The Steps of Talking Chips Strategy

41 happen in Indonesia, the students are afraid to make mistakes in front of their friends. As the result, they tend to be silent when they are asked to share their ideas or opinions. The monotonous activities during the learning process could make the condition getting worse. Based on those problems, Talking Chips strategy could be applied as an effort to improve the students’ speaking ability. Talking Chips strategy could be applied in discussion activities during the learning process. This strategy allows the students to participate and to give contribution in their group. This strategy also helps those who have low motivation and shy students to improve their participation during the learning process. By using this strategy, every student would have more opportunity to practice English orally and gradually would increase their speaking ability. Hopefully, this strategy could help the teacher to be more creative during the learning process and create atmosphere where the students could decrease their fear on using English and motivate the students to be brave to speak up. It is expected that there would be positive changes in the speaking teaching and learning process after applying this strategy. 42

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD

A. Research Designs

In accordance with the objective of the research, this study aims to improve the students’ speaking skill through the use of Talking Chips strategy for XI grade students of SMAN 1 Pengasih. This research is conducted as an action research. Koshy 2005: 9 states that action research is about working towards practical outcomes, and also about creating new forms of understanding, since action without understanding is blind, just as theory without action is meaningless. Koshy 2005: 3 concludes that the purpose of action research is to learn through action leading to personal or professional development. Nunan 1992 in McKay 2006 points out that action research typically has three major characteristics; it is carried out by practitioners i.e. classroom teachers, it is collaborative, and it is aimed at changing things. Further, Burns 1999 in McKay 2006 expands those three characteristics into the following features: 1. Action research is contextual, small-scale and localized- it identifies and investigates problems within a specific situation. 2. It is evaluative and reflective as it aims to bring about change and improvement in practice. 3. It is participatory as it provides for collaborative investigation by teams of colleagues, practitioners and researchers.