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rationality in doing their jobs to deepen their understanding of their action in order to make the teaching-learning process better.
Furthermore, Hopkins explains that Action research has been described as an informal. Qualitative, formative, subjective, interpretive, reflective, and
experiential model of inquiry in which all individuals involved in the study know contributing participants. It has the primary intent of providing a frame work for
qualitative investigations by the teachers and researcher in complex working classrooms.
In short, action research is characterized by those constraints and strength given a research methodology intended to be a workable technique for working
classroom teachers. One can conclude that the meaning of classroom action research is reflective action which is done to maintain the doers’ rationality in
doing their jobs to deepen their understanding of their action in order to make the teaching-learning process better. An action research is done to improve a teaching
learning process. Elliot 1991: 49 concludes that action research improves a teaching learning process by saying “The fundamental aim of action research is to
improve practice rather than knowledge.”
1.14 Theoretical Framework
Based on the previous explanations, I would like to give the outline of the materials about the topic going to be researched. Audio-lingual Method drills
students in the use of grammatical sentence pattern. It indicates that the focus of this lesson is to improve students’ target language communicatively. The The goal
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of this method for the students is to be able to use target language Freeman, 2000: 37. It is based on behaviorist theory which is the belief that learning should
be based on psychological study of observable and measurable psychology only; psychological theory based on stimulus-response influenced Audio-lingualism.
The Audio-lingual Method, like the direct method, is also an oral- approach. However, it is very different in that rather than emphasizing vocabulary
acquisition through exposure to its use in situations, the Audio-lingual Method drills students in the use of grammatical sentence patterns. In its development,
principles from behavioral pshychology were incorporated. It was taught that the way to acquire the sentence patterns of the target language was through
conditioning helping learners to respond correctly to stimuli through shaping and reinforcement.
Drills, as part of the Audio-lingual Method, have been applied to the teaching of English especially speaking. In this case, teaching English as a foreign
language makes teachers and students try to use English as often as possible. The more we use spoken English as much as possible, the better of speaking skill we
get. Meanwhile, Harmer 2001: 12 defines grammar as the description of the
ways in which words can change their forms and can be combined into sentences in that language. Next, Lundquist 2009:18 cites that Most English classes teach
grammar as a foundation of spoken English. It can be right that the paradigm of learning foreign language well is from the basic rules of grammar. The aim is to
get the understanding while applying spoken language.
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Speaking is the productive skill in the oral mode. It is like the other skills, it is more complicated than it seems at first and involves more than just
pronouncing words. Speaking has several meanings, like Bygate 1987: viii describes that
speaking is a skill deserves attention every but as much as literary skills, in both first and second language. There are two ways in which speaking can be seen as a
skill, they are as follow: 1.
Motor perceptive skills This includes articulating, perceiving, recalling in the correct order sounds and
structure of the language. 2.
Interaction skills It covers making decision about communication, such as what to say, how to say
and whatsoever to develop it, in accordance with one’s intentions, while maintaining the desired relation with others.
The use of the drill techniques focus on one feature or set of the language. This means that repetitively doing a particular process till it is
reproduced without errors. Activities that present a model must be performed till mastery is gained. Simple correction is not as effective as reinforcement. The
language learning techniques recommend the usage of visuals like slides, pictures, magazines, real life situations, stick figures and student position in relation to the
helper, for new text drills.
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CHAPTER III METHOD OF INVESTIGATION
In this chapter, I would like to present the following investigation method to achieve the objectives of this study, I used the following methodologies which are
divided into eight sections: 1 research design, 2 subject of the study, 3 role of the researcher, 4 types of data, 5 procedures of collecting data, 6 instruments
of the study, 7 procedures of analyzing data.
3.1 Research Design
This study was an action research which was concerned with the use of Audio- lingual Method to improve students’ oral past tense. It used qualitative approach.
Bodgan and Taylor 1992: 5 define qualitative method as a research procedure which produces descriptive data in the form of written or spoken record from
individual as well as observed behaviour. The purpose of qualitative research is to gather descriptive data which
will be used to give a detail and in a depth description in order to develop the concept or understanding about something being researched. Thus, the resulted
data do not require a statistical test and no hypothesis to test. Kurt lewin 2004, then, develops action research into 4 major parts:
planning, acting, observing, and reflecting, which become a continous cycle and can be illustrated below:
