185 to stimulate their friends. Whenever their friends did not know the English
word of something, they told them or helped them to find it in the dictionaries. Since the grouping technique was implemented repeatedly, and the captains
were different from one activity to another activity, as a result, this behavior change happened to most of the students.
3. The English Teacher’s
By being the first collaborator in the research, there were some changes in the English teacher. The changes were related to her view on teaching
language, and her concern to design a speaking practice in small groups. The teacher got some knowledge about the current trend of teaching
language i.e the communicative language teaching. She found that it was important to involve the students in a speaking practice that resemble their real
life. Besides, she was impressed with the pre-communicative activities I gave to the students to prepare them for the communicative activities. In this case,
she also learned various kinds of exercises such as crossword puzzle, semantic web, word search, and word
list that attracted the students’ interest in the learning process.
In addition to this, the teacher was also inspired by the way I conducted the communicative activities in small groups. Before being involved in the
research, she used to ask the students to have some speaking performance in front of the class. According to her, asking the students to perform in front of
the class was efficient to observe the students’ speaking skill. However, by
186 being involved in the research, she realized that involving the students in
communicative activities in small groups gave them more comfort thus they would be more confident to practice to speak.
4. My Colleagues
By being involved as my research collaborators, my colleagues changed their perspective on teaching. Before being involved in the research they found
it difficult to build rapport with the students. They sometimes felt awkward to mingle with students. After being involved in the research, they were inspired
by my way of building rapport with the students so the students felt happy to learn with me yet still had some respect for me.
5. Myself
By conducting this action research, there are a lot of changes in me myself. These changes were mainly related to my understanding of teaching
theories, my experience in teaching, my perception of teaching, and my experience in conducting action research.
Conducting the action research has deepened my understanding of teaching theories especially those related to communicative language teaching.
Before conducting the research, I understood that involving the students in communicative activities would enhance their speaking skill as it made sense.
However, by conducting the research, I witnessed by myself how my students
187 really learned the language because they were involved in some
communication using English. In addition to my understanding of teaching theories, I got more
experience in teaching. This was related to my process of learning to develop learning materials and media, conduct communicative activities and handle the
class in general. I have learned to develop materials not only to practice my knowledge
about materials development but also to really facilitate the students to learn. This increased my awareness of every single thing I used as the learning
materials. This was because misusing something as the learning materials might consequently hinder the students in learning. Besides, I learned to
develop teaching media such as audio recording, and cards and sheets to help the students in being involved in the information-gap activities.
Conducting the research gave me some experience in involving students in communicative activities. Before conducting the research, I learned various
kinds of activities suggested by experts. I was not yet experienced in conducting the activities in the real class. In the research, I learned how to adapt
the existing activities to suit the students’ need. Besides, I also learn how to manage the students in being involved in the activities. Sometimes, the students
were too excited to have the activities thus made it difficult for me to control them to stay on their tasks. This situation then made me learn to explain the
rules of the activities thoroughly before the activities were done in earnest. By
188 doing so, I could make sure that the students knew exactly what they were
expected to do. Furthermore, the experience of teaching in this action research study
enabled me to know more how to deal with students. Sometimes the students lost their focus on learning, thus I had to attract their attention either by having
jokes or doing another fun thing. This situation motivated me to maintain the fun learning atmosphere during the whole teaching and learning process. I
mingled with the students, built some rapport with them, and recognized their interest. By doing so, I could identify what things were interesting to the
students. Thus, I could engage the students in the whole teaching and learning process.
Other than that, the experience in teaching made me change my perception of teaching. I used to think that teaching was boring and a lot of
pressure. However, the experience in teaching made me realize that teaching was absolutely challenging and a lot of pleasure.
The last yet not least, the experience of conducting the research had enhanced my understanding of action research itself. It deepened my
understanding of the steps of action research, methods of collecting data, analyzing them as well as reporting the findings. Especially in reporting the
findings, I learned to have scientific attitudes. I learned to report the findings by having proofs and theories as the base.
189
B. Implication
