Hendrawan2013 conducted a study entitled “The Effect of Talking Chips
Strategy on Students’ Speaking Ability at Grade XI of SMAN 8
Kota Jambi
”. The researcher gave different treatments in the experimental group and the control
group after the pre-test. In the experimental group, talking chips strategy was used to teach speaking, while in the control group the researcher used the lecturing
method. The result of t-test was 7.561 with the critical value of t-test is 2.000 for df=78. So, there was positive effect of students who were taught by using talking
chips strategy in the speaking class. Another research studies was conducted by Purnamantari 2013 which
entitled “Teaching Speaking Ability through Talking Chips Technique to the Eight Grade Students of SMPN 2
Sukawati in Academic Year 20122013”. The research findings showed that there was a different mean between two cycles
conducted in the research. It can be concluded that teaching speaking through Talking Chips Technique was effectively enough in helping class VIIIB of eight
grade students of SMPN 2 Sukawati to improve their speaking ability. The studies above prove the effectiveness of talking chips activities to
improve students’ speaking ability in educational settings and professional areas. Talking chips encourages the students to be more confident to speak with others,
and it will make the students tend to interact and communicate to other students. Moreover, talking chips is helpful to develop their creative thinking skills and
creativity. It can be said that Talking Chips is beneficial for enhancing students’
communicative ability.
B. Conceptual Framework
Speaking is one of the important skills that should be mastered by the students. Ideally, in the teaching and learning process of speaking the students
have to be given some opportunities to practice a target language and produce it in the spoken form. They can practice the language in the form of dialogs, monologs,
discussions, games, or role plays. Besides, those practices can be given in controlled, guided, or creative. Moreover, they have to be able to not only speak
fluently in English, but also pronounce phonemes correctly, use appropriate stress and intonation patterns, and speak in connected speech and different genres and
situation. Based on the preliminary observation in class VII A of SMPN 1 Trucuk,
the researcher found problems related to the teaching and learning process of speaking. Firstly, they are lack of vocabulary mastery. Most of them cannot
express their ideas or thoughts during the class. They also have difficulties in finding appropriate words to deliver their ideas in English. It shows that their
language experiences are limited. Second, they are lack of confidence. They always felt nervous to participate individually in the teaching and learning
process. Most of them are afraid of making mistakes and they will be embarrassed if their friends laugh at them. Therefore, they do not take a risk to try
out language. Then, they have low motivation in learning English. Most of them are not interested and motivated to participate during the teaching and learning
process. It is proven when the teacher asked them to speak up during the teaching and learning process, most of them were silent. They did not want to have the
discussion with others since they were not accustomed to it. Later, they cannot speak fluently. Then, related to the learning strategies, the teacher did not use
effective technique to build the students ’ motivation in the teaching and learning
process. In addition, the materials given by the teacher were not interesting and less variation. As a consequence, the students were not interested to involve in the
teaching and learning process. Considering the facts that the students and the teacher need an appropriate
strategy in order to arouse students’ speaking skill in teaching and learning process of speaking, the researcher used Talking Chips as a strategy to improve
students’ speaking skill. Talking chips is designed to be implemented in the English teaching-learning process, including speaking. Talking chips is believed
to be effective to improve the students’ speaking skills. Talking chips provides a wide range of opportunity for students to be more confident to interact and
communicate with other students in teaching and learning process since the activity consists of a group discussion. Before the students speak up, they have to
put the chips one by one every time they want to speak up. In summary, it is expected that Talking Chips is able to improve the
students’ speaking ability. The implementation of Talking Chips in the teaching and learning process is hoped to solve the speaking problems encountered by the
VIIA students’ of SMPN 1 Trucuk.
