assignment to the students. Since the conversation book is used for outside class activities, this assignment is in the form of a recording as a report after studying
the unit. This kind of report will help the students to perform their speaking skill although it is not a direct performance. This kind of assignment also helps the
teacher to assess students’ speaking skill without having problem with the time limitation inside the class.
7. Materials Development for Language Learning
There are many kinds of materials that can be used as language learning materials such as course books, games, video, pictures and so on. Tomlinson
2012: 143-144 says that materials development includes the process of materials evaluation, materials adaptation, materials design, materials production, materials
exploitation, and material research to produce or use the language learning materials. Graves 2000: 149 says that materials development is a planning
process where teachers can develop units and lessons to reach the objectives of the course. It
means that materials development needs teachers’ creativity and skill in developing materials.
The conversation book is likely compatible for a text-based course. As it is mentioned in the School-Based Curriculum, students Grade VIII should learn
speaking skills from texts. This kind of book should provide model texts and well designed activities to be used for outside class. Tomlinson 1998: 2 states that
materials refer to anything that are used by teachers and learners to facilitate the
language learning including cassettes, videos, CD-ROMs, dictionaries, grammar books, workbooks, photographs, and exercises.
Furthermore, Clarke and Siberstein cited in Richards 2006: 20 state that the language learning process should exposure the use of authentic materials which
are as closely as possible to the “real world” communication. The authentic materials include: 1 providing cultural information about the target language,
providing exposure to real language; 2 relating to learners’ needs; 3 supporting a more creative approach to teaching.
From the descriptions above, it can be concluded that materials development is the planning process that enables teachers researchers to produce, evaluate, and
adapt materials in the form of units to reach the objective of the course. Therefore, the conversation book should be designed similarly to real world communication
to make valid models of language.
B. Review of Relevant Studies
To support the theories above, researchers had conducted some similar researches. Berry and Englert 2005 conducted research to examine the nature of
student talk and the teacher’s role during book discussion. According to their journal, the student-selected topics and contingent talk were necessary for fluent
conversational discourse. Another research was conducted by Nastitijati 2015. The research was
conducted to cover students’ needs in a conversation club. In her research, the designed units have three main parts: introduction, main lesson, and
reinforcement. The introduction includes the warm-up activity. The main lesson consists of the explanation of the materials and activities, range from guided
activities to free guided activities. The reinforcement part provides fun facts and vocabulary list.
C. Conceptual Framework
Based on the explanation in the background of the problem, the main problem is there are
not sufficient materials that help students to develop students’ speaking skills, especially conversation outside the class. To solve this problem,
the researcher designed a conversation book that suitable for the outside class activities.
Mastering the skills of conversation is not separated from the use of materials of the conversation as well as the practice quantity. However, practice without the
right guidance might lead to misunderstanding. Therefore, the researcher will conduct a research in designing a conversation book for outside class activities to
support the learning process. This book is expected to fill the students’ activities
and used as a guidance in carrying out conversation in more natural way. In designing the learning materials, the researcher followed the steps of the
Research and Development cycle. First, the researcher explored the need as the way to analyze the target and learning needs. Second, the researcher adjusted the
designed-materials with the actual condition of the students. Third, the researcher designed the material based on curriculum. Therefore, the course grid was
developed as the guidance in the materials writing in which included the standard
