Abstract
This study is aimed at improving the speaking
ability of the tenth grade students of SMK Negeri 1 Magetan by using role play.
The improvement of students’ English speaking ability can be reached if the
teaching speaking uses the appropriate teaching technique, and it is
appropriate with the principles for teaching speaking. Role-play is one of the
appropriate teaching techniques to improve students’ speaking ability in
English. This technique is chosen since the result of the preliminary study
reveals that the causes of the students’ inability to speak English are (1) the
limited chance for the students to speak in the classroom, (2) feel tense every
time they are given a chance to speak, (3) do not responds and do not know how
to answer when the teacher asked some questions orally, and (4) lack of group
activities the students have in the class. Supported by some theories,
experiences, and previous studies in speaking skill, the researcher decided to
use role-play strategy to solve the students’ problems on speaking.
Keywords: improving, speaking skill,
role-play
English has become an international language, more
and more people learn it. The importance of English language has made people to
learn English as early as possible.
People who use English as
language find difficulties because they do not use it for daily activities. On
the contrary, some people who speak English as a foreign language still consider that English is the most difficult to
practice.
Teaching English should encompass four
language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Those should be
given integrated. Speaking is a very important skill to have direct
communication among people because language is basically spoken. In this global
era, it is a must for young generation to be able to communicate directly in
English because English is an international language. They need speaking skill
to be able to compete in this global world. English teachers have the
responsibility to make students able to speak English as one of important
skills that students must have otherwise they will get difficulty to improve
themselves and make them loose many chances in the world competition.
According to Kemendikbud (2012, p. 10), The “2013 curriculum” a means of
intergrating attitude system,
knowledge, and skills, which has orientation on developing the learners’
competencies, the changing of teaching-learning methdology towards teaching-learning process which gives
priorities on the learning experiences through observing, inquiring,
associating, and communicating so as to enhance the values of competitiveness
and build prime characters.
To achieve all of these, the teaching methdology involves not only exploration, elaboration,
confirmatin, but also observation, inquiry, analysis, reasoning, description,
inferrence, evaluation, and “creation”. (Kemendikbud, 2012, p. 25).
To overcome the students’
problem in learning speaking needs the appropriate teaching strategy. Harmer (2002, p. 271) states that there are many classroom speaking
activities: acting from the script, communication games, discussion, prepared
talks, and simulation and role-play. “Role play is supposed to be an
appropriate teaching strategy to overcome the students’ problem I learning
speaking. While Brown (2007,
p. 327) states that there are six
categories of speaking activities: imitate, Intensive, Responsive,
Transactional (dialogue), Interactive, and Extensive.
Role-play
activities are those where the students are asked to imagine that they are in
different situations and act accordingly.We may tell them to role-play in a
travel agency to act as a customer and a driver or as a tour guide who
guidance a tourist in a tourism object
for example. By implementing role-play, the students will be used to do at
least a simple or a short dialogue in the classroom, so the same format can be
used to get the score in testing or in speaking assessment. The other ‘role’
can be also played by the tester or another students.The role-play should not
require sophisticated performance skills or a lot of imagination.
Some difficulties in implementing the ideal strategy
of speaking class during the teaching learning process is influenced by some factors, such as the number
of the students, they have different background of English knowledge (most of
them come from lower input and do not understand english spoken), they tend to
use their mother tongue, and they fell unconfidence to speak English for daily
communication in the school. They are unmotivated to speak English, and they
tend to be passive in the class. Only few students can speak English actively.
There are some problems faced by the students in teaching and learning process
of speaking. Cultural factor is related to the students’ prior learning
experience, cultural background between the teacher and the student, between
students’ mother tongue and the target language. They lack of the understanding
in English grammar, pronunciation, and also their previous negative learning
experience, motivation, emotion, and so on. All problems are also possibly
found by the students in the speaking class.
Role play is a strategy
functions to stimulate students in order to communicate more in English through
role-played by them based on the real situation. According to Thornburry (2005, p. 274), “....Role play and simulation are speaking activities involving a drama
element, in which learners take an imaginative leap out of the classroom,
provide a useful springboard for real-life language use. ” By playing role play
the students will be stimulate to communicate more in English. Thus, role play
strategy is the specific activity in the classroom in which the students act as
outside of themselves or act as another person which emphasizes on the
students’ ability t perform based n real situation.
There
are six major steps in the procedure for role-play activities in the
classroom:(1) Decide on the Teaching Materials, (2) Select Situation and Create Dialogs,
(3) Teach the Dialogs for Role-Play, 4.
Have Students Practice the Role-Play, 5. Have Students Modify the Situations
and Dialogs, 6. Evaluate and Check Students’ Comprehension
The first process is decide on the teaching
material that is concerned with the materials which will be used for role play
activities. The material can be created by the teacher’s authentic of teaching
materials for role play activities.The material which is taught should be
decided based on studens’ level and interest, the goal of teaching, and
apprpriate for teaching.
The second process is select situation and create
dialogs. After deciding the teaching material, a situation to be role played
should be selected. In the situation of role play, the dialogue could be
provided by the teacher or created by the students themselves. The dialogue
should apprpriate with the situation given.
The third process is teach the dialgue for role
play. Before role-play activities, the teacher needs to explain the vocabulary,
sentences, and dialogs necessary for the role-play situations. The teacher
needs to make sure that the students know how to use the vocabulary in
sentences and dilaogs prior to doing the role-play activities, otherwise, the
teacher should allow students to ask how to say the words they want to say.
The fourth process is the students practice the role-play. In this process,
the students can practice in pairs or small groups. After they have played
their own roles a few times, have them
exchange roles. In this role play, the students can play in different
roles and practice all of the lines in the role-play. When the students are
confident enough to demonstrate of perform in front of class, the teacher can
ask them to do so for their classmates.
The fifth process is the students modify the
situations and dialogs. After the
students have finished and become the
familiar with an original role-play situations, they can modify the situations
and/or dialogs to create a variation of the original role-play. They can create
the dialogue freely.
The last is evaluate and check students’
comprehension. In this last prcess, the teacher shall evaluate the
effectiveness of the role-play activities and check if the students have
successfully comprehended the meanings of the vocabulary,sentences and
dialogs.There are several ways to do by the students for evaluations. Students
can be given oral and listening tests relating to the role-plays. There are some
examples of oral test such as:
·
Students
are asked to answer some simple questions relating to the role-plays.
·
Students
are asked to reenact the role-plays.
·
Students
are asked to translate the role-plays into their native language.
Role play has
some advantages to teach speaking. Some advantages of role play are stated by
(Brady et al:.2010) in Dwi Esti K (2011, p. 23)“Role-playing is useful for practicing appropriate
behavior in more complex social interactions where students must choose from a
wide range of possible behaviors. Good topics for role-playing include sharing
materials, including classmates in activities, and supporting someone who makes
a mistake. Role-playing allows the teacher to acknowledge the complexity of
these situations and give students practice in making responsible choices.”
Method
This
research applies action research method. The aimed of this research is to
improve the students’ speaking skill through role play. For this research the
researcher arranged the plan that consists of teaching and learning process,
the planning stages are arranged as follows (1) designing lesson plan, (2)
prreparing instructional materials and media, (3) role-play procedure, (4)
deciding the criteria of success.
Designing Lesson Plan. The lesson plan functional as the guideline for
the teacher in implementing the role-play strategy in the classroom. The
success or failure of teaching-learning activities is influenced by teacher’s
lesson plan. The lesson plan was developed based on the Content Standard.
Lesson plan/course design or in Indonesian widely known as Rencana Pelaksanaan
Pembelajaran (RPP) is an instructional plan describing learning objectives,
teaching-learning material, method and techniques, media, learning sources, and
some means of assessments/evaluation.
Good planing strategies always indicates the importance of materials and the
equipments that can support or facilitate the teachers and the learners in
teaching and learning the material. Procedures include: (a) an opening
statement as a “warm up” (pre activity), (b) a set of activities and techniques
that are appropriate for whole class work, small group, and pair work, teacher
talk and student talk, (main activity) and (c) closure (post activity)
The first
activity was pre-activity. In
this activity the student used it by brainstorming. It was needed not only to dig the students’ prior knowledge
about the topic which they were going to deal with, but also a good chance for
the students to practice their speaking skill. The teacher gave short
explanation by using English.
The next actvity was main activity. In this
activity the teacher was dividing
the students into groups, and in this stage, the teacher gave instruction about
the procedure of role-play and the topic of the dialogue. The students applied
the dialogues based on the teacaher’s instruction.
As the last activity was
post-activity. This activity,
was aimed to measure how effective the use of the role-picture in teaching
speaking by grouping the students and to know the students’ ability in
speaking. Teacher checked students’
works.
Preparing Instructional Material and Media.The selection of the materials was done based on the curriculum . These
instructional materials were developed by the researcher based on the Content
of Standards. The material can be taken from text book or local handout.
The materials were describing tourism object and
describing peple. The researcher implemented role-play technique in teaching
speaking. To motivated the students in learning and to make them understand the
materials easily, the media used was depended on the students dialogue.
Preparing the Procedure of the Role-Play. Because the researcher wished to implement
the classroom speaking activities, the procedure of role-play must be included
in some steps. The first step was deciding the topic of dialogue. It is decided
by the teacher. In deciding the topic, it was required to pay more attention to
the level, and the need of the students.
The second step, the teacher created the situation
for the dialogue. The situation for the dialogue was directed not only to build
an intersting play but also to connect with the real life situation. The third
step was arranging the role-players and groups. In arranging the role-players
and groups, the dividing of the job description was selected based on the role
characters. The division of the groups can be selected based on the students’ achievement
level.
The fourth step was arranging the place for
practicing and presenting. During practicing, deciding the place was not really
important since the students maight practice their role-play anywhere. Only by
giving a good atmosphere could we njoy the role-play action well.
The fifth step was using media. Applying role-play
techniques provided with the media, i.e. things mentioned in speaking could
make the play more vivid. The more complete media we had in role-play, the more
interesting play we could enjoy as it looks real with its artificial made up.
The sixth step was practicing the dialogue. In
practicing stage, the students were suggested that they had serious practice,
because a serious practice could reduce the time frequency, which took more
time only for practicing. The last step was presenting the dialogue. In
presenting the dialogue, the students were assessed on how well they: (1)
performed the role-play, (2) used correct language function, and (3) worked in
groups cooperatively. Every groups should do their role-play in turn and should
pay attention when the other groups were presenting.
Deciding
the Criteria of Success
The
criteria of success are determined by two components, namely process and
product of students’ speaking achievement. The criteria should be related with
the purpose of the study. (a) The
students were active and motivated to communicate after implementation of
role-pley strategy (b) ,The students had score of , pronunciation,fluency, and
interactive communication, and (c) 70%
of the students’ speaking achievement obtains the minimum passing grade. The minimum passing grade for the students is
70. Means that if a astudent was able t achieve a final score of 70 in analytic
scring rubrics she/he is
categorized successful.
Implementing
the Action
The
action was administered for
two cycle or more. Each cycle consisted of three meeting. After observing and
reflecting the action, it was evaluated whether the action had fulfilled the
criteria of success or not. If the action did not meet the criteria of success,
the action
would be continued to the next cycle. And if the action had fulfilled the criteria of success, the action would have been stopped.
Observation.
In doing this research, the observation dealt with
the implementation of the teaching speaking skill using role-play strategy to
the students in terms of their respect to the teaching and learning of english,
especially the speaking skill and their ability in using English in the
classroom instruction.
The observation sheets were used to
record and gather data about the students’ and the teacher’s activities during
the teaching and learning process. The observation checklist of the students’
involvement, the observation checklist of the students’ activities during the
teaching and learning process, and the observations checklist of the teacher’s
performance.
Field notes were written
description related to the teaching learning process. It was used to record
what is heard, seen,felt and experienced as well thought in collecting data
that were not covered in the observation sheets.
Interview guide form. By
interviewing the students, the researcher notedthe students comments, opinions,
and suggestions concerning the activity they had. The data was very beneficial in analyzing the success of the
activities and in revising the activitieheetss for the next cycle.
Reflection
The reflection dealt with the activity to analyze the implementation of the action during the
cycles, which were obtained
through the result of the observations. The reflection was included in the discussion of how far the
developed strategy solves the problems and the factors that might be the causes
of the unsuccessful strategy applied. Related to the indicators to be achieved
in this study, there were three major
indicators used as the criteia of success of this study. They were: (1) the students became more active to involve in instructional
activities; (2) the students have self-confident when they perform the conversation; and (3) the students could show good responses towards the instructional
activity and materials.The result of reflection in each cycle discussed by the reseracher together with the collaborator
in order to do the revision to improve the teaching and learning strategy for
the next cycle. It became the basis for
the future classroom action research dealing with the students’ speaking
activities.
Results
A. Cycle 1
Based on the evaluation of students’
speaking ability in demonstrating their action to increase their speaking
ability by using role-play strategy. It was found their ability to used oral
English has increased. The score was better than the score in preliminary study
but it was still under the minimum score standard that is 70.00. This fact
should be followed up by conducting the 2nd cycle.
There is a
reasons that caused the failure of the implementation of role-play strategy
during the first cycle. It showed that the target grade only 32%. In this fact,
the researcher concluded that the implementation of rle-play activities in
improving the students’ speaking ability in cycle 1 was notsatisfying yet.
Thus, the action in cycle 1 should be revised and then continued to the next
cycle that is cycle 2.
2. Cycle 2
From the three categories based on the researcher
average was 77.50. There were
31 students (82%) have fulfilled the criteria of success. While from the
collaborator average was 81.08. There were 31 students (82%) have fulfilled the
criteria of success. There was 77.50 from the researcher average and 81.08 from the collaborator average. So,
the mean score was 79.29.
The reseacher and the collaborator analyze
the result of cycle 2. Based on the data obtained, the researcher got some
results dealing with the implementation of role-play activities in cycle 2.
First, the researcher found that the students seemed to be more confident to
present their role-play activities and more active to share their idea. Second,
in terms of language function, the students were not only able to minimize
their mistakes in pronunciation but also communicated in English more fluency,
and more bravely in interactive communication than in cycle one. The number of
the active students exceed to the passing grade or target grade from 32% in
cycle 1 to 82% in cycle 2, the data proved that in cycle 2, there were 31 out
of 38 students wh achievely participated in the speaking ability. Thus, it is concluded that “the strategy of
the role-play applied in this cycle has been successful in solcing the
students’ problem in improving the students’ speaking ability.
Discussion
Speaking is communication activity to share
idea, to maintain social relationship or to deliver information in the daily
life which is possible for the speakers to interact directly or indirectly.
According to Spratt (2005, p. 91), that teacher teaching plan or lesson plan is
a set of notes that helps the teachers to think through what we are going to
teach and how we are going to teach it. We can identify the most important
components of a lesson plan by thinking carefully about what we want out
learners to do and how we want them to do it.
As the indicator to be
considered, the researcher decided to do improvement of the students’ result in
conversing their English skill; that is the students’ average score of the speaking,
which can raise at least 70.00 as criteria of success. The students became more confidence to speak
in English after doing the role play in front of the class. They did not
hesitate and did not fear to speak English in front of the class because of
using role play technique. They could prepare and practice more their
conversation.
The teacher implements the
role-play activity into three classroom activities namely opening activity,
main activity, and closing activity. Brainstorming is the first activity which
is very important. That the strength of the
application of role-play strategy in teaching speaking was that it improved the
students’ ability in speaking skill. The improvement of the students’ speaking
performance was due to some factors. It included the improvement of learning
motivation and self-confidence of the students, and the procedures of role-play
activities. There were 12 students (32%) out of 38 students who could reach the
criteria of success. There were 31 students (82%) out of 38 students who reach
the target of criteria of success. They are good at acting out their
performance during the role-play action, can use their English in the correct
way and are able to work in groups cooperatively without worrying of making
mistakes and without feeling shy when communicating in English orally.
As the evidence of the students’
result of role-play activities. From 63.60 in cycle I the students got average
score 79.29 in cycle 2. This means that most of the students have taken part in
s good group work when acting their role-play..
Conclusions and Suggestions
Conclusions
Moreover, related to the test result, there was 6%
improvement of students’ mean score from preliminary study to the first cycle.
In the preliminary study, there were 10 students (26%) who passed the KKM
cnsidering their mean score was53,42.
Meanwhile in the result of the first cycle, there were 12 students or
32% students in the class who pass the KKM considering their mean score from
the researcher was 62,65. And from the collaborator was 63,60. So their mean
score was 63,13.
Next, based on the result of
the second cycle, there were 31 students
or 82% students in the class who passed the KKM considering their mean score
from the researcher was 77,10 and from the collaborator was 79,09, so their
mean score was 78,10. It is showed that the students have significant
improvement, the improvement can be seen from the score that gets higher from
preliminary, cycle 1, and cycle 2.
Finally, based on the research
was conducted in X PMS-3 class of SMKN 1 Magetan, the researcher concluded that
role playing activity can improve students’ speaking ability showed by the
score they got. It is shown by the use of the role-playing strategy in
improving the students’ speaking ability, the time spent and seeking of
appropriate regalia are the weakness to apply strategy. It can be concluded that the students like
role-play technique. Moreover the observatin check list showwed that the
students seem braver and more confident in speaking. It proven by their
enthusiasm to join role-play paying attention t the lesson, discussions in
group work, and perform in front of the class.
Suggestions
1. The
teacher needs to maintain using role-play strategy as alternative strategy of
the teaching process in the year students of vocational school.
2. The teacher should give clear explanation and
instruction in directing her/his students using role-play.
3. The teacher should pay attention in selecting
the topics for role-play presentation. It should be appropriate with their
level.
4. The teacher should control the students’
activity when she/he finds some problem related to the students’ pronunciation
that make them understand their mistake.
Next, to the future
researcher, since this study is a classroom action research which is conducted
to improve the speaking skill of the tenth grade, it is advisable to conduct
with similar research on speaking using role-play strategy in other vocational
high schools and senior high schols in Magetan with the same or higher level.
This is because the material or the syllabus in Vocational high school and
senior high schools in Magetan is mostly the same that is based on mostly
functional language or speaking skills.
References
Esti, D. K. (2010). Improving the speaking skill of the tenth
grade students of SMK Negeri 2 Malang through Role-Play. (Unpublished
Thesis). Malang: Program Pascasarjana UNISMA.
Harmer, J. (2007). How to teach English: An introduction to the
practice of English language teaching. England: Pearson Education Limited.
Kemendikbud. (2012). Bahan uji publik kurikulum 2013.
Jakarta: Kemendikbud.
Thornburry, S. (2005). How to teach speaking. England: Pearson
Education Limited.
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