IMPROVING THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS’ PARTICIPATION AND SIMPLE PAST TENSE ACHIEVEMENT BY GIVING VERBAL AND NON- VERBAL REINFORCEMENTS AT SMPN 1 BANGSALSARI-JEMBER

Abstract

This classroom action research was intended to improve the eighth grade students’ participation and simple past tense achievement by giving Verbal and nonVerbal

Reinforcements at SMPN 1 Bangsalsari-Jember in the 2012/2013 academic year. This research began by conducting a preliminary study by interviewing the English teacher of the eighth grade students of SMPN 1 Bangsalsari on 15th May 2012. It was found that the students of class VIII C had less motivation and had difficulties in learning tense, especially simple past tense. Moreover, they couldn’t apply that tense in a sentence and got the difficulties in memorizing the patterns of that tense. Besides, the students lack of participation in the classroom during the teaching and learning process of tense. This finding was supported by the English teacher’s admission and the average score of the students’ grammar test that was 65 while the minimum standard score requirement of the school was 70. About 16 students of class VIII-C got ≥70 in the test and 18 students got < 70. It means that only 47% of the students achieved the standard score. This classroom action research was conducted collaboratively with class VIIIC English teacher of SMPN 1 Bangsalsari. There were four stages of activities in this research, namely: preparation of the action, implementation of the action, observation and evaluation, and data analysis and reflection. The data collection methods that were used in this research were interview, documentation, previous tense test, and classroom observation. This classroom action research was carried out in two cycles and each cycle was conducted in three meetings. The first and the second meetings were used to do the actions and the third meeting was used to conduct the simple past tense test. In the first cycle, it was known that the percentage of the active students was 79.4%. It means that the minimum requirement percentage of the active students in this reserach (75%) had been achieved successfully. Meanwhile, the students’ mean score of the simple past tense test in the first cycle was 68.4. The students’ mean score had not achieved the minimum standard score requirement of SMPN 1 Bangsalsari (70). Moreover, the percentage of the students who achieved ≥70 was only 67.6% whereas the minimum requirement percentage in this research was 70%. Dealing with the results, it was necessary to continue the action to the second cycle by revising some necessary aspects in the first cycle. In the second cycle, the percentage of the students who were active during the teaching learning process was 92.5%. It achieved the minimum requirement percentage (75%) and was higher than the percentage of the active students in cycle 1 (79.4%). Besides, the students’ mean score of the simple past tense test improved from 68.4 (cycle 1) to 75.15 (cycle 2). The students’ mean score in cycle 2 also achieved the minimum requirement standard score (70). Meanwhile, the percentage of the students who got ≥70 was 82.3%. It means that the minimum requirement percentage of the students who got ≥70 had been achieved in cycle 2. Since all of research targets had been successfully achieved in the second cycle, the action was stopped. Based on the research results from cycle 1 to cycle 2, it could be concluded that teaching simple past tense by giving verbal and non verbal reinforcements could improve the students’ participation and simple past tense achievement. Thus, the English teacher was suggested to use of Verbal and Non verbal Reinforcements in teaching tenses since it could make the students participate actively in the teaching learning process of tenses and improve their tense achievement, especially in Simple Past Tense.