Improving Students’ Speaking Ability  And Motivation Through Discussion  (A Classroom Action Research at the VIII A of SMP N 4 Kepil Wonosobo     in the 2009/2010 Academic Year)

Wiyono, Hadi

The purpose of this research was to find out whether the use of discussion technique was able to improve students’ speaking ability and motivation and what the strengths and weaknesses of the discussion technique in teaching speaking are. This classroom action research was conducted to the eight-grade of SMP N 4 Kepil Wonosobo in the 2009/2010 Academic Year. The action research was conducted in two cycles. The procedure of the research consisted of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. In collecting the data, the researcher used tests for Quantitative and Qualitative data. The quantitative data are taken from the scores of speaking tests: initial test, post-test of Cycle 1, and post-test of Cycle 2. After having the mean scores of each test, the researcher compared the means of initial test and post-test of Cycle 1, and the means of post-test of Cycle 1 and Cycle 2. The qualitative data are from the questionnaire scores of initial stage, Cycle 1, and Cycle 2. The scores from each stage are compared to each other. To find out whether there is a significant difference or not, the researcher used t-test for non-independent variable. The result of the research showed that Discussion Technique was able to improve the students’ speaking ability and motivation. The improvement of the students’ speaking ability was reflected in the tests’ scores. The average speaking scores improved from 65.52 in the initial stage to 70.60 (the post-test of Cycle 1). Then, the average speaking scores of the post-test of Cycle 1 (70.60) increased to 73.70 in the post-test of Cycle 2. After the calculation by using t-test for non-independent variables, it was found that the ttable (2.069) at the significant level α=0.05 is lower than the tobs of the initial stage and the post-test of Cycle 1 (3.318). Then, the ttable (2.069) is also lower than tobs (3.437) of the post-test of Cycle 1 and Cycle 2. These findings lead to the fact that there is a significant improvement on speaking skill by using discussion technique. The scores of motivation also improved from 17.25 in the initial stage to 20.33 in Cycle 1 and to 22.54 in Cycle 2. The implementation of discussion technique is able to encourage the students to express what it is in their mind, to generate interactive languages, to promote learners’ responsibility and autonomy, and to lessen the teachers’ talking time. On the other way around, it cannot be denied that the class becomes very noisy, passive students do not discuss seriously, and teacher sometimes cannot differentiate if a student is serious or not to join the learning process. Keyword: Discussion Technique, Speaking, Motivation, Recount Text

Abstrak

Improving Students’ Speaking Ability And Motivation Through Discussion (A Classroom Action Research at the VIII A of SMP N 4 Kepil Wonosobo in the 2009/2010 Academic Year)