Procedure of the Research

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CHAPTER IV THE RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

This chapter presents matters concerning research findings and discussions. These are presented in three headings: research procedures and findings, the implementations of the actions and discussions, and results of pre- test and post-test on the students’ speaking ability.

A. The Sharpening of the Problem

To give clear understanding on the research process, the description of steps in action research suggested by Kemmis and McTaggart 1988 with some modifications are presented as follows:

1. Reconnaisance

The research process began with the formulation of problems identified in the field which was derived by conducting some observations and interviews with the English teacher and the students. The field problems occurred during the teaching and learning process could be seen in Table 1. 2. The Identification of the Problems Table 1: The Problems found during the observation of teaching and learning activities No Aspects Description 1 The teacher a. The teacher just focused on delivering materials. b. The teacher did not maximize the use of media available in the classroom like the LCD and the sound systems. c. The teacher rarely used English 2 The students a. The students were easily bored listening to the long explanation. b. The students’ speaking ability was low. 3 The teaching techniques and activities a. The teaching techniques used were monotonous. b. The teaching techniques were lack of interesting activities that students could maximize the use of English. c. The teaching techniques did not motivate the students to use English actively. d. The teaching techniques were lack of language practice. 4 The materials a. Mostly, the materials were based on the course book. b. The materials were lack of activities to support language learning. c. The materials were lack of speaking activity. 5 The media a. Media were rarely used. b. The teacher rarely created media. Based on the observations and interviews, the lack of students’ ability in speaking was caused by some factors such the activities, the materials, and the teaching techniques. Mostly, the techniques and the activities in the teaching and learning activities did not support the use of English actively. The activities were mainly based on the course book only. This fact was approved by the students in an interview that the teacher rarely used meaningful activities in which the students were able to practice the language orally. The students, thus, passively involved in the teaching and learning activities because most of the teaching and learning activities were spent with sitting down on the chair. The other factor causing the low speaking ability was the lack of language input used by the teacher. The teacher tended to speak in Indonesian language rather than use English. The use of classroom English was also rarely used by the teacher such as in giving instruction, requesting, or asking something. Thus, the students’ comprehension in understanding English was also low. This case was found when the researcher tried to communicate using English. The response that the students gave when the researcher used English was sometimes funny like when the students said “saya tidak dong I don’t understand” or “ngomong apa si mas, nggak ngerti ? I don’t understand what you are talking about”. However, in some cases, the students were able to give response in English like “good morning” and “how are you?” the students were able to respond the expressions since they were accustomed to listening to the expressions. It means that if they were familiar with English, they were able to speak English gradually. Based on the observations, there was no problem with the media which were available in the classroom because there were the LCD and sound systems to support English learning process. The only problem was that the media were rarely used. In fact, the LCD was really useful to present materials and to give language inputs like movies and pictures. Therefore, the students asked the researcher to make use the LCD. They also asked the researcher to play movies or video. The use of the LCD would become a variation of language input besides using English course book that they used every single meeting. It would also be used for lessen the students’ boredom.

3. Research Problems

Solving the problems was figured out after finding and learning the field problems. In this case, improving students’ speaking ability was the focus of this research study. The low speaking ability was perceived by the difficulty of students trying to express their ideas in English and trying to give response. The problem dealing with the difficulty expressing their idea into English was probably caused by the lack of practice. Meanwhile, the difficulty in giving response was caused by the lack of English comprehension, the ability to understand what the speaker says, or the ability to interpret the speaker’s ideas. Therefore, they got difficulty in answering the question or doing instruction. In addition, the students seemed very nervous when they were asked to speak in English. The researcher concluded that it was caused by the lack of confidence, afraid of making mistake, and lack of English performance since they were not accustomed to speak English.