Action research cycle 1 Teaching and Learning Process throughout the Action Research Cycles

92 my most favorite activities are Games and discussion. We got refreshed after playing games. Besides, we can know new words... yes, we add new vocabulary. Translated, P ST08-INT 09 Therefore, the use of games was still maintained, yet the choice of games should be the ones that were less time-consuming, yet still contained high learning values for students. b The effectiveness of mixed-competence grouping The next crucial issue to discuss is the process of collaborative learning among the students. As the practical manifestation of collaborative learning, flexible groupings were applied in every lesson session to enable students work with different characteristics peers. In some parts of the lesson, the students were assigned to work in mixed-competence groups. Since there were nine students, usually they were put in a group of 3 students, each of whom were from bottom, middle, and top tier. This action was carried out to enable students to help one another and allow them to form teacher-student relationship Lai, 2011 since they were composed of high and low ability. This following field notes describe students’ dynamics when working in mixed-competence groups R FN 3.5 and R FN 5.11. Students worked in a group of 3, with mixed competences. They had to observe some pictures and describe what activity was performed by the people in each picture. Group 1 Arka, Amin, Titus: Arka has high willingness to help his friends, but he did not use English. So, the teacher reminded the students to keep speaking English. Group 2 Desta, Ben, Vino: Desta’s group seemed very quiet that they did not really demonstrate discussion activities. Vino, Desta, and Ben were still busy looking at each of their books, rather than communicating. So, the teacher came closer to encourage them to do group work. Group 3 Yosep, Dony, Satria : Yosep’s group members ask and answer quite frequently. R FN 3.5 93 The students continued to have their own procedure in different groups of mixed competence level. Yosep, Amin, and Titus struggled to pick their theme. But, as Ms Nora came to give some clues, they could initiate their own idea on procedure and steps to perform it. Yosep helped his friends actively, yet spoke much bahasa Indonesia during interactions. Dony and Satria needed to find ways to contribute more in their group because they tended to only watch, not participate in the group works. All students still need to be reminded all the time about using English in every single discussion. Titus needs more assistance from his friends, but he was reluctant to ask for help. Consequently, he did not know what to say about certain words until the teacher came and told him. R FN 5.11 From those field notes, some interesting findings related to students’ collaborative behaviors when working with different competence peers were obtained. First of all, it was obvious that two out of three students with considerably higher competence, namely Arka and Yosep, were active and willing to assist their peers. Here, their keenness to help others indicated that they countenanced the process of learning collaboratively, which was then confirmed by Yosep’s answer to the interview question “Do you enjoy more learning individually or collaboratively in groups?” I personally prefer working in a group, Miss. That’s because... for me, I can contribute a little bit of my capability to other less competent friends. Or in contrast, when I am the weaker one, I can ask a smarter friend. That is why I prefer it collaborative learning. I can exchange experience also. Translated; P ST04-INT 09 The fact that they did not use English while helping friends was probably because they believed that it was more effective to use Bahasa Indonesia when explaining something to lower capability peers. This is in line with Arka ’s belief that it was more effective to learn new English concepts bilingually, as presented in the following interview transcript. ...but, I prefer to use from Indonesia to English, or English to Indonesia. P ST05-INT 05 94 I prefer Bilingual because it is easy to understand because if with English maybe there will be, mm.. the explanation about something. Maybe the word is pull. And they will express about “pull is the activities to blablabla” like that. Naah, it is more difficult. So I must study more. But, if I use Indonesia English I think it is very easy for me to understand. P ST05-INT 06 This personal belief made him think that he could help others effectively when he explained something in Bahasa Indonesia. Different from Arka and Yosep, Ben, who was also one of the top tier students according to the pre-test result, did not obviously help his friend much. This fact raised a question regarding what made him behave so. His reflections points written in his reflective journals provided the explanation. The following reflections were Ben’s responses to the reflective question “Did I help my classmates in the learning process?” No, I didn’t. Because I have a trouble to speak English in this classroom, especially to my friends. I think I not to help my classmates yet, because my English is bad. Q ST03-REFL 1.4 No, I didn’t, because my knowledge about traditional art and about English is bad, I think. Q ST03-REFL 2.4 From Ben’s reflections, it was understood that he was not confident about his own capability. He did not realize that his competence was considerably higher than his friends. It then becomes essential for teachers to help students understand and realize their capability in order to grow their confidence both in individual and collaborative learning process. The second finding obtained from the observation field note R FN 3.5 and R FN 5.11 was regarding the fairly and less competent students’ behavior. It was understood that at this period they tended to act as a receiver among the more competent students. However, not all the less-competent students were passive. 95 Desta was the real example. The following interview script elaborates his answer when he was asked “Have you ever helped your friends when they were experiencing difficulties?” Yes I have. It was actually not when they were experiencing difficulty. I just reminded him. Before we did a presentation, we had discussed the points that we were going to say. Yet, when performing in front of the class, one of them forgot what to say, so I helped them remember what to say. Translated, P ST08-INT 13 Desta’s statement indicated that he had a good collaboration skill. The fact that he realized he did not have higher capability than others, did not make him reluctant to help others. Instead, he made efforts for himself and other peers. This was contrasting another fact that Titus, a student who needed the most assistance from friends were reluctant to ask for help or ask questions. This could potentially retard him from progressing. The fact that less-competent students showed less participation served as an empirical evidence towards Lesser’s 2004 notion that “learner’s ability to cooperate and contribute meaningfully while working on a collaborative task is clos ely tied to proficiency” as cited in Joyce McMillan, 2012, p.216. For this reason, it was understood when some less-competent students showed little or no contribution in the collaboration process. This was another crucial thing that needed improvement. Thus, less competent students needed more assistance from both the teachers and peers, to be more empowered through being given individual assignments or project, which would encourage them to explore knowledge further. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 96 Apart from their being passive in the group participation, apparently students from the bottom tier also gained advantages from learning collaboratively, as it was depicted in the following interview transcripts. What I enjoy most is working in a discussion group, because when we have discussion, when I don’t know particular words, my friends can explain to me. Translated, P ST01-INT 06 ...when we have a discussion, it allows us to practice speaking. But sometimes when I don’t know the English words, I combine with Bahasa Indonesia. In the discussion, we learn collaboratively with friends. If I haven’t understood certain things, I can ask just ask them. Translated, P ST08-INT 10 – 11 After examining the related statements from the bottom tier students, it is understood that less-competent students found that studying in a collaborative learning environment, which in this case was group work, enabled them to get assistance from other peers. The assistance provided by peers could make them learn better without having to feel inferior because they knew that they were learning in such a competition-free environment. On the other hands, it was evidenced that more-competent students did not feel disadvantaged since they could still learn from each other. It is indeed important for more-competent students to have positive perceptions toward their group’s learning so that they could maintain positive atmosphere in learning and thus make improvements for themselves as well. After all, there was a special effort to make sure that all students contribute actively in the collaborative learning process, which was by giving basic knowledge about collaborative learning in collaborative environment. Thus, a “Students’ Handbook” see Appendix E was distributed to each student on the first lesson session. It contained necessary information about the conduct of the 97 action research, i.e. the classroom problems and the proposed solutions as well as the research timeline, in order that all students would keep in mind the whole research process that they were participating. Other than that, the handbook contained the knowledge of collaborative learning principles, which would guide the students on how to participate positively and gain maximum advantages in collaborative learning environment. This was one of the efforts of making sure that all participants were benefited from action implementation. c The effectiveness of homogeneous-competence grouping Throughout cycle 1 of action research, as another manifestation of flexible grouping strategy, the students were exposed to the experience of group working with peers with the same competence level. There are apparently still a number of debates on whether grouping students homogeneously in terms of competence is beneficial Adodo Agbayewa, 2011. However, in this research, homogenous student grouping was applied as it agreed with Hall et al.’s 2003 and Tomlinson’s 2014, p.23 recommendation on flexible grouping strategy, in which students need to be exposed the experiences of collaborating with different kinds of peers. In addition, it was in line with Wilkinson’s 2011, p.628 suggestion on grouping students based on language level and topic complexity. In fact, this served as one effort to fulfill the different needs of all learners, which agreed with the one of the principles of differentiated instruction. That is, to differentiate the process, which are the “opportunity for learners to process the content or ideas and skills to which they have been introduced” Tomlinson, 2001, p.79. In this PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 98 sense-making activity, therefore, students were given the same point of understandings and skills, but they proceeded with different support, challenge, and complexity. To manifest this, there were tiered group assignments provided to students. In accomplishing such project, students were to work with peers of similar competence level at times, particularly in the receiving inputs session. In each lesson session, a topic was provided to guide the whole session discussion. In order to introduce the topic, students were asked to use their receptive skill to receive the topic knowledge presented, which was given in a different form in every session, such as reading short texts or watching short videos. Following, they were to respond to some comprehensive questions or tasks serving to bolster as well as scaffold their understandings process on the text or short video. This activity was tiered to enable students to receive language inputs with different level of support, or scaffoldings. This session lesson was selected to group students homogeneously in order that the students could get input receiving in the way it was adjusted to their level of support necessities. During the implementation of the aforementioned activity, although the tasks had been adapted to each tier of students’ competence, there were still some problems encountered. The situation is portrayed in the following field note taken on meeting 2 R FN 4.7. The students were divided into 3 groups according to the competence level. All students were to watch the same video about the process of making batik while learning the new vocabulary obtained from it. The vocabulary exercise was taken from the course book without any modification. It was in the form of matching the words with the English definitions. Then, they continued with doing tiered exercise. I handle Tier 1 group. I played the video and make frequent pauses to let students 99 observe the pictures, in the hope that students understand what objects they were looking at because the words in the vocabulary exercise were taken from the video. After watching it once, I asked students “What is wax?” and “What is synthetic?” But the students could not answer. It seemed that my tier 1 students found the vocabulary too difficult to handle, not to mention that the words definitions were also in English. So, I ended translating some words to help them. When I asked them to retell the process shown in the video, they were also full of hesitant. At that time I knew they also had difficulty in understanding the text that appeared in the video. To help them, I retell the process while showing the paused clip segment. Tier 2 students were handled by Ms Nora. She put much focus on the vocabulary found in the video, instead of the sequential process. When they had to do the vocabulary exercise, it seemed that they had a difficulty matching the words and the definitions. With English definitions provided, it made the students struggle. When doing the answering-questions part, the teacher still gave much help for the students. Even the teacher read the text for the students. Vino seemed to be the most active student in tier 2. Tier 3 students were engaged in a lively discussion. They contemplated to complete the vocabulary task as well as answering the open-ended comprehension questions. R FN 4.7 Based on the situation presented in the above field note, it was obvious that students were provided with the same form of input with the same difficulty of vocabulary exercise. The comprehension task was the only assignment adjusted to their competence level. This finding was, in fact, fruitless. Giving tiered task without the input being tiered as well had turned out to be fruitless. Therefore, not intending to waste another opportunity, in the following lesson, the strategy was modified. In lesson session three, students in different tier groups were provided with leveled difficulty input, which was in the form of three different videos on procedural steps. Meanwhile, the following comprehension activity still maintained the same strategy, which was reduced scaffolding for higher competence students. The flow of the lesson episode is depicted in the following field note taken from lesson session 3 R FN 5.7, R FN 5.8, R FN 5.9. The students were divided to 3 groups according to their competence. They were to watch videos of procedure with different difficulty levels. Tier 1: Ms Fanny started activity with telling the students that they were going to watch 100 a video on how to pick and store Korean apples. Titus did a good initiative by taking notes on what he was watching. Desta could give best responses to the teachers’ questions related to the video. Satria paid full attention, yet he kept quiet. There are parts that were not necessary pauses. After watching, the students were to rearrange the jumbled steps into the correct procedures according to what they had watch. The activity challenged them to understand each step before they could arrange them in a good order. A few times they asked, answer and discussed. They also initiated the workload distribution, including distributing the tasks when performing the presentation. They rehearsed. The rehearsal session seemed to be effective. Everyone tried not to look at the board while presenting his part. R FN 5.7 Tier 2: Before watching the video of procedure, I invited the students to look at the sentences and guess what kind of procedure they were about to watch. Vino answered “cleaning aquarium”, which was almost correct. After the students were given the instruction on what to do during watching, I started playing the video on “How to clean a fishbowl”. This procedure worked since the students could start rearranging the jumbled sentences while watching the video, so it could save the time. Vino was the most active student for he could initiate necessary actions to accomplish the tasks. Meanwhile, Amin and Dony seemed to hesitate on what to do. However, everything went okay, because Vino could help others. Then they started rearranging the jumbled clues and developed the clues into complete sentences. They were involved in an effective discussion. R FN 5.8 Tier 3: The students in tier 3 seemed enthusiastic in watching the video of how to plant vegetables. However, they struggled to understand what the person in the video was talking, since there was no subtitle and the person spoke quite fast. Then the teacher gave them a second chance to watch the video. The second time they watched the video, finally they could have a better understanding on the procedure. After that, the students had to arrange some clues to develop the procedure retelling. While the students were doing that activity, Ms Nora explained the temporal conjunctions and imperative verbs to help them develop the procedural text. Arka and Ben seemed to understand, but Yosep did not. Yet, they worked together to contemplate arranging the procedural text. They demonstrated good degree of collaboration under the teachers’ supervision. R FN 5.9 The field note above portrays how the learning materials were more well- adjusted to each group of students’ competence. The difficulty level of short videos functioning as the source of knowledge input was modified according to students’ level of competence. Therefore, it suited the students more, which was evidenced through how smooth their learning and collaborative process was. Subsequently, each group of students had to prepare themselves to retell the video procedure in front of the class. This was one form of open-ended task, which PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 101 allowed students to retell a series of procedure using their own mastered language complexity, as it is recommended in differentiated instruction environment. This finding supports the notion that providing open-ended tasks enable all levels of students to work on the same task using their own pace Xanthou Pavlou, 2008, p.6. Hence, students with different linguistic competences could perform within their own range of capability without fearing too much of making mistakes. d Students’ collaborative attitude outside the classroom During the action research as well as the course program, the students were provided with take-home assignments with the intention to encourage students’ independent and collaborative learning outside the class. Since the students participating in this research live together in the same dorm, there was a great opportunity that they could perform collaborative learning while they were not in the classroom. Therefore, in cycle 1, the students were given two times of individual homework and one time of group homework. Not every time was the homework completed appropriately. The following field note taken in lesson meeting 3 describes the aforementioned situation R FN 5.2 I went around to check their homework: vocabulary poster as an individual project and individual grammar exercise. All the groups had finished the poster assignment, which was good. However, none of them made the poster vocabulary helpful enough for them by providing the words meaning. So, the poster that was initially intended to ease them in looking at the words and remembering the meaning, did not turn out to fulfill its intended purpose. After all, students’ creativity in decorating the poster and the amount of vocabulary they wrote in the poster was laudable. When I checked the grammar exercise, it turned out that most of the students did not do as it was instructed to them. They were supposed to do the exercises individually, and then come to a friend to do peer checking outside of the class. They had to hand in after the worksheet were corrected and given feedback by their friends. In fact, 102 only a few students did as instructed. Consequently, they had to submit it again on the following meeting. R FN 5.2 From the field note, we could see that the students did the group task well. The fact that they made effort to finish the assignment together indicated that they performed collaborative learning while outside the class, although it was under teacher’s instruction. It was, in fact, also important to empower students to perform collaboration on their own initiatives. Therefore, the students were always encouraged through verbal reminders that every individual assignment had to be exchanged with peers in order that they could check one another’s work. This was in line with Chang’s 2012 recommendation to adopt peer feedback as one of the ways to promote collaborative learning. However, that expectation did not always turn into reality, as some students’ had not done peer checking as instructed. There was one astounding fact related to giving and receiving peer feedback for take home tasks. Therefore, the students had to be urged more to take actions to make the collaborative learning action more alive. There were, in fact, a number of students who preferred consulting their seniors at the congregation, rather than exchanging works with classmates. This occurred in two lesson meetings. Responding to this, in an informal talk, I tried to ask the student personally about the reason why he did not exchange the work with his peers. He then told me that he asked a senior brother because he expected more accurate answer from someone whom he thought was smarter than him. This could signify that not all students trusted his peers to help them gain more competence. This was something that was not supposed to happen in a 103 collaborative learning environment since one of the key aspect in collaborative learning is mutual trust to share the group responsibility Lin, 2015. In relation to the above finding, there was another finding obtained from students’ interview result, which testified what actually happened outside the class. In the interview session with Arka, when was asked what suggestion he had to improve the learning, he told that regular vocabulary test was necessary. Then he said the reason behind it through the following interview transcript: I saw my friend. If they have already learned English, they will not study again. They will maybe do other task, or... so, maybe they don’t prepare themselves. P ST05-INT 25b As one of the students with higher competence than others, Arka was appointed as the captain of the class, both in English and other subject classes. Therefore, responding to his testimony, I asked for his willingness as a leader to help promoting the collaborative learning actions outside the class by reminding their friends to study English as well as practice speaking English in as many opportunities as possible, including outside the class. Then, he responded and continued explaining what happened outside the class related to English learning: I have done that. For example in dining room. But, when I speak, they will be keep silent. Maybe, they will.. no... what.... not confident with themselves. Errr. For example father Yuli and father Santo always make them to say the English. But, maybe they are afraid or... I don’t know. But if there is English day, in dining room,, giggles... almost the whole day no talk anymore in English. P ST05-INT 26 The situation that Arka described in the interview result revealed another finding that students’ awareness to study outside the class, especially collaboratively had not been well built until the end of cycle 1. Thus, there raised a big concern on how to grow more of this awareness in students’ self. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 104 Different from what Arka reported based on his observation, there was a quite contrasting finding obtained another student ’s interview results, which indicated that there was collaborative action outside the class, even just a little bit. The interview scripts are presented below. We usually use Bahasa Indonesia in outside class interaction. Usually when I passed in front of a friend’s room when he was doing English assignments, I took a peek on his answers. If I knew it was wrong, I tried to correct it. I also crosschecked with another friend to make sure my answer was right. Translated; P ST04-INT 17 My friend, Titus so... what... silent when we were on English day. Then I told him to speak english, but he just errr... he just nodded his head. But, and now he ... what... he starts to speak english with others. Yes Titus. Translated ; P ST04-INT 22 This student ’s testimony during the interview showed that collaborative learning did take place among students’ English learning-related activities outside the class, although not significant. However, these findings, including what Arka did to his friends, signified that some students had built a sense of collaboration on their own initiative, particularly those who had built confidence in themselves. 3 Reflecting From the acting and observing stage, there were several findings, which represented the dynamics as well as pluses and minuses existing in the cycle 1 of action research. Therefore, during the reflecting phase of cycle 1, I contemplated on both those positive and negative episodes. Therefore, this reflecting section is divided into two parts, one of which explores the obtained improvements, while the other part discusses some defects that needed improvements. 105 a Students’ improvements’ during action research cycle 1 Based on the qualitative data obtained from cycle 1 action research implementation, there were some improvements taking place in the learning process, particularly the ones that students experienced themselves. First of all, regarding the tiered assignments and lesson activities adjusted to students’ competence level. From students’ reflective journals, it was understood that all students were provided with sufficient activities and exercises that suit their ability. As a result of this, some students testified that they had gained improvements in speaking skills as well confidence in performing English speaking, as shown in their reflections below, as a response to the reflective question “Do you experience any improvement progress in your English speaking skill after today’s lesson?” Yes, of course. Now I am brave enough to speak in the public, especially to my formators. Q ST03-REFL 1.3 I am usually speak to people a little or quiet, because I think about English grammar. I afraid to be wrong. Now I don’t care about that. Q ST07-REFL 1.3 Another improvement that students experience was related to their increased awareness of the importance of collaborative learning. Their appreciation towards the process of learning collaboratively had grown. One of the evidence was discovered in one of the dialog during an interview with Yosep. He mentioned that Titus, his friend, who never used to speak English, started to be willing to speak with friends lately. When he was asked “In your opinion, how could that happen? Was it because of Titus himself or everybody around him?” Then Yosep answered “I think because everybody around him to encourage him PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 106 to speak English” Q ST04-INT 23. This statement from Yosep indicated that he believed that one’s improvement took place because of other peers’ supports. Thus, he had built positive perception towards the importance of collaborative learning. Besides the aforementioned facts, there were improvements as well in terms of students’ contribution during the learning process. This might have occurred because students had gained more positive beliefs towards collaborative learning. These following reflection transcripts represent students’ concrete participation throughout the learning process. This day I’m happy because I can participate in classroom. I giving feedback for my classmates. I hope next I can participate again for this class. Q ST07-REFL1.4 I help my friends explain difficult words. Q ST07-REFL 2.4 So far, I have helped my friends in terms of vocabulary and pronunciation. Translated, Q ST05-REFL 2.4 From those reflections written by students, it was discovered that the improvements of students’ learning process, which in this case was collaboration skill, was quite obvious. Another improvement that existed during the action implementation of cycle 1 was that the students with lower competence could experience progress because of both his individual efforts as well as peers’ assistance during the collaborative learning process. As a result, their speaking skill also developed throughout the cycle one of action research, which was demonstrated by students in classroom presentation as depicted in the following field note R FN 5.10: Group 1: Satria, Desta, and Titus performed with full of confidence, although Titus needed to work hard to improve his pronunciation. Satria 107 did it really well because he could speak without reading, which is a great leap for him. Group 2: Vino, Dony, and Amin collaborated really well in the presentation although Amin forgot some sequence. Dony needed to improve his confidence still although he made some mistakes. He seemed to be nervous he did not keep eye contact with the audience. He also seemed to overthink what he was going to say, so then he forgot to mention the temporal conjunction. Vino could have done better without reading because he had the good skill to talk spontaneously. It was proven when Arka asked questions to the group, he could provide accurate answer using his own words spontaneously, which was laudable. Yosep, Arka, and Ben seemed not to be well-prepared for the presentation. They could have explained the steps without reading, but they chose to read. R FN 5.10 From the field note above, each student experienced different level of improvement. Some students like Satria, Desta, and Titus showed significant improvements in speaking confidence, as they started to be able to speak in public without reading notes. The other students performed the presentation quite successfully as they could retell the sequence of procedure quite understandably, although at times they needed to look at their notes. After all, a remarkable improvement was shown by Vino. As one of the tier-2 students, his speaking performance was impressive as he could always speak spontaneously without too many pauses or groping for words. This was in accordance with his speaking test outstanding performance, which made him gained far higher progress test 1 score 60 than the pre- test 69. Vino’s remarkable performance during progress test 1 was recorded in the following field note: Vino kept communicating despite his limited vocabulary. He was always good at making improvisation as well as finding alternatives whenever he did not know the precise vocabulary to express something. Therefore, he could always maintain the fluency in speaking. Also, he was always successful in conveying his messages as well as maintaining understandable speeches to the interlocutor. His ability to interact is undoubtedly good as he was PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 108 always able to understand his interlocutor’s questions as well. R FN 6.4 Because of his significant improvement, he could make himself equal to tier-3 students, as his progress test score was tightly close to the scores of tier-3 students. b Points to improve in the next cycle Based on the qualitative data collected during cycle 1, there were some points to improve in the next cycle. First of all, reflecting on the observation field notes on the efforts to make fun learning atmosphere, some games carried out during the lesson were ineffective in delivering linguistic knowledge to the students and time consuming, despite the fact that students seemed to enjoy the games. Creating fun learning atmosphere, thus, can be done through variations of other learning activities, such as quizzes and free conversation activities. The second reflection point is regarding group shifts during one lesson session. Related to the flexible grouping strategy proposed in differentiated instruction, the students were put in different groups in different activities. The too frequent group shifts were apparently time consuming and exhausting for students. Also, it turned out to be less purposeful. In the following cycle, therefore, the application of flexible grouping was better to be made simpler and less frequent. The next thing to be reflected was that the instructional process in cycle 1 used almost 100 English. In fact, some students could not bear this as some of them recommended that the instruction was supposed to be bilingual. One of them said in the following interview script: PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 109 I can understand English when it is translated into Bahasa Indonesia first. If not translated, I can only understand very little Translated; P ST01- INT 04 When the teacher teaches using English all the time and not translated into Indonesian, I cannot understand yet. Translated; P ST01-INT 09 As a means of emancipating the participants, action research welcomes every aspiration from the participants. Therefore, this proposal from students had to be considered in planning the following research cycle. There was also another strategy as a part of the action to be maintained in the next cycle since students still enjoyed and preferred to carry them out. It was tiered assignments. As it was explained in the previous section, students felt that the difficulty level of the tasks and activities given were fit for their individual competence. This also meant that the amount of scaffolding given through the tiere d task as well as teacher’s direct assistance must be kept at approximately the same level to every tier group of students.

b. Action research cycle 2

This section presents the action undertaken during the second action research cycle, which was also conducted in three lesson meetings. Important findings related to the conduct of action research cycle 2 are elaborated in this section as well. Similar to the previous section, the discussion is distributed into three parts, namely planning, acting observing, and reflecting. 1 Planning The process for planning lessons of cycle 2 was based on the considerations obtained from cycle 1’s findings and reflection. The same differentiated instruction strategies remained being implemented as data evidence 110 showed their effectiveness in improving learning process as well as minimizing classroom problems. In cycle 2, individual tasks and assignments were again provided in different difficulty level. Similarly, students were to receive language inputs with different amount of scaffoldings in homogeneous competence group in order that the students could receive input according to their readiness. Other than that, as students valued positively the extensive speaking activities provided in cycle 1, in cycle 2, more varied speaking activities were provided while still maintaining the relaxed and non-stressful atmosphere, in the forms of group and whole class discussions, presentations, debate, interview, and role play. In order to facilitate students’ different preferences as well as to promote democracy in learning, a number of approaches were applied. First of all, as students usually sat in fixed seating arrangement, in cycle 2 the seating arrangement was regularly modified, in order to let students experience collaborating with different peers. Similarly, students were given more freedom to select their own group members, as another variation of flexible grouping. Other than that, students were frequently provided with selections of tasks as well as topics for speaking that matched their preference. One of the findings related to students’ expectations in future learning was that they needed more vocabulary building activities as well as pronunciation. This was portrayed in one of the interview results presented below. mmm... my expectation is errr... I can have a... errr... good pronunciation. Cause I think my pronunciation is broken. It’s really broken. I hope my pronunciation will be increased and I will get new vocabulary because I think vocabulary is very important because when you talk to other people, if you don’t have vocabulary then you can’t speak. P ST 05-INT 22 111 Responding to students’ demand for learning vocabulary, a take-home vocabulary building task was proposed to the students prior to the cycle 2 commencement. This take-home task required students to make a list of vocabulary consisting of at least 10 new words obtained from a lesson session, together with the meanings. This task followed the open-ended principle, in which the students were allowed to write any words as well as the meanings in whatever ways that they preferred, which enabled them to memorize the words better. To maintain consistency in collaborative learning, the students were to keep doing peer checking on their take-home task. Pronunciation practice was also made into a habitual activity in each lesson session. The aforementioned strategy was performed also in the purpose of increasing students’ independent learning. It is in fact, important that students can learn independently, particularly outside the class in order that they can assist both their own and their peers ’ learning. In relation to this, in cycle 2, the lesson objective was constantly informed to the students at the beginning of the lesson session as one effort to raise students’ independent learning. By understanding the lesson objectives, it was expected that the students would know what to do as well as perform suitable efforts to achieve the objectives. 2 Acting, Observing The process of undertaking the planned action in the purpose of solving problems in mixed-competence English speaking class continued in the second 112 action research cycle. Some important themes emerging throughout the cycle are discussed in details in this sub-section. a Coping with students’ inferiority During the process of action research cycle one, it was reported that there were some improvements on students’ collaborative learning skills. Nonetheless, in the further dynamics of collaborative learning, there were series of vicissitudes as well as instability of students’ performance. Despite students’ positive attitudes and contribution during the process of learning collaboratively, there were also some problems remaining as the consequences of their mixed-competence. First of all, there were situations in which some students felt inferior and under motivated. In most of the whole-class discussion sessions, it was seen that the same few of students usually dominated the discussion. Usually, they were those students with higher competence, and sometimes the middle tier students. Meanwhile, the other students did not contribute as actively. This participation issue was as it was theoretically predicted by Gurgenidze 2012, p.57 who stated that “some students may take many turns, while others do not speak for the entire lesson” due to the complex difficulty that they experience, such as confidence, age and knowledge. This problem was serious, as students’ success of achieving speaking skill progress is affected also by their participation. The following field note captured different speaking participation during the 5 th lesson session R FN 8.5: Ms. Fanny invited students to make simple predictions about things related to the future of the suitcase. Vino and Amin could make good predictions about the suitcase owners. Arka made a prediction about robbers in the future. Then Ms. Fanny asked Titus to share his prediction, but he did not say anything. He kept silent as he seemed confused and 113 had no idea on what to say. He scratched his head and kept looking to the right and left. R FN 8.5 From the field note above, it is seen that Titus was one example of the less active students. Titus was, in fact, aware of his inferiority as it was written in one of his reflective journal: I feel like I haven’t done enough speaking practice because I haven’t been able to speak English yet. Translated, Q ST01-REFL 4.4 Throughout the learning process, his biggest hindrance was being able to formulate utterance spontaneously as he needed more time to think of the vocabulary first and process them into utterances. The same problem sometimes occurred also to some other students. In order to deal with this problem, the teachers usually appoint students with less contribution directly, which sometimes also did not work as it is reported in the field note. To respond to this problem, in other speaking opportunities, students were given some time to prepare themselves and formulate what to say before performing a speech, instead of asking them to do impromptu speech. In another speaking activity in lesson session 6, the students were to present their results voluntarily in front of the class after interviewing friends within the topic of “predictions on the future of technology”. The situation is portrayed in the following field note: Ms. Nora invited the students to share their interview results voluntarily. Some students volunteered themselves: Desta, Yosep, Satria, Ben, and Vino. Unfortunately, the time was not enough for everyone to speak R FN 9.18 The above field note reports the moment when some students who used to be passive volunteered themselves to speak up. Desta and Satria were two of the