45 will be helped to lower these feelings since they have to speak up in a small
group instead of the whole class. Besides, having this kind of activities which is both communicative and cooperative in the classroom will take the most of
the students’ cognitive development since they have to communicate with other students to have some intended information in order to complete tasks. This
condition then will make use of the adolescent development of social cooperation as what has been discussed in the fourth paragraph of this point.
B. Relevant Studies
Some researchers have conducted researches aimed at improving the students’ speaking skill by using information-gap activities. Putri 2014
conducted some research to improve the speaking skills of VIII Graders in SMP Negeri 7 Yogyakarta Academic Year 20132014 by using information-
gap activities. In the research, she conducted the activities in pairs and groups. The results of her research show that the activities gave the students wide
opportunities to practice to speak by communicating certain information to their friends. Besides, since in carrying out the activities the students had some
purpose that was to bridge the information gap, the students were highly motivated and felt confident to speak in English.
On the other hand, Suputri 2014 conducted some research to see the effectiveness of using information-gap activities to teach speaking. The
subjects of her research were VIII Graders in SMP Negeri 7 Denpasar Academic Year 20132014. Based on the findings of her research, it can be
46 concluded that information-gap was an effective technique for teaching
speaking.
C. Conceptual Framework
Speaking in English is one of the crucial skills that students have to have. Accordingly, they have to be trained to be able to speak in English well. Ideally,
in the context of English teaching and learning process, they need to be given opportunities to practice to speak using the target language in a situation that
replicate the real life. As what has been touched upon in chapter I, there were several problems
happening in SMP Negeri 1 Muntilan especially in class VIII E. The main problems were those relating to teaching speaking. The speaking activities
designed in the teaching and learning process were not communicative. The students were given some time to prepare what they wanted to say.
Consequently, they were not trained to speak in English spontaneously as how they had to be able to in the real life oral interaction.
According to the literature review presented in this chapter, the problem could be solved by involving the students in information-gap activities. As
what has been elaborated previously, information-gap is one of the crucial features of real communication. In this kind of activities, students are required
to speak in English to bridge the information-gap they have with their communication partners. Besides, these activities would be done in small
47 groups to enable the students to stimulate each other to speak up and help each
other to solve the difficulties they might encounter. In addition to this, the materials to be used in the activities would be those
related to the students’ real life. Therefore, the speaking practice would resemble the oral communication the students have to handle in their real life.
According to some review of teaching speaking and the use of information-gap activities in an EFL classroom synchronized with the
problems happening in the field I observed, a conceptual framework could be illustrated as follows.
Figure I: The conceptual framework of the research
Information-gap activities
Communicative speaking
practice
The students’ speaking skill
improvement Kinds of
information-gap activities
Meaningful materials
Grouping technique
48
D. Hypothesis
