This research aims at: (1) improving the students’ participation in speaking through Think-Pair-Share; (2) identifying the problems in the implementation of Think-Pair-Share.
The method used in this research is classroom action research. The research was carried out to the tenth grade students of SMA Negeri Sragen Bilingual Boarding School. The research data were collected using qualitative technique and quantitative technique. Technique of collecting data using qualitative technique can be divided into two categories: (1) observational (observation, diary, audio recording and transcription). (2) non-observational (interview, photograph). While technique of collecting data using quantitative technique was obtained from the questionnaire that consists of pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire. The qualitative data were analyzed by using constant comparative techniques that consists of assembling the data, coding the data, comparing the data, building interpretations and reporting the outcomes. While the quantitative data were analyzed by comparing the students’ mean score of pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire by using Likert Scale technique.
The research findings show that; (1) the use of Think-Pair-Share improves the students’ participation. It can be seen from the increasing of the mean of students’ score. It lets students to act alive in a non-threatening atmosphere and motivates them to participate and attend the lesson actively in class.; (2) There are three advantages and disadvantages of this technique. As its advantage the strategy was very effective; 1) improving the participation and the achievements of students in class, 2) eliminated dominance in the classroom or pair work, 3) allowed quite students to answer questions or performing in front of the class. However there are two difficulties; it did not work for accuracy and did not ideally increase students’ spontaneity in speaking English.
Keywords: Think-Pair-Share, participation