CHAPTER II: THE STUDY ON USING COMMUNICATIVE
2.5.1. Results from class observation and student’s questionnaire
Students’ awareness towards four skills and speaking skills in learning English
In order to find out students’ attitude and motivation in learning English and speaking skills, the first four questions were set. Questions 1,2,3 and 4 will show the brief description of the survey results.
Question Answer
A B C D E
1 65 15 13 7 X
2 92 8 X X X
3 27 54 8 4 6
4 13 53 25 9 X
The result of question 1 indicates that a majority of the respondents (65%) ranked speaking skillas the most important skill in learning English. Listening is the second place with 15%. The third place is 13% of writing skill. Surprisingly, only 7 students (9%) placed their choice on reading skill. The result from the survey shows a reality that many students care for their speaking ability and they are aware of the importance of speaking skill.
The question 2 is raised to find out whether they like learning this skill. It is easy to see that most of the students (92%) confirmed that they are interested in the speaking skill. Meanwhile, only 8% of students found no interest in this skill.
From question 3, the finding reveals that 54% of the informants confessed that they felt embarrassed and nervous when taking part in the speaking activities and 8% of them said they were uncomfortable with the activities whereas 6% were bored with these activities. Nevertheless 27% of students show their interest in speaking activities and 4% confirmed that they were confident with these activities.
When being asked whether they enjoy speaking classes at Pasal, many students (66%) expressed positive attitudes towards speaking classes. Among which, 13% of the informants present their complete approval of speaking classes, and 53% said that they enjoyed it meanwhile 25% said that they did not really enjoy, and 9% of them found no interest in their speaking classes.
Factors related to students’ interest in speaking lessons
Question 5 and 6 ask about factors related to students’ interest in speaking lesson.
Question Answer
A B C D E F G H
5 48 67 45 85 63 13 13 X
6 21 17 27 65 25 43 20 0
Just a few students are likely to be motivated because 13% of participants said they really liked learning English. 45% of students think that with speaking lessons they have opportunity to practice and speak English, whereas 85 students believed that speaking lessons help them develop their speaking skills, and 48% of students admitted that they were attracted by teachers’ method of teaching. According to 67% of students, they found interested in communicative activities in speaking lessons. Amazingly, 63%
of students agreed on their enjoyment because speaking lessons at Pasal meet their demand of using English to communicate. And others idea (13%)
showed that they liked English speaking lessons simply because they wanted to enrich his background knowledge.
Factors de-motivating students in speaking classes are shown by question 6. The result shows that 43 students admitting no enjoyment to English speaking lessons blamed themselves for this reason (characteristic).
27 ideas of participants among 100 students found no interested in English speaking lessons at Pasal because of their teachers’ method. Too much vocabulary and many new structures are also a factor preventing them from speaking, taking up to 25%. Another obstacle to students’ interest is teachers’ instruction. 20% did not satisfy with the teachers’ instructions which are not clear and motivating.
In addition, 60/100 students revealed that their English knowledge was not sufficient which caused trouble to them in learning speaking skills. Boring topic somehow affected students’ speaking with 17%. Furthermore, 21%
shows their disapproval to English subject. It can be concluded from the results of the survey that some subjective and objective factors had an influence on students’ motivation in learning English language speaking skill.
Students’ difficulties in speaking lessons
Students’ difficulties in speaking lessons will be indicated by question 7.
Reasons %
A, Your knowledge of English (such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, etc) is poor
73
B, Your shyness 45
C, Your fear of making mistakes 65
D, Teacher do not encourage you much 17
E, Other difficulties 1
Regarding students’ fondness to speaking lessons at schools, they still get difficulties in participating in the lessons. 65% students said that the fear of making mistakes brought them troubles in learning the English language speaking skills. The number of 45% of students commented that their shyness makes them less confident to speak to their partner or teacher. The poor knowledge of English (such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, etc) is also a problem to many students (73%). Moreover, 17% of students thought that their teachers did not encourage them much. Especially, one student shared his difficult in understanding teacher’s instruction.
Students’ opinion about teachers’ design of communicative activities
To have more information about the frequency of using communicative activities in speaking lessons, the writer designed question 8.
Activity Always Often Sometimes Seldom Never
Role play 35% 30% 35% 0% 0%
Interview 5% 12% 37% 25% 21%
Discussion 47% 35% 18% 0% 0%
Information
gap 0% 31% 45% 24% 0%
Guessing game 3% 14% 49% 34% 0%
Survey 0% 0% 34% 52% 24%
Games 53% 40% 13% 0% 0%
There are various kinds of CAs such as role-play, interview, discussion, information-gap activities, and games; however, the most common kinds were selected to serve the aims of the findings.
According to the results, it can be seen that the teachers’ favorite activity was games (53%), discussion was ranked behind (47%). Meanwhile, survey (52%) and guessing games (34%) were seldom used by the teachers.
Especially, 25.8% ideas from students believed that their teacher never used interview (21%) and survey (24%) while teaching speaking skill.
Students’ attitude towards communicative activities
Besides that, the research also tries to discover kinds of communicative activities students preferred. The results are presented in table below:
Activity Role play
Interview Discussion Information gap
Guessing game
Survey Games
Percentage 25% 15% 37% 9% 21% 7% 54%
As for communicative games, the majority of students, making up 54%
considered communicative games as their most favorite activity. Secondly, discussion was the next choice by 37% of students. Through observations of some classes, it can be seen that many teachers preferred to organize the speaking task as discussion activity and students were eager to participate in communicative activities in which they could have the same opportunity to share their ideas with their friends and practice in English.
Role playimproves its benefits when it was ranked as the third favorite activities with 25%. In reality, this activity is quite easy to prepare and apply in classes. In addition, most of students showed their enjoyment when taking part in this game.
The investigation also discovered that guessing game occupied the next position with 23%. The other activities such asinterview (15%), information gap(9%) and survey (7%) did not get much approval from students.Yet, it cannot be concluded that these activities were not interesting and they were not welcomed by the students.
According to observation, most of students are eager to join some activities that are fun, interesting and energetic.
Students’ feedbacks to the implementation of communicative activities
Concerning the benefits which communicative activities brought to students, the data of question 10 indicated that students understood and appreciated them very much.
Expected Advantages %
Increasing confidence, help students communicate in English fluently
73
Having opportunity to communicate, perform the ideas 23 Making students be interested in learning English 35
Developing creative and imaginary ability 11
Practicing language in appropriate context 30
Helping students be familiar with social situations in English in real communication
45
Other advantages 5
As shown in, the biggest number of learners (73%) chose the benefit
“Increasing confidence, help students communicate in English fluently” as the first advantage of communicative activities. A large percentage of informants (45%) were aware of the function of communicative activities which help them to be familiar and raise their ability to adapt to similar context in real life. 35% of informants thought that they were motivated to speak if their teachers conducted CAs in the lessons. In addition, 30% of students voted for communicative activities because these activities help them to practice language in appropriate context. 23% of students were conscious that with communicative activities they have chance to communicate and express
themselves. Language has incredible functions if teachers make full use of them. However, only 11% of students said that with communicative activities, they can develop their creative and imaginary ability. One idea stated that he/she had fun when attending communicative activities.