Promoting Islamic Senior High School Students’ Ability In Speaking Through All-Write Round Robin Technique (AWRRT)

Abstract

This Classroom Action Research (CAR) raised the issue Cooperative Learning (Henceforth CL), in particular All-Write Round Robin Technique (henceforth AWRRT) as a model of CL strategy to promote students‟ speaking ability. AWRRT is a technique that provides an interaction activity in the form of negotiation of meanings. From the result of interview and observation of the preliminary study conducted at MAN Bondowoso, it was identified that the students of XI Agama 2 experienced difficulties in speaking as indicated by the inequality of the students‟ speaking achievement. The interviewee informed that some students (40%) could achieve in their speaking while the rest of them (60%) could not achieve . Those 60% of the students were still struggling with fluency, pronunciation, and accuracy that tended to cause miscommunication. This present research was conducted within two cycles. Each cycle consisted of 3 meetings: 2 meetings for the implementation of the action and 1 meeting for the test. This research investigated two kinds of data: quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data (i.e. students‟ speaking ability) were in the forms of students‟ speaking scores gathered through speaking test. The qualitative data (i.e. changes in the way students negotiate meaning) were in the forms of descriptive notes collected through field notes by observing the speaking teaching and learning process using AWRRT, specifically the discussion activity. The results of the observation in cycle 1 showed that the changes took place in the way the students negotiate meanings from meeting 1 to meeting 2 were not really significant. In addition, the results of the speaking test in cycle 1 showed that there were only 14 out of 30 or 47% of students who could achieve score . It means that the action given to the students in Cycle 1 were not successful. After doing a reflection of the action in Cycle 1, it was identified that the problem was laid on the students‟ unfamiliarity with the procedure of the group discussion and students‟ pronunciation. Therefore, cycle 2 needed to be conducted by revising the weakness points found. In cycle 2, the data of the observation showed that AWRRT gave a chance for the students to have an interaction, causing some changes in the way students negotiated meanings. The changes were the students seemed to be more confident in asking questions, prioritized mutual understanding by not ignoring the other members‟ questions, were more polite in asking question and clarification, expanded their way in asking questions and for clarification, and negotiated meanings more significantly. Furthermore, the results of the students‟ speaking test in cycle 2 showed an improvement. There were 23 students who could achieve and 7 students achieved score below 75. It means that there were 76.6% of the student who were successful and 23.3% of the students who were failed. The students who got score increased from 47% in Cycle 1 to 76.6% in Cycle 2. Finally, it can be concluded that the result of the action research proved that the use of AWRRT could promote the speaking ability of XI Agama 2 students of MAN Bondowoso and also there were some changes took place in in the way students negotiate meanings by implementing AWRRT in English teaching and learning process. Thus, the researcher suggest English teachers to use AWRRT as an input and consideration in teaching speaking due to the improvement of students‟ speaking ability showed in this research result. The result of this research also might be used as guidance for English teachers to create, find, or give more suitable activities in teaching speaking. The result of this research could also be used as a useful reference and information for future researchers in conducting further researches. This will also be a very beneficial guidance to conduct further research studies on the issue of CL in promoting the four English skills or components in different contexts.