Reflection Classroom Action Research

21 act more effectively, wisely, and prudentially, so it does not raise new problems. Kemmis and McTaggart: 1992 page 12.

b. Action and Observation

Action is guided by planning. In the action section, practitioners do their plan as they constructed before. The action should reflect what are going to achieve and what should be achieved. Here, the practitioners apply the method or strategies they prescribed in the plan. The practitioners teach the class while observing the situation, the students’ attitudes and behavior in the classroom, and the learning atmosphere. Kemmis and McTaggart: 1992 page 12. Observation has the function of documenting the effects of action. The observation of the process result can be done through students’ reflection, interviews, or questionnaires. The careful observation is necessary because action will always be controlled and organized. Observation should be planned so that the documentary of sequences is objective, responsive, and open-minded. Kemmis and McTaggart: 1992 page 13.

c. Reflection

Reflection is aimed to make the process, problems, and issues become clear. Reflection has an evaluative aspect. It includes researcher’s experience in order to judge whether the learning activities give good impacts or not to students’ development. Reflections are also used to give suggestions to the next cycle. In this reflection researcher should evaluate what they have done and re-arrange 22 activities which are going to be done in cycle two. Kemmis and McTaggart, 1992:13. Figure 2.1 Action Research cycle by Stephen Kemmis 1988 23 There are several key points about action research Kemmis and McTaggart, 1988:22 : 1. Action research is an approach to improve education by changing it and learning from the consequences of changes. 2. Action research is participatory: it is research through which people work towards the improvement of their practices. 3. Action research develops through the self-reflective spiral: a spiral of cycles of planning, acting, observing, reflecting and re-planning, further implementation, observing and reflecting. 4. Action research is collaborative; it is done in collaboration between others. 5. Action research is a systematic learning process in which people act deliberately. 6. Action research involves people in their practicing about circumstances, action, and consequences and to understand the relationship between circumstances, actions, and consequences in their own lives. 7. Action research puts students’ practices, ideas, and assumptions about the material given. 8. Action research involves keeping a personal journal in which we record our progress and our reflections for the sake of the effectiveness of the process. 9. Action research involves people in making critical analyses of the situations classrooms, schools, systems in which they work. 10. Action research allows us to build records of our improvements. 24 B. Theoretical Framework The first theory that is used in this study is the theory of Audio-Visual Materials. Audio-Visual materials are recorded materials using live or motion pictures which provides experiences which are directly related to the real life situation. Here, the researcher chose Fun with English because it is a visual and auditory material using live pictures which presents daily life situations related to the students’ experience in their daily live. There are several reasons why the researcher chose Fun with English to develop speaking skill of junior high schools students. The first reason is Fun with English uses natural language input. The language that is used is simpler so that students could understand the materials given easier. The second reason is that live pictures could be good models for students in developing their speaking ability. It could convey the meaning authentically so that students could understand the messages accurately. The third reason is Fun with English facilitates the integrated teaching-learning process as stated in the computer-assisted language learning. Students could develop their listening skill integrates with their speaking skill or writing integrates with speaking skill or reading skill integrates with writing and speaking skill. Besides, the language activities vary so that students would not be bored in following lessons. Live pictures and the listening activity train students to watch, read, listen, write, and speak. Listening and reading activities helped students understand the meaning of the words and pronounce the words correctly. When students read the reading passage loudly, the researcher made correction on their wrong pronunciation. Through writing activities, students’ mistakes in structure 25 grammatical items could be corrected together so that students know the right grammar should be used. The last reason is that Fun with English fulfills the bidirectional learning. Students and the teacher could learn to each other so that there is a good interaction between students, between students and teachers, or between teacher and students. Answer and question section, discussion, and practicing conversation create a good interaction in the classroom so that there will be a live teaching learning activity. A good interaction in the classroom shows that the students are active. Willis 1981:104 suggested several activities that can be used to improve students’ speaking ability are among others conversation drill, using picture cues, imaginary situations, and role play. Here, the researcher includes those activities in her teaching learning activities. Drilling is used to train students pronounce the English words taken from Fun with English so that students will not be confused while watching the film. Imaginary situation is presented in writing activity. Students are asked to write their own conversation so that they could write and imagine what kind of situations they want to write. Role play is conducted as the formative test. This test aims to know students mastery of speaking skill, their confidence, and their fluency in speaking English. Those activities also usually used in communicative language teaching. The other focus in this teaching is that teachers should know “what to teach” and “how to teach”. In “what to teach” the researcher focuses on the students’ needs based on the curriculum so that the indicator of the learning achievement could be achieved. In “how to teach” the researcher chooses activities based on the 26 characteristic of the students. Students need activities which make them interested, motivating, and help them understand the material given. The theory of communicative language teaching relates to the theory of effective learning. The other theory to develop students speaking skill is the theory of computer-assisted language learning. It is student-centered learning. Students are given a lot of opportunities so that they will actively speaking in the classroom. Computer-assisted language learning is integrative learning. Like in developing speaking skill, teacher should integrate students’ skills because there is correlation between listening, reading, and writing with speaking skill. The following diagram will explain the correlation clearly. Listening Reading Writing Speaking Students are able to understand the pronunciation, stress, and intonation correctly. Receptive Students are able to practice the pronunciation correctly as the example given. Productive Students are able to make or to construct sentences using the correct grammar Productive Students are able to speak fluently with the correct pronunciation and grammar when they perform in the class. Productive 27 The last theory to answer the research problems is the theory of classroom action research. Classroom action research is the appropriate and effective method to be implemented to solve the problem related to students’ low mastery in English speaking ability. There are several reasons why classroom action research can effectively and significantly improve the students’ speaking ability. The first reason is that the researcher could design the learning activities accurately based on problems related to the low mastery of speaking ability. The second reason is that the researcher could record everything happened during the teaching-learning process so that the researcher knows which parts of activity are interesting for students and which parts of activity are boring for students. The third reason is that the researcher uses questionnaire to know whether the activity gives good impacts for students’ speaking ability or not. The last reason is that the researcher has the opportunity to revise the activities to improve the quality of the learning activity for the future learning in the step. 28

CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY