Improving Speaking Ability through Educational Drama by Applying Role Play at First Grade Students of SMK Multimedia Tumpang Malang

By Agung Priambodo

Abstract

The study was aimed to investigate the role play technique can be implement to improve speaking skill of the first frade student of Smk Multimedia Tumpang Malang who encounter the problem in speaking class. It is very important to implement the classroom action research since the student speaking skill in English is low. So far it is proven by the score of the student which was always under the passing grade. Role play as one of the drama education technique is very challenging. The researcher is very interested in conducting role play technique applied in this study. It motivated and triggered students to have self-confidence. There are at least four step that the researcher applying the process of role play, those are planning, acting, observing and reflecting. The main data was about students’ improvement skill in speaking. It was measured by giving test to the students. In the first cycle the average score of the students were 63.67 while in the second cycle the average score of the students were 74.20. This activity was done in group work. The researcher also managed the period of conducting the drama class in order to make the progress run smoothly. The conclusion based on the result, it could be taken that the use of role play as one of education drama improved students’ speaking skill. The students felt more confident to speak English. Then, he suggested to the English teacher to apply role play technique as the one of the method in teaching speaking to improve the students’ speaking skill. Moreover, many researchers are suggested to develop the teaching quality and to improve the students’ speaking skill.

Keywords: speaking skill, role play

Speaking English is considered as the most difficult language skill by students since they should have lot of vocabulary, pronounce them correctly, and use them in appropriate context    at the same time, speaking is one of the important skills that students need to have especially for students of vocational high school since it links to a great deal of their success in life especially in the work fields when they have graduated from the school.

            According to Nurlaelawati  and  Damayanti (2011), students of vocational high school are expected to have the ability to speak since many companies that hire SMK graduates often complain about their English proficiency. In this case, the students must study hard to master it and the teacher should create a good atmosphere in class. However, many speaking activities do not work in class because many factors prevent students from speaking English. They are afraid of making mistakes in their ability (Harmer, 2007).

It is in line with the result of preliminary investigation which I conducted in the class before conducting the research. There were still many students who were not able to speak English and were not active participants in the classroom, either because most of them have not been highly motivated to put forward their opinion and ideas even to ask a question. The teacher has also not created sufficient opportunities for the to use English language in meaningful situation and has not provided the appropriate method in teaching English.

In teaching speaking, teachers should strive to improve their students’ vocabulary and confidence by creating opportunities which will enable them to use the language within authentic context and learn in meaningful context (Brown, 2011). In addition, teachers should provide a good atmosphere in which students can get involved actively in teaching-learning process (Savignon, 1983). Therefore, teachers should apply various methods to teaching and learning such as co-operative learning, group work, and drama-on-education activities or Educational drama. Of all above mentioned speaking techniques, Educational Drama was regarded as a favourable technique in aiding vocational high school students to adapted to different level of proficiency and for different topics and they allow learners to experience autonomy in the speaking skill (Thornbury, 2005). Malan (1973 stated that drama-in-education aimed to develop students into confident and expressive speaker. Being confident, students can be willing to speak a lot. Thereby, by using Educational Drama, learning is expected to take place better since it can provide enjoyable experience, create variety of activities and give more opportunities for students to get involved in learning and develop their skill (Mcnaughton, 2006). According to Ulas (2008), drama has significant function especially in improving speaking skill among the basic language skill.

            It is with this background in mind, that this study aims to provide an outline of how the implementation of Educational Drama led to the overall improvement of the students’ speaking ability in an English language proficiency at a Vocational High School in SMK Kabupaten Malang.

References

Harmer, J. (2007).The practice of English language teaching (4th. Ed.). England: Longman.

Implementing Selected Context Clues to Improve Reading Ability of Year XI Students at SMA Nazhatut Thullab Prajjan Sampang

By Sutrisno Wibowo

The most common of the four skills tested is reading. How to best assess reading ability in EFL context has made language testing researchers interested for a long time. Reading proficiency is empowering and a hallmark of academic success (Hagaman& Reid, 2008; Hall & Piazza, 2008; Paterson & Elliot, 2006; Thomas & Wexler, 2007).  Reading offers opportunities and enlightenment (Hall & Piazza, 2008). Although reading proficiency involves many student-centered factors, educators also play an important role.

In English as a foreign/second language, reading comprehension tests include a series of related items that are based on the same reading passage (Lee, 2004). As Alderson (2000) argues, the selected text and test methods are so effective in testing reading comprehension.

Critical reading is definitely essential to ensure optimum intellectual development among this community of learners in the universities, but their effort to construct content knowledge by reading critically is frequently hindered by inadequate mastery of the foreign language, especially in mastering vocabulary.

Vocabulary is an inseparable part of any language learning process especially in reading class. It would be impossible to learn a language without vocabulary. Rivers (1981) states that, "vocabulary cannot be taught. It can be presented, explained, included in all kinds of activities, but it must be learnt by individuals (p. 28). One of the existing problems in the mastery of vocabulary is the number of unfamiliar words in textbooks or other supporting texts for students. Unfamiliar words still becomes one of the significant obstacles in reading comprehension, probably due to the insufficient vocabulary knowledge. Nowadays, the difficulty levels of vocabulary substantially affect the readability of reading texts and—sequentially—comprehension (Alderson, 2000a; Coady, 1993; Nation, 2001; Stoller and Grabe, 1993; Williams and Dallas, 1984) and abundant research has also provided empirical support to this finding (Calvo, Estevez, and Dowens, 2003; Kusumarasdyati, 1996; Lotto and de Groot, 1998; Martino and Hoffman, 2002).

It can’t be denied that reading comprehension is based on vocabulary mastery. When the students’ vocabulary is poor, it can be assumed that they will get difficulties in understanding reading text no matter it is long or short text. What happens after that has been clear; they will have no good reading understanding. Moreover the worst is they really don’t know nor understand what the content of the text is. In this case the writer has a problem with his reading class since the learners still do not really master the vocabulary and their reading comprehension still need to be improved.

In reference to the explanations above  and the strong  desire  of  finding the solution  of  these problems, the writer has motivation to do the research in improving the learners vocabulary and their reading understanding by using context clues as the strategy in reading class. Context clues are hugely important because their comprehension and effective usage leads to academic success. They can increase the child’s vocabulary, reading comprehension, and make children better readers (Tatyana, 2013).

Robinson (1976, p. 56) said that there are three ways to be familiar with unfamiliar words. The reader should do wide reader that can help increase his/her vocabulary, open dictionary, and using context clues.

Context clue is a pure linguistic study that can be categorized as micro study because this research is a study about meaning and text. Wiener and Bazerman (1986, p. 10) state that context clues are hints provided by the words and sentences surrounding the unfamiliar word. Smith and Schulz (1982, p. 425) define context clues as the words surrounding an unknown word often provide clues to its meaning. Eanes (1997, p. 338) defines that Context Clues refer to the use of surrounding word, sentence, and paragraph meaning to decode words or determine their meanings.

There are many models in this context clues, such as Statement of Meaning, Definition by Example, Definition by Synonym. Definition by Experience, Definition by Description, Definition by Comparison, Definition by Contrast, and Reflection of Intent, Mood, Tone, or Setting. Context clues are divided into two types. They are the use of syntactic clues and the use of semantic clues (Robinson: 1976). On the other hand, Spears (2000, p. 98) divides context clues into four general types: synonym, antonym, example, and situation clues. For this study, the researcher took three models from Spears; synonym, antonym, and example and one model from Robinson; statement of meaning. Those models were selected by researcher because that was the common part of reading text which often appears and often we ignore. Besides, the purpose of this study is to increase students’ reading ability. As we know that reading ability is different with reading comprehension. In reading ability we focus more in vocabulary mastery, while in reading comprehension is about understanding to the whole reading content. Due to that difference it is suitable if the researcher use context clues to improve students’ reading ability.

William (2014) who stated that context clues has some advantages such as, the intention of vocabulary acquisition, stimulate critical thinking of reader, it doesn’t need longer time than opening dictionary, can be useful to define word meaning for any polysemous word depend on the context.