Improving the Eighth Grade Students’ Speaking Skill by Using Telegram as the Supporting Tool

Abstract

This Classroom Action Research focused on improving the eight-grade students’ speaking skill by using telegram and engaging their participation. This research was conducted in one Junior high school in Pasuruan. According to the preliminary study, it revealed that the eight-grade students had problems in their speaking. They had limited vocabulary lists, they could not pronounce the word correctly, and they used to be afraid of making mistake when they have to speak in English. Furthermore, the English teacher also mentioned that the students used to get bored easily that makes them unable to actively participated in teaching and learning process. These problems might be caused by several factors, such as the less use of any learning media and the less practice given to the students. This was presented in the students’ speaking score that was still low. The previous score revealed that there were only 17% students who achieved the Minimum Mastery Criterion (73) in this school. Thus, become the reason of the researcher conducted this research. In order to overcome the problems faced by the students, the researcher considered the use of mobile technology known as Telegram to improve students’ speaking skill. This application provides some advantages in language learning (Rasiban, 2021). Sing et al (2020) mentioned that Telegram has a voice recording feature that is suitable to train students’ speaking skill. Furthermore, Telegram can also motivate the students to engage in the teaching and learning process because it offers an interactive and supportive learning environment (Chiau, 2019). Telegram was implemented in this research where it was conducted in two cycles. Each cycle consisted of two meetings of the implementation and one meeting for taking speaking test, that become the data collection methods along with the observation to see the students’ participation. The result of this research presented the improvement of students’ speaking skill along with the participation in the classroom. Based on the speaking test, it revealed that there were 35% students who met the target criterion in the first cycle. It increased up to 48% students who reached the target criterion of the speaking skill in the second cycle. Besides, the students were categorized as active participants when they fulfilled at least 3 indicators. In the first cycle, there was a slight improvement of students’ participation where there were 43% students who were active in the first meeting. Meanwhile, there were 48% students who actively participated in the second meeting. Furthermore, the students’ participation was increased highly in the second cycle where there were 57% in the meeting 1 and 61% students who were participating in the meeting 2. According to the result, it can be concluded that the implementation of Telegram can help the students to improve their speaking skill and their active participation in the classroom.