affective (feeling) attitude. The researcher might ask some questions to the
students which are used to expose their beliefs and feeling towards the
implementation of the presentation technique. Since the presentation technique
has been commonly used in learning process, the students might have different
beliefs and feeling on it.
Importance of Attitude. Reid (2003, p. 33) declared, “attitudes are
important to us because they cannot be neatly separated from study.” Attitude is
considered as a crucial factor influencing language performance (Visser, 2008).
Achievement in a target language relies not only on intellectual capacity, but also
on the learner’s attitudes towards language learning. It means that learning
language should be approached primarily as a social and psychological
phenomenon rather than as a purely academic one.
Active Learning Strategies in Higher Education
Commonly, active learning strategies were taught in university level.
Active learning strategies were used to revenge the old style teaching in higher
education. The main purpose of these strategies was to create student-centered
learning. Hence, the definition and the examples of active learning strategies are
explained below.
Definition of Active Learning. In general terms, Mayer and Jones (1993)
define, “active learning involves providing opportunities for students to
meaningfully talk and listen, write, read and reflect on the content, ideas, issues,
and concern of an academic subject (p.6)”. Moreover, the role of the students in
teaching and learning process is bigger than the lecturer. In order to create good
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circumstance in the classroom, the students are forced to be participated actively
in the academic subject. Rudasill (2011) points out that active learning technique
is used to reduce the traditional teaching model, in which the role of the students
as passive receptors and the role of the lecturer becomes the source of language.
Whereas, the role of the students should become an active receptors and the role
of the lecturer should become a facilitator (Rudasill, 2011).
The Examples of Active Learning Techniques. According to Faust and
Paulson (1998) there are some active learning techniques which can be applied in
college classroom activity. Furthermore, they have classified active learning
technique into seven parts, such as Exercises for Individual Students, Questions
and Answers, Immediate-Feedback Techniques, Critical-Thinking Motivators,
Share/Pair, Overcoming Obstacles to Active Learning, and Cooperative-Learning
Strategies.
Here, the researcher specifically looks at the cooperative-learning strategy.
Cooperative learning strategy is a strategy which is used in teaching and learning
activity. The aim of this strategy is to educate the students to work in groups.
Each group consists of three to five students. Those statements are supported by
Faust and Paulson (1998), “the kinds of exercises included under the rubric of
cooperative learning all utilize small groups in which three to five students work
together toward a common goal (p.13)”.Additionally, they also state that
cooperative-learning strategies are also divided into five activities which are
Panel-Discussion, Work at the Blackboard, Concept-Mapping, Visual List and
Role Playing.
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The first is Panel-Discussion. According to Faust and Paulson (1998)
panel discussion is generally known as the presentation technique. Here, the roles
of the students are to be presenter and audience. Technically, the lecturer divides
the students into small groups which consist of three or five students. Each group
has to present a different topic. It is better for the lecturer to give same theme, but
in a different topic area. For example, the lecturer might ask the students to
discuss about a topic under the medical issues. Moreover, the lecturer has to
divide into some subtopic such as, the roles of doctor, patients’-rights advocates,
hospital officials, and so forth (Faust and Paulson, 1998). They also note, “the key
to this method’s success is to choose topics carefully and to give students
sufficient direction to ensure that they are well-prepared for their presentations
(p.16).”
Second activity under the cooperative-learning strategy is Work at the
Blackboard. This activity gives space for the students to discuss about problem
solving strategy (“Should we try this?”) without embarrassing students who have
not any idea to give solution (Faust and Paulson, 1998). If the classroom does not
have black board, the students can still work in a group by using pieces of paper
and pen, or computers. The third activity is Concept-Mapping. It can be used to
encourage students in a way to share their ideas into piece by piece information.
Generally, it is called as brainstorming technique. It educates the students to
generate their ideas into a particular topic. Next activity is Visual List. It seems
like the lecturer have one idea or topic about something, then the lecturer asks the
students to list everything they can think under the topic which has been written
on the black or white board. Faust and Paulson (1998) point out, “the students
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typically can generate more comprehensive lists working in groups than they can
alone (p.15)”. The fifth activity in cooperative-learning strategy is Role Playing.
The students demonstrate the situation in a group. It is used to lead them in having
a better understanding of the theories that has been taught in the classroom.
In addition, English Education Department of Universitas Muhammadiyah
Yogyakarta is one of the departments which implement the presentation technique
in teaching and learning activity. The students have implemented the presentation
technique since they were in the first semester. The department provides some
supporting courses which used to implement the presentation technique. Since the
presentation technique is also frequently used, later the researcher will expose
some related study about the presentation technique.
Presentation
Presentation was known as sending and receiving the information to the
audience. Usually, it was supported by three common factors namely presenter,
audience and visual aids. Thus, the components which are related to the
presentation will be discussed as follows.
Definition of Presentation. Commonly presentation is defined as a
process to deliver a content of a subject and it is exposed in a class (Vinci, 2009).
Presentation seeks to inform and give some explanation about some topic.
Presentation is an essential tool that leads the students to success in their learning
process because it helps students to organize step by step while preparing the
presentation.
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Further, Chan (2009) defines,
Presentation is the process of showing and explaining the content of a
topic to an audience or a group of audiences. It is often used to assess
student learning in individual or group research projects. In recent times,
presentation is no longer just about oral presentation but also visuals.
Paper, white board or PowerPoint presentation are sample tools to aid the
visual part of the presentation. (p.1).
Based on the definition above, the presentation technique can be
concluded as a way to deliver the information to other people. It is a process to
express the ideas or opinion to others. In other hand, presentation is a two-way
communication which acts as the presenter and as the audience. Hence, the way to
deliver the material plays an important role to measure the successful of the
presentation.
According to the researcher’s experiences, the success of a project depends
on a good presentation since it has correlation with the communication and other
soft skills that is used for the future life. Presentations are the medium of choice
for communicating concepts, issues, objectives and results. Further, Vinci (2009)
describes that a presentation is the theme of an exhibition highlighting the core
concepts and keeping the audience attention. Presentation is an attractive way to
transfer knowledge to other people. Westwood (2004) argues that one of some
selected features of effective teaching is using presentation. Meanwhile, Mackey
(1965) also defines that presentation is delivering message to somebody. Here,
presentation means engaging two parties namely presenter and receiver or usually
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it called as audience. This is the process of convey and receive the message which
is based on content.
Effective Presentation. An effective presentation consists of some
components that are related to the lecturer and the learners. In order to create an
effective presentation, the lecturer and the students should aware of the
components. Hence, according to Ur (2009) there are some components to
generate an effective presentation, for example; a) Attention, b) Perception, c)
Understanding, d) Short-term memory, and e) Peer teaching. Besides, King (2002)
mentions, “having students give presentation in front of the class is one of learnercentered activity that has been widely included in teachers’ lesson plan to improve
students’ oral proficiency (p.401)”.
Types of Presentation. Burden and Byrd (1999) classify formal
presentation into three types. The first type is lecturing type. Lecturing type means
the lecturer gives oral presentation as one of the instructional strategy in teaching
and learning process, in which the role of the students are only as the audience.
The students have a responsible to listen to the material that is delivered by the
lecturer and ask some questions if they do not understand about the explanation.
The second is the summary and response of subject matter type. In this
type, the teachers ask each group of the students to sum up the material and
present the material to the other group. Thus, the roles of the teacher are replaced
by the students. The presenters are forced to be active and creative during deliver
the material since they have responsibility to make the audience understand with
their explanation.
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The third is seminar type. Seminar type means the role of the students are
to be the presenter. The students have their own project that has been given by the
teachers and they are responsible to present their final project after finished their
work. The content of the project also contain their opinion, so the students have
opportunity to express their idea towards their project. Annotated bibliography is
one of the examples which can be used as students’ project.
Ur (2012) also categorizes presentation into three types. Those types are
classified based on the length of presentation such as short, medium-length, and
long. The first is short type, it only needs 1 (one) up to 3 (three) minutes long for
the presenter to deliver their presentation. This short type presentation is usually
used to present about a) show and tell, b) describing things, and c) About self
(daily activities). Second type is medium-length. It needs 5 (five) up to 10 (ten)
minutes long to present. There are three criteria that are frequently used in this
presentation, such as: a) narrative, b) instruction/procedure, and c)
recommendation. The last is long type. In this types, the length of presentation is
around 15 (fifteen) minutes or more. The presentation should explain the
organization of the material that will be presented such as opening, outlines, the
main body, the explanations, examples, summarizing and closing. It is often used
to present about information and argument.
According to Tuber (1972) and Yang (2010) the last types of presentation
are classified based on the number of participants in presentation which is
frequently called as individual presentation and group presentation. The number
of participant who are conducted the individual presentation is only one person.
Individual presentation is forced the students to become an independent learner.
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The students have to search the material and also prepare the presentation by
themselves. Afterwards, they also should design the media and search the
information related to the material that will be presented individually (Tuber,
1972). According to Yang (2010) in group presentation, the numbers of
participants who will be the presenters are more than one person. Commonly, the
students will be divided into some groups which consist of three or five students
in each group.
This research focuses on the last types which are individual presentation
and group presentation since both of types are relevant and frequently used in
teaching and learning process at the English Education Department Universitas
Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta.
The Process of Making Good Presentation. Making a good presentation
is not the easiest thing to be done. According to Nicklos (2003) there are some
steps to create an effective presentation. The first step to make a good presentation
is plan. Plan means thinking ahead about important aspects of it. Here, it is where
the presenter begins the task of organizing the presentation. It is included of some
several important aspect such as objective, audience, content, organization, visual,
setting and delivery. The second step is preparation. The centerpiece of this part is
to research the materials and also prepare the slide which will be used to present.
The third step is practice. There are some reasons to have practice section before
the presentation. It trains the presenter to be familiar with the visual slide and the
content of presentation. Further, it helps the presenter to ensure the body
movement. It also assists the presenter to identify the kinds of question and issues
that might surface during the actual presentation. The last step is present. There
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are six factors that the presenter should be aware in making presentation. It
consists of facial expression, pace, voice (intonation, inflection, pronunciation),
body movements (posture, gestures, moving about), use of a pointer (classic
wooden pointer or laser), and the last is roles (in the event of group presentation).
Figure 1. The Process of Presentation
Plan
Prepare
Practice
Present
Goals of Presentation. According to Brookfield and Preskill (1999) there
are some goals of presentation in learning process. First, the students learn to
organize information in a coherent manner. Second, they can practice the use of
logical and emotional appeals to persuade an audience. Third, the students can
practice the use of voice, gesture and bodily action to convey meaning. Fourth,
they will create an effective and useful speaking outline and notes. Fifth, it trains
them to develop experience and confidence in one's presentational skills.
The Advantages of Presentation. Doing presentation frequently offers
some valuable lessons for the students. They get some positive impact on
implementing the presentation technique. According to Milonic (2009) there are
some advantages of classroom presentation that will be described below:
The presenter's peers and lecturer would have the opportunity to ask the
presenter questions regarding his explanation. As the audiences, the other students
have chance to help the presenter to clarify unclear statements and the class to
offer constructive suggestions. In addition, by presenting an assignment in class,
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the presenter could receive direct feedback from the other students and the
lecturer, so that the presenter could make changes before submitting a final
assignment. Higher education students or adult learner are often skilled in some
areas since they have long life experienced and could provide added information
to audience during the presentation.
Afterwards, oral presentation also gives chance for the students to
increase, improve and also provide alternative method in learning process to
enhance their capability. Each student would have the benefit of the entire class's
feedback and expertise. It provides some information that uncommonly known by
the students. It gains the students to get some useful information from the
presenter. Hearing others' explanation will make the class more interesting than
receiving feed-back and a grade from the lecturer alone.
In addition, the presentation technique also trains students’ self-confidence
while they deliver message to the audience and try hard to make the audience
understand about their explanation. Having repeatedly presentation in learning
activity, it can increase students' self-confidence weather in public speaking or in
written task. It gives them two skills in same time. The class would gain new
areas of information.
Besides, presentation can enhance students’ critical thinking and train
them on the ways to give constructive feedback. Students would learn to think for
themselves, rather than having the lecturer doing all their thinking for them. The
lecturer would moderate, fill in omissions or correct errors. Furthermore, class
members would also participate more actively in discussion, see each other faceto-face instead of seeing other students from the back only, and would come to
21
know other class members, bond and help each other. Students would more often
complete the assignment when knowing they will be "on-stage." Many students
would enjoy public presentations and using the white board and projector. This
activity would provide a change of pace, and certainly more physical activity
needed in three-hour classes.
In addition, the students who have a good practice of oral presentations
will gain excellent skills for their future professional meeting/conference
assignments in the workplace. In other hand, they have mastered public speaking
that can be used in their real life. Knowing that one is due to give a public
presentation would increase the student likelihood of coming prepared. It trains
them to be conscious learners since they are responsible to have well-prepared
before the presentation start.
Meanwhile, King (2002) also mentions some advantages of the
presentation technique. He classified the benefit of presentation in several areas.
First, he reports that presentation will enhance students’ proficiency which
represents four language skills including reading, writing, speaking and listening.
As he says, “using the four language skills in naturally integrated way, helping the
students to collect , inquire, organize and construct information, enhancing
teamwork, and helping students become active and autonomous learner (p.402)”.
the second advantages of presentation is to build self-confidence. It was also
argues by him who is saying “experience builds confidence, which is vital to
effective presentation (p.406)”. The time to train their self-confidence is starting
from choose the topic that will be presented. Students have their own choice to
choose the topic which is used to present is to give them a chance in exploring
22
their even-oriented, students-initiated, and in-depth topic students. Those three
things can be used to enhance their creativity and self-expression.
Afterwards, another benefit of presentation technique is to master
grammatical or structure. As explained by King (2002) that students used to work
on memorizing detailed grammatical rules, vocabulary out of contexts and
isolated phrases or expression. By doing presentation regularly, it make them to
become autonomous learner. He reports “among many advantages of presentation
technique are bringing the gap between language study and language use, using
the four language skills in naturally integrated way, helping students to collect,
inquire, organize and construct information, helping the students become
autonomous learner (p.402)”.
According to Brooks and Wilson (2014), presentation technique offers
several advantages. Those advantages will be explained one by one. First, using
presentation in the classroom leads the students to have a great interaction and
participation. Besides, it also creates an interesting environment in learning
activity and gets improvements in students’ communication and speaking skill.
Students are required to speak when giving their presentation. Afterwards, there
are some factors that is determined the successful of presentation which is known
as the micro level skills in the genre of specific language items namely vocabulary
and grammar. In addition, the language and grammar which are learnt in the
presentation will be useful for the students in other situation that involve spoken
English (Thornbury as cited in Brooks and Wilson, 2014).
Second, presentation technique gives the opportunity for the students to
practice their listening skill when they act as audience members for other group
23
presentations. Likewise, Brooks and Wilson (2014) add another explanation that
as the presenter the students also get a chance to confirm unclear information and
misunderstanding by answering the question and interacting with the audience. In
addition, Otoshi and Heffernen as cited in Brooks and Wilson (2014) mentioned
that presentation can include how to make eye contact, how to organize
presentation, how to connect with an audience, how to use body language and
how to construct an effective presentation. Thus, Presentation allows the students
in improving their English language skill as well as their critical thinking. Third,
Presentation can be valuable activities in helping the students to improve their L2
skill, develop their research skill, improve their creativity, and enhance their
confidence when speaking in front of people. Usually, group presentation also
allows the students to work together in planning and preparing their presentation.
Delegating task for each member will build students’ self-responsibility.
The Disadvantages of Presentation. As mentioned by Brooks and
Wilson (2014) that for some reasons presentation technique is not often used in
language classes. It is only used as one time summative assessment at the end of
course. Since implementing presentation technique for the students who do not
prepare to present, it causes the students’ difficultness in finding a positive
learning experiences on presentation. Those statements are supported by some
facts such as speech anxiety, group boredom, and limited presentation skill were
the major problems which lead the students’ failure in presentation.
Another disadvantages also reports by some experts. According to Rose,
another issue of using presentation in classroom is that presentation is consuming
time. When the students are presenting, the audience are passive. It leads them to
24
boredom (as cited in Brooks and Wilson, 2014). Besides, students’ fault in
choosing uninteresting topic which will be presented can cause two problems. The
first problem is the students dislike with the implementation of the presentation
technique and the second they gain nothing from giving the presentation.
When the presentation was assigned in class, there will be students who
felt frustrating and intimidating. It is stated by King (2002) that lack of experience
is usually the main factors of students stress and nervousness. Furthermore, he
reports “presentation can be a face-threatening activity, particularly for some
Asian students (p.404)”. Thus, delivering presentation can be a source of extreme
anxiety. He also underlines in other statement, “speaking in public sometimes
actually undermined students’ confidence and is ineffective in developing
students’ oral proficiency because students were put on the spot (p.403)”.
Conceptual Framework
Attitude is one of the most important things in language learning
strategies. The role of attitude becomes an essential factor which influences
language learners’ achievement towards their understanding to the target
language. The result of many researches has repeatedly showed that the successful
language learner depends on their attitude towards the target language. The main
role of attitude in language learning is also supported by three components of
attitudes which is generally called as ABC models in which A stands for
Affective, B stands for Behavioral, and C stands for Cognitive.
Those three components that have been mentioned above are typically
human basic form to absorb knowledge. Those components are related to active
25
learning techniques that are commonly used in higher education. However, this
study only focuses on students’ cognitive and affective attitude.
Likewise, the higher education learners are forced to be participated
actively in classroom activities. Nowadays the presentation technique is familiar
in teaching and learning process. It happened since the presentation technique is
such kind of learning strategies which gives chance for the learners to have two
roles in same time. As the presenter they have responsibility to prepare well their
presentation, so that their audiences understand with their explanation. As the
audience, the students have to understand well with the materials that have been
presented by the presenter. It also trains the students to organize their thinking
while preparing the presentation.
This study will look at the students’ cognitive (beliefs) attitude towards the
implementation of the presentation technique. Afterwards, this study is going to
explore students’ affective (feeling) attitude towards the implementation of the
presentation technique that have been implemented at English Education
Department.
26
Figure 2. Conceptual Framework
Presentation
Attitude
Affective (Feeling)
Cognitive (Beliefs)
The Disadvantages of
Presentation
Brooks and Wilson (2014):
a) Causes speech anxiety
b) Make a group boredom
c) Consumes much time
King (2002):
d) Makes students’ stress and
nervousness
e) Sources of an extreme anxiety
f) Ineffective in developing
students’ oral proficiency
The Advantages of
Presentation
Milonic (2009):
a) Increase self-confidence
b) Enhance capability in language
learning
c) Enhance speaking skills
d) Clarify unclear information
e) Receive direct feedback
f) Enhance critical thinking
g) Create an effective environment
h) Having a good public speaking
27
27
Chapter Three
Methodology
This chapter discusses about the methodology which is employed in this
study. It is divided in four parts and it consists of research design, research setting,
research participants, data collection method, and data analysis.
Research Design
This research used qualitative research. It was suitable for this study since
this research explored the participants’ point of view towards their attitude on the
implementation of the presentation technique. Hence, Kothari (2004) defines,
“qualitative research is attitude or opinion research i.e., research designed to find
out how people feel or what they think about a particular subject or institution
(p.3)”. Creswell (2012) states that qualitative research is a type of educational
research in which the researcher relies on the views participants, ask broad,
general question and collects data consisting largely of words (or text) from
participants. It also describes and analyzes the data based on words.
In addition, this research employed descriptive research design since it is
helpful to investigate students’ attitude towards the implementation of the
presentation technique. Hale defines that descriptive methods are pretty much
describing the situations. They do not make accurate predictions, and they do not
determine cause and effect (as cited in Abas, 2015).
Research Setting
This research was conducted at English Education Department Universitas
Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. The deliberation of this choice was based on two
factors. First, English Education Department Universitas Muhammadiyah
28
Yogyakarta offers some courses which implement the presentation technique in
teaching and learning activity. Those courses are Academic Presentation,
Listening and Speaking for Formal Setting, Listening and Speaking for Academic
Purposes, Listening and Speaking for Daily Conversation, Listening and Speaking
for Career Development, Capita Selecta on Grammar 4, Language Research,
Teaching English as Foreign Language, and Second Language Acquisition. In
addition, this research focuses on Academic Presentation since this course
employs individual presentation and group presentation. The second factor was
the accessibility of the researcher to collect the data. It was accessible for the
researcher to conduct the research since the researcher is one of the students at the
English Education Department.
The researcher collected the data on March, 7th to 19th 2016. The
researcher needed two weeks to conduct the interview and make appointment to
the participants. Furthermore, the researcher analyzed and accomplished the data
that had been collected from the previous participant in the middle of collecting
the data. For this reason, it required two weeks to collect and to analyze the data.
Research Participant
Purposive sampling was used to choose the participants of the study.
Creswell (2012) points out that the consideration to use purposive sampling is
because it provides useful information. The participants of this research were the
students of English Education Department in batch 2012. The consideration of
choosing batch 2012 was because they had long life experiences in presentation. It
means that they had participated in some courses which provided presentation as a
29
technique in teaching and learning activity such as Academic Presentation course.
The researcher reconfirmed the information before she did the interview.
Since students’ batch 2012
at the English Education Department
of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta
A Skripsi
Submitted to the Faculty of Language Education in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for Degree
Sarjana Pendidikan
Anis Astriani
20120540084
English Education Department
Faculty of Language Education
Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta
2016
vii
TABLE OF CONTENT
COVER
i
APPROVEL SHEET
ii
AUTHOR’S DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY
iii
DEDICATION
iv
MOTTO
v
ACKNOWLEDMENT
vi
TABLE OF CONTENT
vii
TABLE OF FIGURE
ix
TABLE OF TABLE
x
ABSTRACT
xi
Chapter One Introduction
1
Background
1
Statement of the problem
3
Limitation of the problem
4
Question of the research
4
Objective of the research
4
Significance of the research
5
Outline of the research
6
Chapter Two Literature Review
7
Attitude
7
Active Learning Strategies in Higher Education
11
Presentation
14
Conceptual Framework
24
viii
Chapter Three Methodology
27
Research Design
27
Research Setting
27
Research Participant
28
Data Collection Technique
30
Data Analysis
32
Chapter Four Finding and Discussion
33
Findings
33
Discussion
44
Chapter Five Conclusion and Recommendation
56
Conclusion
56
Recommendation
57
References
Appendix 1. Interview Guideline
Appendix 2. Selective Coding
59
i
STUDENTS’ ATTITUDE ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE
PRESENTATION TECHNIQUE AT THE ENGLISH EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF UNIVERSITAS MUHAMMADIYAH YOGYAKARTA
Abstract
This study aims to investigate students’ attitudes on the implementation of
the presentation technique at English Education Department of Universitas
Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta in terms of cognitive attitude (beliefs) and affective
attitude (feeling) aspects. Total number of participants of this research was six
participants in academic year 2012/2013. The researcher employed qualitative
method with descriptive research design. Besides, it utilized an interview as data
collection method.
In addition, there were two major findings in this reserach. First, regarding
the aspects of cognitive attitude (beliefs), the participants believed that the
presentation technique offered some advantages such as increasing their selfconfidence, training their public speaking skill, training them to manage time,
practicing their teamwork, increasing self-responsibility, developing English Skill,
training their body language, enhancing critical thinking, and enhancing
creativity. Moreover, there were participants who also revealed the disadvantages
of implementing the presentation technique such as it was a formality, it was a
waste of time, it did not contribute to any skill, it disadvantaged the low selfconfident students, and it stimulated students’ anxiety. Second, in terms of
students’ affective attitude (feeling), the participants also revealed happy and
unhappy feeling in implementing the presentation technique. They felt happy
since it enhanced their English proficiency. It also helped the students to delegate
ii
the materials in equitable way. Besides, they were unhappy with the
implementation of the presentation technique since it made them nervous, and the
lecturer gave short time to prepare the presentation.
Keywords: Attitude, Presentation technique, Oral presentation
1
Chapter One
Introduction
This chapter explains the background of the study which discusses the
curiosity of the researcher to conduct this research. Besides, it discusses the
statement of the problem, limitation of the problem, questions of the research,
objective of the research, significance of the research, and outline of the research.
Background
Nowadays, teaching and learning using technology is very popular. It
happens since technology offers a new way in learning activity. It also provides a
good visual aid. Hence, using technology will attract students’ attention in
learning process. Further, it makes the students easier to understand the materials.
Maddux and Aberasturi (2008) argue, “the use of technology is becoming
increasingly popular as a teaching and learning tool in education (p.1)”.
Moreover, technology is used as a tool in teaching and learning process.
One of the techniques which use technology as a tool is the presentation
technique. The presentation technique is a process to deliver a content of a subject
and it is exposed in a class (Vinci, 2009). In line with that, according to the
researcher’s experience, the presentation technique provides free space for the
students to express their feeling and opinion in public area. Nicklos (2003) states,
“an effective presentation happens as a consequence of four related activities such
as plan, prepare, practice and present your presentation (p.3)”. As a presenter, the
students have responsibility to search the materials which will be presented. After
that, they have to read all the materials related to their topic and write the main
points of the materials in the slide such as power point presentation. Likewise, the
2
students have to practice the way to deliver the materials and present the materials
clearly. Hence, technology plays an important role to support the students in
delivering the material since it can be employed to attract audiences’ attention.
The technology which is commonly used in the presentation technique is
known as presentation software. According to Maddux and Aberasturi (2008),
presentation software has become an accepted lecture aid in higher education. In
line with that, there are some presentation softwares that are generally used in the
presentation technique such as prezi, power point presentation, magiclantern,
sparkol, power point express, and oxygen office impress. These softwares are
frequently found in the teaching and learning at university level.
One of the universities that implement the presentation technique in
teaching and learning process is English Education Department of Universitas
Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. The students of this department have employed the
presentation techniques since they were in the first year. Mostly, each lecturer
offers teaching and learning activity by using the presentation technique. The
researcher believes that this department still continuously uses the presentation
techniques since it might have a positive impact for the students such as
improving their speaking skill, increasing their self-confidence, arranging their
time management, or building a good critical thinking. However, those kinds of
things do not run well for some students. Sometimes, they are not aware in
preparing their presentation. The students’ awareness on the advantages of the the
presentation technique has not been built yet. According to the above statement,
the researcher is interested in investigating students’ attitude on the
implementation of the presentation technique.
3
Statement of the problem
The researcher believes that the presentation technique is one of the
effective techniques which can be used in classroom activity to build a good
learning process. In fact, it provides enough space for the students to build their
self-confidence, arrange their time management, and organize their way of
thinking. Unfortunately, it is not always effective for some students because it is
not as easy as they think. It requires a long time to create a good presentation. As
the result, some of them might not get the advantages of the presentation
technique in teaching and learning activity.
According to the researcher’s experience, there are some problems that are
faced by the students at English Education Department of Universitas
Muhamadiyah Yogyakarta. First, when the lecturer asks the students to make a
group presentation, there will be students who cannot be responsible with their
tasks. In other words, they are dependent to other members. When the other
members prepare the presentation, it seems that they do not have interest in
joining the group members to prepare the presentation. This has caused the
trouble in the group itself.
The second problem is their time management. Some students seem to
have limited time to prepare, whereas the time allocation for the presentation task
had been given way in advance. In fact, students tend to procrastinate to do the
task. Those problems enhance the curiosity of the researcher in revealing the
students’ attitude on the implementation of the presentation technique.
4
Limitation of the problem
Presentation has several areas to be studied. Many researches have been
conducted in the area of the advantages of individual and group presentation, and
presentation as a way to enhance students’ self-confidence. Here, the researcher
only focuses on investigating students’ cognitive (beliefs) and affective (feeling)
attitude on the implementation of the presentation technique. The researcher does
not involve behavioral attitude since it requires more technique to collect the data.
In addition, revealing behavioral attitude need to be done by using direct
observation when the students are doing presentation. This research will be
conducted at English Education Department of Universitas Muhammadiyah
Yogyakarta. The participants of this study are the students of English Education
Department Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta academic year 2012/2013.
Questions of the research
1. What are the students’ cognitive attitudes (beliefs) on the implementation
of the presentation technique at English Education Department of
Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta?
2. What are the students’ affective attitudes (feeling) on the implementation
of the presentation technique at English Education Department of
Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta?
Objectives of the research
1. To reveal the students’ cognitive attitude on the implementation of the
presentation technique at English Education Department of Universitas
Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta.
5
2. To reveal the students’ affective attitudes on the implementation of the
presentation technique at English Education Department of Universitas
Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta.
Significance of the research
In this part, the researcher is going to discuss about the advantages of the
study. The advantages of this study are classifying to lecturers, students,
institution, and the researcher.
Lecturers. The result of this research offers information for the lecturers
to improve their teaching strategies especially in the presentation technique.
Presentation is one of the techniques that can be used to create an autonomous
learning since it proposes some steps such as plan, prepare, practice and present.
Thus, presentation will help lecturers to create an effective classroom activity in
teaching and learning process.
Students. The results of this study have several advantages for the
students. It can be used for the students to organize their thinking in which it can
be useful for their future life. Furthermore, presentation also trains them to have a
good time management and enhance their self-confidence.
Institution. This research provides several advantages for the institution
such as offering information which is related with presentation and telling the
advantages of presentation. Likewise, it can be used for the institution to add
some supported facilities related to presentation such as internet bandwidth, LCDprojector, and computer for each class.
The Researcher. After conducting this research, the researcher knows the
beliefs of the students towards the the presentation technique. In addition, the
6
result of this study also provides information which is related with students’
affective attitude towards the implementation of the presentation technique.
Therefore, it can help the researcher to improve her teaching strategies in learning
process since the researcher is one of the future teachers.
Outline of the research
This research consists of five chapters. The first chapter discussed about
background of the research. Further, the researcher also talked about statement of
the problem, limitation of the research, research question, significance of the
research and outline of the research. The second chapter, the researcher focused
on the literature review. It discussed about the theories which support this
research. It was divided by three main points such as attitude theory, active
learning technique in higher education, and presentation. Hence, it will be
explained more specific for each point. The third chapter was methodology. The
main idea of this chapter was about research methodology which was used in this
research. The researcher used qualitative research. It also used interview to find
data collection method.
The fourth chapters were focused to talk about the finding and discussion.
All the data of research that have been gathered were discussed to answer the
research questions and the final result of the research was discussed in this
section. The last chapter was conclusion and suggestion. In this section the
researcher concluded that the implementation of the presentation technique was
still an effective way in teaching and learning process. Beside that the researcher
also gave some suggestion about the beneficial of classroom presentation.
Therefore, it can be used continuously for teaching and learning process.
7
Chapter Two
Literature Review
This research was conducted to investigate students’ attitude on the
implementation of the presentation technique. In this chapter the researcher is
going to discuss about some supporting resources which are related to the study.
There are some points to be discussed such as the definition of attitude, three
components of attitude, the importance of attitude, active learning strategies in
higher education, definition of presentation, effective of presentation, types of
presentation, the process of making good presentation, goals of presentation, the
advantages of presentation, and conceptual framework.
Attitude
Attitude is one of the factors that influence foreign language learners in
learning process. Another factors which influence learning process included
motivation, anxiety, aptitudes, learning achievements, age, personalities and
intelligence (Gardner; Lehmann as cited in Abidin, Mohhamdi and Alzwari,
2012). Further Fakeye argues that the most important factors that impact on
language learning are learners’ attitude (as cited in Abidin, Mohhamdi and
Alzwari, 2012).
Definition of Attitude. Attitude in general meaning defines as someone’s
point of view or it is like feeling to achieve something. Moreover, attitude based
on Cambridge International Dictionary defines as, “a feeling or opinion about
something or someone, or a way of behaving that is caused by this”. Gardner
(1985) points out that attitude are an evaluative response to some referent or
attitude object, inferred on the basis of the individual’s beliefs or opinions to
8
achieve something whether in academic or non-academic ways. Montano and
Kasprzyk (2008) also add:
Attitude is determined by the individual’s beliefs about outcomes or
attributes of performing the behavior (behavioral beliefs), weighted by
evaluations of those outcomes or attributes. Thus, a person who holds
strong beliefs that positively valued outcomes will result from performing
the behavior will have a positive attitude toward the behavior. Conversely,
a person who holds strong beliefs that negatively valued outcomes will
result from the behavior will have a negative attitude. (p. 71).
Henceforth, according to Melhim (2009) positive and negative attitude are defined
as:
Positive attitude is taking decision of acceptance or reaction that agrees the
attitude we met or it is the attitudes that reveals the advantages of the
subject to take up its value. However negative attitude is defined as
revealing the advantages of the subject to dismiss it and to weaken its
strong attitude. (p.683).
Based on the definition from experts above, the researcher concludes that
attitude is someone’s beliefs or point of view towards an object which is
influenced by the desire of that person whether they want to achieve or not. Those
experts above have similar definition about the attitude. It focuses on their way of
behaving, reacting and feeling towards the object.
Three Components of Attitude. Learning process is viewed as a positive
change in the individual’s personality in expressions of the emotional (affective),
psychomotor (behavioral) as well as cognitive fields (Kara, 2009). In addition,
9
Vogh and Vaughan note, “attitude is relatively enduring organization of beliefs,
feeling, and behavioral tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups,
events or symbols (as cited in Melhim, 2009, p.150-151)”. Attitude concept can
be viewed from these three factors which are called as cognitive, affective, and
behavioral.
Cognitive Attitude. This aspect of attitude involves the beliefs of the
language learners about the knowledge that they receive and their understanding
in the process of language learning. It is also supported by Melhim (2009),
“cognitive attitude is a cognitive evaluation of the entity that constitutes an
individual’s belief about the object (p.684)”. In short, cognitive attitude is beliefs
about the attitude object. Jain (2014) also express that “belief is information a
person has about an object; information that specifically links an object and
attribute. The cognitive component is the storage section where an individual
organizes the information (p.7).”
Therefore, cognitive attitude has an impact for the students. Chaiken and
Trope (1999) describe that the effect of beliefs can change people’s beliefs about
the object of the message. Additionally, Abidin, Mohamadi and Alzwari (2012)
also state that cognitive attitude can be classified into four steps of connecting the
previous knowledge and the new one, creating new knowledge, checking new
knowledge, and applying the new knowledge in many situations.
Affective Attitude. Learning process is an emotional process. Feng and
Chen state it is affected by different emotional factors (as cited in Choy and
Troudi, 2006). It can help the learners express whether they like or dislike the
objects or surrounding situations. Choy and Troudi (2006) explain it is agreed that
10
the inner feelings and emotions of foreign language learners influence their
perspectives and their attitudes towards the target language. Affective attitude can
be assed more quickly rather than behavioral attitude and cognitive attitude since
“feeling is first. Besides, emotional evaluations are seen as more diagnostic of true
attitude than non-emotional ones (Peters and Slovic, 2007). Verplanken, Hofstee,
and Janssen point out, “participants responded more rapidly to their feelings than
their thoughts about attitude objects” (as cited in Peters and Slovic, 2007, p.301).
In sum, affective attitude is feeling about the attitude object.
Furthermore, a common question which often faced is how should the
affective component of attitudes be conceptualized and measured. Here, there are
three studies compared measures based on different conceptualizations (Peters and
Slovic, 2007). Affective attitudes can be holistic reactions to objects or responses
derived from spontaneous images of the objects. It can be bipolar or unipolar in
structure or it also can be discrete emotional evaluations (e.g., angry, happy) or
more general valence evaluations (e.g., good, bad).
Behavioral Attitude. The behavioral aspect of attitude deals with the way
one behaves and reacts in particular situations. In fact, the successful language
learning enhances the learners to identify themselves with the native speakers and
acquire various aspects of behaviors which characterize the members of the target
language community (Abidin, Mohammadi and Alzwari, 2012).Hence, Kara
(2009) also states that positive attitudes lead to show the positive behaviors
toward courses of study, with learners absorbing themselves in courses and
motivating to learn more. To sum up, the influence of attitude towards behavior is
bigger rather than the influence of behavior towards the attitude.
11
This research will only focus on investigating students’ cognitive (beliefs)
and affective (feeling) attitude. The researcher might ask some questions to the
students which are used to expose their beliefs and feeling towards the
implementation of the presentation technique. Since the presentation technique
has been commonly used in learning process, the students might have different
beliefs and feeling on it.
Importance of Attitude. Reid (2003, p. 33) declared, “attitudes are
important to us because they cannot be neatly separated from study.” Attitude is
considered as a crucial factor influencing language performance (Visser, 2008).
Achievement in a target language relies not only on intellectual capacity, but also
on the learner’s attitudes towards language learning. It means that learning
language should be approached primarily as a social and psychological
phenomenon rather than as a purely academic one.
Active Learning Strategies in Higher Education
Commonly, active learning strategies were taught in university level.
Active learning strategies were used to revenge the old style teaching in higher
education. The main purpose of these strategies was to create student-centered
learning. Hence, the definition and the examples of active learning strategies are
explained below.
Definition of Active Learning. In general terms, Mayer and Jones (1993)
define, “active learning involves providing opportunities for students to
meaningfully talk and listen, write, read and reflect on the content, ideas, issues,
and concern of an academic subject (p.6)”. Moreover, the role of the students in
teaching and learning process is bigger than the lecturer. In order to create good
12
circumstance in the classroom, the students are forced to be participated actively
in the academic subject. Rudasill (2011) points out that active learning technique
is used to reduce the traditional teaching model, in which the role of the students
as passive receptors and the role of the lecturer becomes the source of language.
Whereas, the role of the students should become an active receptors and the role
of the lecturer should become a facilitator (Rudasill, 2011).
The Examples of Active Learning Techniques. According to Faust and
Paulson (1998) there are some active learning techniques which can be applied in
college classroom activity. Furthermore, they have classified active learning
technique into seven parts, such as Exercises for Individual Students, Questions
and Answers, Immediate-Feedback Techniques, Critical-Thinking Motivators,
Share/Pair, Overcoming Obstacles to Active Learning, and Cooperative-Learning
Strategies.
Here, the researcher specifically looks at the cooperative-learning strategy.
Cooperative learning strategy is a strategy which is used in teaching and learning
activity. The aim of this strategy is to educate the students to work in groups.
Each group consists of three to five students. Those statements are supported by
Faust and Paulson (1998), “the kinds of exercises included under the rubric of
cooperative learning all utilize small groups in which three to five students work
together toward a common goal (p.13)”.Additionally, they also state that
cooperative-learning strategies are also divided into five activities which are
Panel-Discussion, Work at the Blackboard, Concept-Mapping, Visual List and
Role Playing.
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The first is Panel-Discussion. According to Faust and Paulson (1998)
panel discussion is generally known as the presentation technique. Here, the roles
of the students are to be presenter and audience. Technically, the lecturer divides
the students into small groups which consist of three or five students. Each group
has to present a different topic. It is better for the lecturer to give same theme, but
in a different topic area. For example, the lecturer might ask the students to
discuss about a topic under the medical issues. Moreover, the lecturer has to
divide into some subtopic such as, the roles of doctor, patients’-rights advocates,
hospital officials, and so forth (Faust and Paulson, 1998). They also note, “the key
to this method’s success is to choose topics carefully and to give students
sufficient direction to ensure that they are well-prepared for their presentations
(p.16).”
Second activity under the cooperative-learning strategy is Work at the
Blackboard. This activity gives space for the students to discuss about problem
solving strategy (“Should we try this?”) without embarrassing students who have
not any idea to give solution (Faust and Paulson, 1998). If the classroom does not
have black board, the students can still work in a group by using pieces of paper
and pen, or computers. The third activity is Concept-Mapping. It can be used to
encourage students in a way to share their ideas into piece by piece information.
Generally, it is called as brainstorming technique. It educates the students to
generate their ideas into a particular topic. Next activity is Visual List. It seems
like the lecturer have one idea or topic about something, then the lecturer asks the
students to list everything they can think under the topic which has been written
on the black or white board. Faust and Paulson (1998) point out, “the students
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typically can generate more comprehensive lists working in groups than they can
alone (p.15)”. The fifth activity in cooperative-learning strategy is Role Playing.
The students demonstrate the situation in a group. It is used to lead them in having
a better understanding of the theories that has been taught in the classroom.
In addition, English Education Department of Universitas Muhammadiyah
Yogyakarta is one of the departments which implement the presentation technique
in teaching and learning activity. The students have implemented the presentation
technique since they were in the first semester. The department provides some
supporting courses which used to implement the presentation technique. Since the
presentation technique is also frequently used, later the researcher will expose
some related study about the presentation technique.
Presentation
Presentation was known as sending and receiving the information to the
audience. Usually, it was supported by three common factors namely presenter,
audience and visual aids. Thus, the components which are related to the
presentation will be discussed as follows.
Definition of Presentation. Commonly presentation is defined as a
process to deliver a content of a subject and it is exposed in a class (Vinci, 2009).
Presentation seeks to inform and give some explanation about some topic.
Presentation is an essential tool that leads the students to success in their learning
process because it helps students to organize step by step while preparing the
presentation.
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Further, Chan (2009) defines,
Presentation is the process of showing and explaining the content of a
topic to an audience or a group of audiences. It is often used to assess
student learning in individual or group research projects. In recent times,
presentation is no longer just about oral presentation but also visuals.
Paper, white board or PowerPoint presentation are sample tools to aid the
visual part of the presentation. (p.1).
Based on the definition above, the presentation technique can be
concluded as a way to deliver the information to other people. It is a process to
express the ideas or opinion to others. In other hand, presentation is a two-way
communication which acts as the presenter and as the audience. Hence, the way to
deliver the material plays an important role to measure the successful of the
presentation.
According to the researcher’s experiences, the success of a project depends
on a good presentation since it has correlation with the communication and other
soft skills that is used for the future life. Presentations are the medium of choice
for communicating concepts, issues, objectives and results. Further, Vinci (2009)
describes that a presentation is the theme of an exhibition highlighting the core
concepts and keeping the audience attention. Presentation is an attractive way to
transfer knowledge to other people. Westwood (2004) argues that one of some
selected features of effective teaching is using presentation. Meanwhile, Mackey
(1965) also defines that presentation is delivering message to somebody. Here,
presentation means engaging two parties namely presenter and receiver or usually
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it called as audience. This is the process of convey and receive the message which
is based on content.
Effective Presentation. An effective presentation consists of some
components that are related to the lecturer and the learners. In order to create an
effective presentation, the lecturer and the students should aware of the
components. Hence, according to Ur (2009) there are some components to
generate an effective presentation, for example; a) Attention, b) Perception, c)
Understanding, d) Short-term memory, and e) Peer teaching. Besides, King (2002)
mentions, “having students give presentation in front of the class is one of learnercentered activity that has been widely included in teachers’ lesson plan to improve
students’ oral proficiency (p.401)”.
Types of Presentation. Burden and Byrd (1999) classify formal
presentation into three types. The first type is lecturing type. Lecturing type means
the lecturer gives oral presentation as one of the instructional strategy in teaching
and learning process, in which the role of the students are only as the audience.
The students have a responsible to listen to the material that is delivered by the
lecturer and ask some questions if they do not understand about the explanation.
The second is the summary and response of subject matter type. In this
type, the teachers ask each group of the students to sum up the material and
present the material to the other group. Thus, the roles of the teacher are replaced
by the students. The presenters are forced to be active and creative during deliver
the material since they have responsibility to make the audience understand with
their explanation.
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The third is seminar type. Seminar type means the role of the students are
to be the presenter. The students have their own project that has been given by the
teachers and they are responsible to present their final project after finished their
work. The content of the project also contain their opinion, so the students have
opportunity to express their idea towards their project. Annotated bibliography is
one of the examples which can be used as students’ project.
Ur (2012) also categorizes presentation into three types. Those types are
classified based on the length of presentation such as short, medium-length, and
long. The first is short type, it only needs 1 (one) up to 3 (three) minutes long for
the presenter to deliver their presentation. This short type presentation is usually
used to present about a) show and tell, b) describing things, and c) About self
(daily activities). Second type is medium-length. It needs 5 (five) up to 10 (ten)
minutes long to present. There are three criteria that are frequently used in this
presentation, such as: a) narrative, b) instruction/procedure, and c)
recommendation. The last is long type. In this types, the length of presentation is
around 15 (fifteen) minutes or more. The presentation should explain the
organization of the material that will be presented such as opening, outlines, the
main body, the explanations, examples, summarizing and closing. It is often used
to present about information and argument.
According to Tuber (1972) and Yang (2010) the last types of presentation
are classified based on the number of participants in presentation which is
frequently called as individual presentation and group presentation. The number
of participant who are conducted the individual presentation is only one person.
Individual presentation is forced the students to become an independent learner.
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The students have to search the material and also prepare the presentation by
themselves. Afterwards, they also should design the media and search the
information related to the material that will be presented individually (Tuber,
1972). According to Yang (2010) in group presentation, the numbers of
participants who will be the presenters are more than one person. Commonly, the
students will be divided into some groups which consist of three or five students
in each group.
This research focuses on the last types which are individual presentation
and group presentation since both of types are relevant and frequently used in
teaching and learning process at the English Education Department Universitas
Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta.
The Process of Making Good Presentation. Making a good presentation
is not the easiest thing to be done. According to Nicklos (2003) there are some
steps to create an effective presentation. The first step to make a good presentation
is plan. Plan means thinking ahead about important aspects of it. Here, it is where
the presenter begins the task of organizing the presentation. It is included of some
several important aspect such as objective, audience, content, organization, visual,
setting and delivery. The second step is preparation. The centerpiece of this part is
to research the materials and also prepare the slide which will be used to present.
The third step is practice. There are some reasons to have practice section before
the presentation. It trains the presenter to be familiar with the visual slide and the
content of presentation. Further, it helps the presenter to ensure the body
movement. It also assists the presenter to identify the kinds of question and issues
that might surface during the actual presentation. The last step is present. There
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are six factors that the presenter should be aware in making presentation. It
consists of facial expression, pace, voice (intonation, inflection, pronunciation),
body movements (posture, gestures, moving about), use of a pointer (classic
wooden pointer or laser), and the last is roles (in the event of group presentation).
Figure 1. The Process of Presentation
Plan
Prepare
Practice
Present
Goals of Presentation. According to Brookfield and Preskill (1999) there
are some goals of presentation in learning process. First, the students learn to
organize information in a coherent manner. Second, they can practice the use of
logical and emotional appeals to persuade an audience. Third, the students can
practice the use of voice, gesture and bodily action to convey meaning. Fourth,
they will create an effective and useful speaking outline and notes. Fifth, it trains
them to develop experience and confidence in one's presentational skills.
The Advantages of Presentation. Doing presentation frequently offers
some valuable lessons for the students. They get some positive impact on
implementing the presentation technique. According to Milonic (2009) there are
some advantages of classroom presentation that will be described below:
The presenter's peers and lecturer would have the opportunity to ask the
presenter questions regarding his explanation. As the audiences, the other students
have chance to help the presenter to clarify unclear statements and the class to
offer constructive suggestions. In addition, by presenting an assignment in class,
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the presenter could receive direct feedback from the other students and the
lecturer, so that the presenter could make changes before submitting a final
assignment. Higher education students or adult learner are often skilled in some
areas since they have long life experienced and could provide added information
to audience during the presentation.
Afterwards, oral presentation also gives chance for the students to
increase, improve and also provide alternative method in learning process to
enhance their capability. Each student would have the benefit of the entire class's
feedback and expertise. It provides some information that uncommonly known by
the students. It gains the students to get some useful information from the
presenter. Hearing others' explanation will make the class more interesting than
receiving feed-back and a grade from the lecturer alone.
In addition, the presentation technique also trains students’ self-confidence
while they deliver message to the audience and try hard to make the audience
understand about their explanation. Having repeatedly presentation in learning
activity, it can increase students' self-confidence weather in public speaking or in
written task. It gives them two skills in same time. The class would gain new
areas of information.
Besides, presentation can enhance students’ critical thinking and train
them on the ways to give constructive feedback. Students would learn to think for
themselves, rather than having the lecturer doing all their thinking for them. The
lecturer would moderate, fill in omissions or correct errors. Furthermore, class
members would also participate more actively in discussion, see each other faceto-face instead of seeing other students from the back only, and would come to
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know other class members, bond and help each other. Students would more often
complete the assignment when knowing they will be "on-stage." Many students
would enjoy public presentations and using the white board and projector. This
activity would provide a change of pace, and certainly more physical activity
needed in three-hour classes.
In addition, the students who have a good practice of oral presentations
will gain excellent skills for their future professional meeting/conference
assignments in the workplace. In other hand, they have mastered public speaking
that can be used in their real life. Knowing that one is due to give a public
presentation would increase the student likelihood of coming prepared. It trains
them to be conscious learners since they are responsible to have well-prepared
before the presentation start.
Meanwhile, King (2002) also mentions some advantages of the
presentation technique. He classified the benefit of presentation in several areas.
First, he reports that presentation will enhance students’ proficiency which
represents four language skills including reading, writing, speaking and listening.
As he says, “using the four language skills in naturally integrated way, helping the
students to collect , inquire, organize and construct information, enhancing
teamwork, and helping students become active and autonomous learner (p.402)”.
the second advantages of presentation is to build self-confidence. It was also
argues by him who is saying “experience builds confidence, which is vital to
effective presentation (p.406)”. The time to train their self-confidence is starting
from choose the topic that will be presented. Students have their own choice to
choose the topic which is used to present is to give them a chance in exploring
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their even-oriented, students-initiated, and in-depth topic students. Those three
things can be used to enhance their creativity and self-expression.
Afterwards, another benefit of presentation technique is to master
grammatical or structure. As explained by King (2002) that students used to work
on memorizing detailed grammatical rules, vocabulary out of contexts and
isolated phrases or expression. By doing presentation regularly, it make them to
become autonomous learner. He reports “among many advantages of presentation
technique are bringing the gap between language study and language use, using
the four language skills in naturally integrated way, helping students to collect,
inquire, organize and construct information, helping the students become
autonomous learner (p.402)”.
According to Brooks and Wilson (2014), presentation technique offers
several advantages. Those advantages will be explained one by one. First, using
presentation in the classroom leads the students to have a great interaction and
participation. Besides, it also creates an interesting environment in learning
activity and gets improvements in students’ communication and speaking skill.
Students are required to speak when giving their presentation. Afterwards, there
are some factors that is determined the successful of presentation which is known
as the micro level skills in the genre of specific language items namely vocabulary
and grammar. In addition, the language and grammar which are learnt in the
presentation will be useful for the students in other situation that involve spoken
English (Thornbury as cited in Brooks and Wilson, 2014).
Second, presentation technique gives the opportunity for the students to
practice their listening skill when they act as audience members for other group
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presentations. Likewise, Brooks and Wilson (2014) add another explanation that
as the presenter the students also get a chance to confirm unclear information and
misunderstanding by answering the question and interacting with the audience. In
addition, Otoshi and Heffernen as cited in Brooks and Wilson (2014) mentioned
that presentation can include how to make eye contact, how to organize
presentation, how to connect with an audience, how to use body language and
how to construct an effective presentation. Thus, Presentation allows the students
in improving their English language skill as well as their critical thinking. Third,
Presentation can be valuable activities in helping the students to improve their L2
skill, develop their research skill, improve their creativity, and enhance their
confidence when speaking in front of people. Usually, group presentation also
allows the students to work together in planning and preparing their presentation.
Delegating task for each member will build students’ self-responsibility.
The Disadvantages of Presentation. As mentioned by Brooks and
Wilson (2014) that for some reasons presentation technique is not often used in
language classes. It is only used as one time summative assessment at the end of
course. Since implementing presentation technique for the students who do not
prepare to present, it causes the students’ difficultness in finding a positive
learning experiences on presentation. Those statements are supported by some
facts such as speech anxiety, group boredom, and limited presentation skill were
the major problems which lead the students’ failure in presentation.
Another disadvantages also reports by some experts. According to Rose,
another issue of using presentation in classroom is that presentation is consuming
time. When the students are presenting, the audience are passive. It leads them to
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boredom (as cited in Brooks and Wilson, 2014). Besides, students’ fault in
choosing uninteresting topic which will be presented can cause two problems. The
first problem is the students dislike with the implementation of the presentation
technique and the second they gain nothing from giving the presentation.
When the presentation was assigned in class, there will be students who
felt frustrating and intimidating. It is stated by King (2002) that lack of experience
is usually the main factors of students stress and nervousness. Furthermore, he
reports “presentation can be a face-threatening activity, particularly for some
Asian students (p.404)”. Thus, delivering presentation can be a source of extreme
anxiety. He also underlines in other statement, “speaking in public sometimes
actually undermined students’ confidence and is ineffective in developing
students’ oral proficiency because students were put on the spot (p.403)”.
Conceptual Framework
Attitude is one of the most important things in language learning
strategies. The role of attitude becomes an essential factor which influences
language learners’ achievement towards their understanding to the target
language. The result of many researches has repeatedly showed that the successful
language learner depends on their attitude towards the target language. The main
role of attitude in language learning is also supported by three components of
attitudes which is generally called as ABC models in which A stands for
Affective, B stands for Behavioral, and C stands for Cognitive.
Those three components that have been mentioned above are typically
human basic form to absorb knowledge. Those components are related to active
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learning techniques that are commonly used in higher education. However, this
study only focuses on students’ cognitive and affective attitude.
Likewise, the higher education learners are forced to be participated
actively in classroom activities. Nowadays the presentation technique is familiar
in teaching and learning process. It happened since the presentation technique is
such kind of learning strategies which gives chance for the learners to have two
roles in same time. As the presenter they have responsibility to prepare well their
presentation, so that their audiences understand with their explanation. As the
audience, the students have to understand well with the materials that have been
presented by the presenter. It also trains the students to organize their thinking
while preparing the presentation.
This study will look at the students’ cognitive (beliefs) attitude towards the
implementation of the presentation technique. Afterwards, this study is going to
explore students’ affective (feeling) attitude towards the implementation of the
presentation technique that have been implemented at English Education
Department.
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Figure 2. Conceptual Framework
Presentation
Attitude
Affective (Feeling)
Cognitive (Beliefs)
The Disadvantages of
Presentation
Brooks and Wilson (2014):
a) Causes speech anxiety
b) Make a group boredom
c) Consumes much time
King (2002):
d) Makes students’ stress and
nervousness
e) Sources of an extreme anxiety
f) Ineffective in developing
students’ oral proficiency
The Advantages of
Presentation
Milonic (2009):
a) Increase self-confidence
b) Enhance capability in language
learning
c) Enhance speaking skills
d) Clarify unclear information
e) Receive direct feedback
f) Enhance critical thinking
g) Create an effective environment
h) Having a good public speaking
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Chapter Three
Methodology
This chapter discusses about the methodology which is employed in this
study. It is divided in four parts and it consists of research design, research setting,
research participants, data collection method, and data analysis.
Research Design
This research used qualitative research. It was suitable for this study since
this research explored the participants’ point of view towards their attitude on the
implementation of the presentation technique. Hence, Kothari (2004) defines,
“qualitative research is attitude or opinion research i.e., research designed to find
out how people feel or what they think about a particular subject or institution
(p.3)”. Creswell (2012) states that qualitative research is a type of educational
research in which the researcher relies on the views participants, ask broad,
general question and collects data consisting largely of words (or text) from
participants. It also describes and analyzes the data based on words.
In addition, this research employed descriptive research design since it is
helpful to investigate students’ attitude towards the implementation of the
presentation technique. Hale defines that descriptive methods are pretty much
describing the situations. They do not make accurate predictions, and they do not
determine cause and effect (as cited in Abas, 2015).
Research Setting
This research was conducted at English Education Department Universitas
Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. The deliberation of this choice was based on two
factors. First, English Education Department Universitas Muhammadiyah
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Yogyakarta offers some courses which implement the presentation technique in
teaching and learning activity. Those courses are Academic Presentation,
Listening and Speaking for Formal Setting, Listening and Speaking for Academic
Purposes, Listening and Speaking for Daily Conversation, Listening and Speaking
for Career Development, Capita Selecta on Grammar 4, Language Research,
Teaching English as Foreign Language, and Second Language Acquisition. In
addition, this research focuses on Academic Presentation since this course
employs individual presentation and group presentation. The second factor was
the accessibility of the researcher to collect the data. It was accessible for the
researcher to conduct the research since the researcher is one of the students at the
English Education Department.
The researcher collected the data on March, 7th to 19th 2016. The
researcher needed two weeks to conduct the interview and make appointment to
the participants. Furthermore, the researcher analyzed and accomplished the data
that had been collected from the previous participant in the middle of collecting
the data. For this reason, it required two weeks to collect and to analyze the data.
Research Participant
Purposive sampling was used to choose the participants of the study.
Creswell (2012) points out that the consideration to use purposive sampling is
because it provides useful information. The participants of this research were the
students of English Education Department in batch 2012. The consideration of
choosing batch 2012 was because they had long life experiences in presentation. It
means that they had participated in some courses which provided presentation as a
29
technique in teaching and learning activity such as Academic Presentation course.
The researcher reconfirmed the information before she did the interview.
Since students’ batch 2012