Improving
Students’ Ability in Speaking
Through
Speaking Competition
In Indonesia, the
teaching of English is generally started at the fourth grade of elementary
school level and continued to the university level. However, currently there is
a new trend that English is taught since the first grade of elementary school.
Some or many more education institutions have even given English since the
students were in the kindergarten level. The
teaching of English in Indonesia, particularly at senior high school, aims to
enable the students to use English for communication. To achieve this goal, the
teaching of English is directed to develop the students’ competency in
listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In particular, being able to speak
English is important. This is because the ability to use the language in daily
communication is the indicator that someone has mastered the language.
Most
people, mastering the art of speaking is the single most important aspects of learning
a second or foreign language and success is measured in terms of the ability to
carry out a conversation in the language. Teaching speaking is not an easy task
for English teachers. Teachers often face many constraints in teaching students
how to speak well. The students are usually shy to express their feeling,
ideas, or wishes. This may be caused by their being afraid of making mistakes,
being laughed at by their classmates, or being criticized in the classroom.
Another factor that could block the learners’ ability in speaking in
motivation. This might be caused by the idea that English in Indonesia is a
foreign language which is not used in daily communication.
Method
The
design of action research consists of four steps: planning an action, implementing
an action, observing, and reflecting.
1.
Planning
the action
A lesson plan was made
as a guideline before conducting the teaching activities. Formulating
instructional objective is very important to decide before conducting the
activity because it leads to the achievement of the objective of the study or
the expected result of the teaching and learning. The instructional objective
is based on the basic competence. In the study, the basic competence is asking
and giving opinion and asking and giving agreement or disagreement of the
situation given. The whilst-teaching stage was intended to implement the theory
into practice. The post-teaching stage was intended to emphasize the students’
paradigm about speaking ability. The procedures of the teaching consist of
three stages: pre-teaching, whilst-teaching and post-teaching stages. The
pre-teaching stage was intended to activate the students’ background knowledge
about the topic and recall the materials from the previous lesson.
2. The
Implementation of the Strategy
In the pre-teaching
stage, the students were given the rules of the activities. The teacher also
told them about the nature of speaking and the expression that they are going
to practice. This activity always does when process of teaching is going on in
everyday in class.
Results
The results of
the data analysis were presented to answer the research question. It was
presented in two categories: scores of the students’ performance and responses
to the questionnaire. The former category was used to show the improvement of
the students’ speaking skill, whereas the latter category was used to know the
students’ opinions on the instructional activities conducted on the speaking
competition basis.
Discussion
As pointed out
earlier, communication is important in the teaching and learning a language. It
means that the teaching of English by using a traditional method that focuses
on grammar mastery should be avoided. The product of teaching should guarantee
the learners on what they have mastered after the learning activities were
completed. This is because success of learning a language is measured in terms
of ability to carry out a conversation in the language. However, teachers
should know how to develop the speaking ability of their students. They should
also know what strategy is suitable with their students so that they can
improve the speaking ability of the students.
The results of
this study show that motivation is one of the key factors that drive the
students to speak and the power of immediate reward is undeniable.
These factors
influence the students’ mastery in speaking as the students were forced to
produce understandable utterances although they still made grammatical
mistakes. Errors are the sign of the language development and tolerable for the
learners. Addition, it is
important that the students be given feedback so that they could correct
mistakes in their sentences. And because errors naturally happen to the
learners, they should not be looked down.
Conclusion
The findings of
the study confirm that speaking competition is effective to improve the
students’ motivation and their speaking ability. It is recommended that
teachers apply this strategy to improve the speaking ability of the students.
Additionally, the students need to be motivated and given a useful and
effective strategy so that their speaking ability can be improved. English
teachers are suggested to apply the strategy especially in speaking class so
that the teaching of English can be made more challenging and effective.
