2 spontaneously. Besides, the teaching and learning process did not involve
much participation from the students. Most of the activity the students had was listening to the teacher’s explanation. There was not much chance for the
students to contribute actively to the teaching and learning process. Consequently, the students were not used to participating actively in the
process. These problems will be elaborated further in the point of problem identification in this chapter.
The findings above then motivated me to conduct a classroom action research in class VIII E SMP Negeri 1 Muntilan in the Academic Year
20152016. After my collaborators and I discussed the problems found out and considered the most crucial problems, we decided to focus the classroom action
research on improving the students’ speaking skill through activities that enable the students to acquire the language and thus be able to use it as a means
of communication.
B. Identification of the Problem
In identifying the problems, there were three kinds of techniques used. Those were observing the English teaching and learning process in the class,
interviewing the students as well as the teacher, and distributing questionnaires to the students before the research actions were planned. The observations were
done three times. Those were on November 5
th
, 26
th
, and 28
th
, 2015. The questionnaires were distributed to the students on November 7
th
, 2015.
3 Meanwhile, the interviews were done during the reconnaissance step starting
from November 5
th
to November 28
th
, 2015. The results of the observations, interview with the students and
questionnaires distributed to the students can be seen in the appendixes. The observation results were displayed in the forms of vignettes that can be seen in
Appendix A, Vignettes 1, 2, 3. The interview results were displayed in the form of an interview transcript that can be seen in Appendix B, Interview Transcript
1. Meanwhile, the questionnaire results were displayed in a table in Appendix E.
Based on the results of the reconnaissance done by having the three techniques above, several problems were identified and they were then
categorized into five categories based on the problem sources. Those were problems focusing on the students, the teacher, the teaching and learning
process, the learning materials and the learning media. The first category focused on the problems coming from the students. It
was found that the students gave little participation in the teaching and learning process. They rarely answered the teacher’s classical questions. This implied
the students’ low confidence in participating in the teaching and learning process. It was supported by the result of the questionnaires in which most of
the students stated that they tended to wait for their friends to answer the teacher’s questions instead of trying to answer by themselves. They also rarely
asked questions to the teacher nor gave comments on the teaching and learning process. Based on the interview done with the students, they tended to keep
4 silent because they were afraid of making mistakes. Besides, they also stated
that they found difficulties to understand the teacher’s English instructions. The
students were not used to practicing to speak in English either. This made the students’ speaking skill low. Consequently, they were not yet able to speak in
English spontaneously. Besides, even though the students were assigned a group
work, based on the teacher’s description and the observation I did, they tended to work individually. Lastly, the students were not used to employing
their dictionaries to help them learn English. The second category focused on the teacher. The teacher rarely made
lesson plans for the teaching and learning process. Besides, in handling a teaching and learning process, when the students were having a pre-
communicative speaking activity, she frequently interrupted them when they were making mistakes. This made the other students laugh at those making
mistakes. Not to mention, she did not give any sanction to those who laughed. Based on the interview I had with the students, this was one of the reasons of
why they were then afraid of making mistakes in learning. They were not willing to participate much in the teaching and learning process since they were
worried about making mistakes, being laughed at and consequently being embarassed.
Meanwhile, the other categories focused on the teaching and learning process, the learning materials and the learning media. In the teaching and
learning process, there was no communicative speaking activity. Based on the observation and the interviews, most of the speaking activities that the students
5 had were by preparation. The students were rarely trained to speak
spontaneously. Besides, during the teaching and learning process in the class, the dominant languages were Bahasa Indonesia and Javanese. The students
rarely practiced to speak in English with their friends nor the teacher. On the one hand, the input texts the students had were limited. Furthermore,
inappropriate learning media were used. In conclusion, all aspects related to the students, teacher, teaching and
learning process, materials, and media needed to be improved. The improvement could be achieved by minimizing the problems above as well as
improving the teaching and learning process quality that then enabled the students to improve their speaking in English ability.
C. Delimitation of the Problem
