Conversation
is central to exchanging information, making our
positions known, and persuading and motivating others. In education, the
communication between instructor and student and student-to-student
communication contribute to learning in many ways: rehearsal of facts to
expedite memorization, exposure to a broad range of information and
perspective, deeper understanding, a stimulus for insight and creative thought,
and a basis for assessment of learning.
Conversation
is a complex activity, even in our first language, and can cause difficulties
for either speaker or listener. As
a speaker , we may
not remember the
exact word or expression
for what we
want to say. When we are listening, we may not
understand or hear the speaker, so we have to signal that there is a problem,
so that the speaker and we can negotiate a way of resolving it between us. But
(Roger, 2008, p. 9)
stated that “Conversation is not just saying something grammatically correct.
It is a social activity and has a multitude of internal and social rules.”
English
Conversation Class is a classroom activity which the focus purpose is to get
students (beginner, intermediate, or advance level) who need oral practice in
authentic, immediately functional English with both their classmates and
teacher.
The
materials used for English Conversation Classes were compelled to be good and
well-founded. Good and well-founded materials of English Conversation Classes
were materials that directly boost the students’ speaking ability. Therefore,
the materials used in English Conversation Classes were actually the
conversation materials for last year and being developed now.
MAN
1 Kediri has implemented English conversation class for about 8 years.
Therefore, it was considered as a competent school that should have developed English
conversation class materials properly. Besides, this school has been the
subject of research conducted by Widiati (2013) who suggested taking one of the
six elements of her findings and conducting an in-depth investigation about it.
The six elements of her findings were the classroom activities, the teacher’s
role, the materials used, the media used, the students’ speaking problems and
the students’ efforts to overcome their speaking problems.
Method
Most
of people, speaking is the most difficult part when learning a foreign
language. Although everyone knows that the best way to speak a language
fluently is to practice speaking as much as possible, not many people can do
this.
Of
course the best way to improve your speaking skills is to talk with a native
speaker. That also means the best language class is the one which has a native
speaker as the teacher. The foreign teacher usually uses only the language
being learnt in the class and refuses to speak in any other. Therefore you can
become more familiar with the language you are studying because you are forced
to speak in it. Talking to a native speaker in your country is good; however,
talking to a native in his own country is far better. If you can afford to
travel to the country where the language that you are learning is spoken and
stay there for some time, it's the fastest way to improve your speaking skills.
When you are surrounded by a new language every day and no one talks to you in
your mother tongue, you have to try your best to speak in that language to
survive. Besides being able to learn how people really talk in their daily
lives, you can also enlarge your vision with new views and enrich your
knowledge about a different culture. Clark & Clark (1977, p. 3), state that
the nature of language is a principle means for communication among human
beings. Noticing the process of communication, it is assumed that two main
activities occur in it, namely speaking and listening.
At
the moment, the researcher is going to focus on the three different approaches
to teaching speaking, being these
ones the closest
to conversation: Indirect
Approach, Direct Approach and
Awareness Raising Approach. In the book of teaching by Principles Brown (2007
p. 333) pointed out the approach to teaching conversation: This inductive approach supports the idea that languages can
be acquired unconsciously just by
exposing students to
comprehensible input and
giving them as
many opportunities as possible to practice their oral skills. (1) In the
Indirect Approach, learners practice the elements of speaking through their
participation in different communicative activities. It states that explicit
focus on form is not important since children learning their first language do
not receive this explicit instruction, and they become competent
conversationalists all the same. In the classroom, the Indirect Approach tends
to give students many opportunities for face-to-face interaction
among them, using
language as a means
to an end.
That is, attention is
paid to comprehensible input
and opportunities to
interact rather than
to focus on explicit rules and strategies of the oral component. Some of
the methodologies that have evolved from this approach are Communicative
Language Teaching and Task based Language Teaching. Richards (1994) criticized
this approach because it fails when referring to other areas such as accuracy
or sociolinguistic appropriacy in order to be competent when speaking. Speakers
can produce utterances quickly but they are not appropriate or accurate, and
these last two
things are essential
for being successful
when communicating. Also, it has been criticized because the L2
learning process is not the same as the L1 process, and thus learners of
foreign languages do need some explicit teaching. (2) The Direct Approach
states that speaking should be taught explicitly. Teachers should make learners
aware of the
nature, systems and
patterns of language
through very specific input.
This way, students
know how to
use the more
abundant set of expressions in spoken discourse. It tries
to immerse learners in the language in the same way as when they learnt their
first one, but teaching speaking skills explicitly based on the assumption that
learners need to be aware of the elements of speaking in order to control, in a
conscious way, their use of language.
Focusing on
conversation, students would
be expected to
participate in speaking activities trying
to reproduce all
the aspects of
their daily life
in sets as
similar as possible to
real contexts. Here, attention is paid on students to use
better learning strategies.
But this
deductive approach also
fails (Richards, 1994)
since the human
mental processing capacity has
limitations in environments where stress
arises, for example.
Hence, speaking
errors are more
frequent and speaking
competence decreases as learners tend to become too self-conscious
when interacting in spoken environments.
Now, we take a look at the teaching methods
that are described as ‘student-centered’ are aligned with the constructivist
theory of learning – although some of these methods were in operation long
before constructivism emerged as a coherent theory. Student-centered approaches
have been given specific titles by their creators (e.g., activity-based
learning, guided discovery; inquiry approach; problem-based learning;
project-based learning; situated learning) but the principles and practices
associated with the methods are very similar. The subtle differences among the
methods described below are usually associated with the amount of guidance and
structure provided by the teacher during the learning process, and with the
degree of autonomy demanded of the learners. The underlying principles for most
of the methods are that students should be actively involved in the learning
process and intrinsically motivated, topics, issues, or subject matter should
be interesting, relevant and intrinsically motivating, whenever possible,
learning experiences should
take place in
real-life situations where the
relevant knowledge and skills will really be needed and used (situated
learning).
`Student-centered approaches and the
contexts, in which they can be used, can be addressed under the general
categories of inquiry-based methods, project-based or resourced-based learning
and computer-assisted learning.
Design
The
purpose of this study is to develop teaching materials to activate conversation
classroom activity at ten grade of MAN 1 Kediri. The appropriate research
design is research and development (R&D). Borg and Gall (1983, p. 772) describe
educational research and development as a process to develop and validate
educational products. The term product refers not only to material object such
as textbook, worksheet, syllabus, and instructional media and so on. According
to Sugiyono (2008, p. 297)
defines research and development as a method of research used to develop
certain products and to examine the utility of those products.
The
researcher conducts an interview to get what students need for activating
conversation class. This need analysis will only be conducted by interviewing
some authoritative students in each class and teachers. They will also have a
role in validating the product after the product has been tried out.
The
product needs to be verified by the experts who are master in foreign language
teaching. They will analyze the compatibility of the title, the topic, the
task, the function, the formation, the lay out of the product. After they have
been verifying the product, it needs to be revised so that it can be tried out
for the classroom activity.
The
researcher employed an educational research and development proposed by Borg
and Gall (1983). This design of the study is usually referred as R&D cycle.
The R&D cycle consist of research and information collecting, planning, and
developing preliminary form of product, preliminary field testing, main product
revision, main field testing, and operational product revision. The activities
in the proposed model which are good in terms of developing media are
simplified into three main steps. Its consists of carrying out need analysis as
information collecting activity, developing the product, validating it with the
experts and trying it out in the field.
Yet
researcher tries to use the latest model of developing the educational product
in this study which is simpler implemented.
By adjusting the models proposed by
Borg and Gall, and Latief the instructional materials are developed through the
following procedures: Need assessment: The instruments used in collecting data
are checklist, questionnaire, and interview guide. Checklist is used to collect
information about the materials used recently and the questionnaire is given to
the students and English teacher. The questionnaire is for collecting the
information about student’s preferences in learning English related to their
needs on conversation class. The interview guide is used to verify the answer
of the questionnaire from the teacher. The data obtained from the needs
analysis are descriptively presented.
A checklist is given to the tenth
grade students to get information about the previous conversation materials,
whether there is a gap between the students’ need and the conversation
materials in the textbook. It is classified into the book design; the materials
of the speaking skill, the instruction of the speaking skill, functional texts
material, the language used, and students’ motivation on speaking texts. The
checklist used the term baik, cukup, and kurang. Giving comments
and suggestions related to the answer is needed to get further information.
To get the information about
students’ need on the design, topic, and the exercise of functional texts in the
writing materials for the first semester the researcher distributed
questionnaire to the students.
The questionnaire is given to
English teacher to evaluate the textbook used by the English teacher at school.
This is a preliminary study to develop materials. It is classified into goals,
topic, design, language skills, exercises, and method of teaching.
The interview is done to English
teachers to verify the answer on the questionnaire about previous materials
they used, whether correspond with the objective in the competence standard and
basic competence as stated in the curriculum of MAN 1 Kediri, to get more
information about the speaking materials and to get information whether it is
needed or not to produce the materials which will be used by both teacher and
students to activate the teaching-learning process in the conversation class.
The instructional goals in this
study will be done by studying the related references, from teacher
conferences, and from discussion with colleagues. Furthermore, researcher will
understand the standard competence and basic competence of speaking for the tenth
grade students of Senior High School listed in the curriculum of MAN 1 Kediri.
The goals are a set as the target to be achieved.
The materials are developed based on
the existing English syllabus for Senior High School of tenth grade students in
the first semester, in this step, the instructional materials are developed
from the item of indicators in the syllabus. The developed materials were
design in a model of peer tutoring in their classroom. Peer tutoring can range
from one student simply helping another at certain points during a lesson – for
example by explaining or demonstrating again something the partner has not
understood – through to highly organized systems of ‘class-wide peer tutoring’
(CWPT) where on a regular basis one student instructs another student or helps
him or her revise a topic. Although a teacher can use group work but
peer-tutoring situations can also help to build both social and communication
skills, as well as contributing to a positive classroom climate. Research over
two decades has supported the use of peer tutoring to enhance the learning of
students of all ages and abilities (McMaster et al., 2006).
Validating the design is a process
to know whether the planned product more effective or not. In this step the
validation is only the measurement based on the rational thought, not based on
the fact of the field. It can be done by the expert. So, the validation by the
experts is intended to see whether the writing textbook has met the criteria of
good instructional materials in term of content, layout and language.
In
this study, the researcher asked two experts to examine his educational
product. They are M. Ali Agung Barata and M. Maftuch Junaidi. Ali is a lecturer
who are experienced in teaching speaking in several institution. Maftuch is a
book editor who works in UIN Press, Malang, he has good knowledge of book
editing.
Furthermore,
if the product has been developed completely thus the validation the experts
are to see closely whether the product has any mistakes or weaknesses or not.
This step must be done in this design to make sure that the product is really
perfect to be the teaching materials in conversation class.
The product needs to be tried out to
know if the supplementary materials produced is applicable, in terms of level
if difficulty, usefulness, effectiveness and attractiveness of the materials.
The design of the try out is
experimental. By using small group (one class of five classes) as the subject
of the try out, researcher hopes it will be able to represent all students in
this grade. While it is being tried out the researcher make a field note what
need to be revised to be the final product. There will be something wrong, so
it must be edited. If there is something more or less, the conversation teaching
material must be revised.
The developed materials from the try
out are the final product. The researcher needs to pay any attention that he
must revise it all perfectly before it becomes the final product which must be
published. It is a set of teaching materials containing conversation model and
practice that can be used for two semesters at the first year of Islamic Senior
High School. The book is aimed to
activate students to communicate in English and follow the classroom activity
well. The book is thick, contains many questions to support the students
activeness in the conversation activity. It also contains some pictures to make
the book more interesting and it will be printed colorfully.
Finding
The
data was taken from the conversation class activity of the first grade students
at MAN 1 Kediri, recorded and transcribed in a written form. The researcher
analyses the data by identifying the students’ need that is based on their
level of education, the students’ weaknesses in oral communication, and also
students wish to improve their oral communication or speaking skill.
From
the need analysis activity the researcher got what the students need as the
learners goal at the first year of Islamic Senior High School. From reviewing
the syllabus the researcher found that they must achieve the affective and
psych motoric aspect of learning. The affective aspect must reach C as the
standard minimum score, it would be better to get B, and the best is A.
There
are 14 students were failed to achieve the affective aspects and 42 got
unsatisfied score. this problem mostly caused by their weakness in responding
such as they cannot obey the rule, cannot express their emotion, cannot
responds others idea, don not ask for apology for their own mistake, and they never
try to get introspection.
The
data the researcher hopes the product can attract the students to pay
attention, to response, to value, to organize, and characterize well.
The
data shows us that almost a half of the students got below 80. There must be an
interesting teaching material which can make them be more active to act. From
the work sample that the researcher conducted, some students are not expressive
in their conversation, and some of them are shy to show their physical
abilities.
So,
the researcher hope is how to make a book contains physical learning activities
like a game to improve their speaking skill.
The
researcher got some problems related to the students’ weaknesses in
communicating English. In the previous conversation class the teacher has a
topic for the students’ activity, for example speaking in the market, in the
hospital, or in the school, etc. by that topic the students must practice with
their friends and the goal is their ability to memorize the conversation text
that their teacher had given to them. The first weakness is that the students
were lack of vocabulary, so if they forget what is in the conversation text,
they will give up and speechless. The second through this way of teaching they
are not learning how to thing, so they were not trained to develop their
thinking ability, to share their idea, to be critical, and to be creative. The
last is the weakness of confidence; they are ashamed to speak English with
their friends because they cannot memorize the conversation text.
After
doing the checklist observation to 148 students in five classes (class
excellent, class A, class B, class C, and class D), the researcher got easy to
plan the model of product for teaching conversation English classroom. The
results are below:
By
studying the result of observation the researcher need to develop the teaching
material for English conversation class. The development will be focused on the
students’ wishes how the book will be. And there must be more than 70 % agree
on each category.
The
teacher of English conversation class gave some material and a set of teaching
learning activity (e.g. syllabus, annual program, semester program, lesson
plan, KKM, and analysis of daily test). There are also related teaching
materials for conversation class. Here is the example of the material.
The
teacher’s book was Indonesian product. It’s a pocket book, so it is so simple
to bring somewhere. The book contains almost 100 pages, and the topics are
about our daily activity. On each topic there is dialog, questions and answer.
The goal is that the students must memorize the dialog. There is no picture on
the book. In presenting the materials the teachers ask the students to write
don on the whiteboard first. So it seemed ineffective for conversation class.
This
development product title is “English Conversation” for Islamic Senior High School Semester I and
II. The book was developed based on the syllabus which represented on the
materials in recent book. It contains 20 lessons, so, there will be 10 lesson
for one semester. They are lesson 1: appearance, lesson 2: introduction, lesson
3: family ties, lesson 4: jobs, lesson 5: time, lesson 6: responsibilies,
lesson 7: school, lesson 8: home, lesson 9: health, lesson 10: facebook. In Semester two, there are Lesson
11: travel and experience, lesson 12: religion, lesson 13: natural disaster,
lesson 14: charities, lesson 15: countries, lesson 16: meeting foreign tourist,
lesson 17: fashion, lesson 18: food, lesson 19: marijuana, and lesson 20:
happiness.
The
developed material was not a thick book; it contains not more than 5 pages in
one lesson. In each lesson consist of conversation guide, and the vocabulary
list. The design of this conversation teaching material is so simple and easy
to use. To make easy in determining the ideas and to communicate them
accurately is to look for examples of similar materials that have already been
produced. Like what the students wish, the teaching material will be drawn some
interesting pictures and print colorfully.
After
making decision about productions of the materials, the researcher don not need
to be expert in page layout or production of printed materials. The purpose of
here is to convey this to graphic artist or word processing /desktop publishing
person who can then produce a simple for their inspection. Here the researcher
gave the complete developed material to them.
The
developed material will print by using standard paper A4. The method of binding
the book is saddle stiched because the developed material is thin. The paper
color is with and the cover is hard. The ink used a great deal of variety in
colours used. It is never mind although the cost is not cheap. It takes the
publisher to copy the teaching material for about 2 weeks and the researcher
only copy 25 books.
The
students’ opinion toward the materials used in English Conversation Classes was
gathered by delivering questionnaires consisted of six question items. The
total samples from X-U, X-A, X-B, X-C, X-D were 148 students.
Questionnaire
item number 1 indicated students general opinion of the
materials
used in English Conversation Classes whether they liked it or not. The
percentage of students who very liked the materials were 9.38% .
Questionnaire
item number 2 indicated students general opinion of the
materials
used in English Conversation Classes whether it was interesting or not. The
percentage of students who said that the materials are always interesting was
67.69%.
Questionnaire
item number 3 indicated students’ perception on the benefit of materials taught
related to their daily life. The percentage that the materials were very useful
is 77.69%.
Questionnaire
item number 4 showed students’ perception on the benefit of materials taught
related to other related subjects at school. The result was most of the
students said that it is useful.
Questionnaire
item number 5 was an open-ended question asking about the students’ opinion
toward the materials that were expected. Most of the students answered that the
materials should not only in the class but also an outdoor class or activity.
Other students mostly wished that the materials hold in the language laboratory
or other places. And some others were satisfied with the materials they already
have.
Questionnaire
item number 6 was an open-ended question asking what kind of materials that
they liked the most or they wished to be used. In grade X, the students said
that the materials they liked the most is the materials which is related to
science subjects such as physics.
The
researcher had been submitted the draft of the developed material to the expert
validators for about a couple of weeks. The researcher got any corrections and
advises that need to be paid attention. The improvement of this product will be
done based on the correction or the validator’s feedback.
The
two expert validators who have explained on the previous chapter checked this
developed materials. One concentrated on the contents of the materials and the
other on the design and lay-out.
After
developing the English teaching material on conversation classroom activity,
the students complained about the pictures. The researcher needs to revise the
pictures on the book, because the book considered lack of pictures. To revise
the pictures the researcher need to communicate with the book designer. And the
result was fantastic; the designer can illustrate some interesting pictures
that support the topics. The developed
material is fine so far, although there were any mistakes on the writing error,
such as missing letters or word and also doubles typing word, those must not
happen because they can make the reader confused.
Conclusion
and Suggestion
Conclusion
This material development
is purposed to activate the English conversation classroom activity. The
previous book is lack of properness nowadays that students are intended to be
more active in thinking process and in socializing in the classroom setting. So
that, they will not feel inferior and they must be critical in thinking.
The
strengths of this developed conversation teaching material is on the content,
the features, and the effectiveness of teaching learning activity. On the
content, there are a few interesting topics which can support their English
subject. By using the material, the students hopefully can be critical on the
conversation classroom activity, because there are not any answers on the
conversation guide. The researcher wants the English teacher become the guide,
trainer, advisor, and actor who can control the class. The features of the
developed material is really interesting because it contains any picture that
is relevant with the topics, the pictures can stimulate the students interest
so that they can be active to follow the conversation class. The effectiveness of teaching learning
activity can be reached by using this book, because this book contains
vocabulary list, blank note, scoring rubric, and self-assessment. They are very
useful in English conversation class because some students do not bring
dictionaries, some others do not bring notebook in class, at the end of the
lesson memorizing the vocabulary become the best way to increase students
vocabulary. The scoring rubric and self-assessment are used to record the
students’ progress, which is very useful for the institution or school.
While
teachers are using this developed material, the researcher predicts any
possible problem may occur; they are mastering the topic and getting difficulty
on new vocabulary. The teacher as a guider must not lack of idea related to the
topic that is discussed, must not forget the English vocabulary while their
students ask them new vocabulary in the teaching learning process.
Suggestion
The researcher has implemented the developed
material to his conversation classes for two semesters. He has explained the
weaknesses of this material above, because there is only the questions guide to
make the students’ conversation run well without any answers on the material,
the English teacher must be ready to face the various answers from his
students. They will ask many questions and also ask any new vocabularies that
may also difficult for the teacher. The solution is getting ready; the teacher
must read any related sources about the topic will be discussed. After getting
ready, the teacher prepares some possible answers that would be asked by his
students in the class.
The researcher suggests the teacher to note
collect the students answer by ask them to type what they have learned at the
conversation class. The questions and answer of the whole activity in each
semester will be the product of the students themselves. The product, which is
published at school, can be very useful for all the students there.
Refference
Brown, H. D. (2007). Principles of language learning and
teaching. By Addition Was I am Longman, Inc.
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