CONCLUSION

DISCUSSION

IV. CONCLUSION

included category of equation was P8 ⁴₅− 𝑎 −¹₄+ 𝑎 = 𝑎 and P10 ⁴₅+ 𝑎 = 𝑎 + 𝑎 +¹₄. b. Moving the beginning equation side elements then added those sides by fractions, the

included category of equation was P7 ¹₄+ 𝑎 −⁴₅+¹₄ =¹₄.

6. Subject made a new equation by moving one of these then added the sides by the fractions.

The included category of equation was ¹₄+⁴₅= ⁴₅− 𝑎 +⁴₅ .

Anik Purwani

Islamic University of Malang, Indonesia E-mail address: bukan_anikpurwani@yahoo.com

Many experts (Hadfield, 1990; Byrne, 1995; Ersoz, 2000; Kim, 1995;

Uberman, 1998) of language teaching methodology agree that playing a game is a good way to learn English. Hadfield (1990) defined games as an activity with rules, a goal and an element of fun. It is a well-planned activity with objectives, rules and fun. This kind of activity will give students a break and at the same time allow students to practice language skills (Ersoz, 2000). Unfortunately, the textbook of the 2013 curriculum supplied by the government does not provide enough language games for learning activities in the English class. To accommodate the students’

needs, it surely needs suitable games which can supplement to reinforce the existing materials for them. Providing appropriate games which are attractive will increase the students’ motivation in learning English. In addition, the availability of language games that are suitable with the content of the 2013 curriculum cannot be found in the market in Tulungagung even in big cities like Surabaya and Malang.

Therefore, developing language games for teaching English to the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Tulungagung needs to be conducted to bridge the gap.

The Research and Development (R&D) design adapted from Borg and Gall (1983) is employed in this study to develop language games. The model used for designing and developing the games was adapted from Heinich’s model (1983).The product was in the form of resource book that consists of two parts: the first one is the teacher’s guide and the second part is the photocopiable material. The first part contains the guidelines of how to apply the language games in the class and the second one provides photocopiable materials or forms if it is necessary. The developed games then were validated by the expert and tried-out. The final product of this study is language games. The games have been empirically tested in try-out stage. Therefore, it will be easy for the teachers to apply in their classes.

Keywords: Developing, Language games, and Supplementary materials

According to Crystal (2003), “English is a global language”. Lauder (2008) stated that English is being used for following technological and scientific improvements and also for better job opportunities. The mastery of English both oral and written will be one of the most crucial competences that should be possessed in order to be able to compete in the global world. Unfortunately, the result of the teaching learning of English is not considered satisfying yet (Lengkanawati, 2004). Madya stated the teaching of English in Indonesia has been unable to achieve the declared goals despite the many efforts made to improve its quality. The government admits that fact as stated in the guideline book of the 2013 curriculum for English subject that the graduates of junior and senior high schools do not have good ability to communicate in English.

There are some problems stated by many experts why it happens and some of them are the teaching material and teaching strategy. According to Yulia (2014), many teachers are still using outdated methods and having very little training in English teaching, many teachers are not trained in English teaching methodology, there is a lack of quality

not only on the conceptual perspective but also on the process that tends to student centered learning. All the activities should give the students opportunities to express themselves and show their ability.The teacher should provide some activities that can motivate them to be active and to have a will to participate in the classroom activities.

The teacher who was teaching in the eighth and ninth grades at SMP Negeri 1 Tulungagung has been informally observed that there were some problems faced by the students of the eighth grade concerning the teaching and learning process in the class. The result showed that the students need to have learning activities that will minimize their reluctance to be active in the class as well as their boredom and they wanted to learn English through games and suggested having fun activities in class. Whereas the English teacher avoided using games because of the limited time and lack of sources. The most important was to focus on finishing the target material suggested by the curriculum.

Besides, most of activities in English classrooms relyied too much on the use of textbook without considering the boredom of the students. Moreover, they found some difficulties to find a resource book that is suitable with the content of the 2013 curriculum. So, the next reason was that there should be a fast track to avoid the boring situation caused by conventional way of teaching learning process. The students need to experience joyful learning activities.

Unfortunately, the textbook of the 2013 curriculum supplied by the government does not provide enough language games for learning activities in the English class. The most suitable one to solve the problem is developing games as reinforcement activities since it has a role as supplementary material for the teaching learning materials and it is developed based on the content of the 2013 curriculum. It can support and complete the material that has already existed. In addition, the availability of language games that are suitable with the content of the 2013 curriculum cannot be found in the market in Tulungagung even in big cities like Surabaya and Malang. Therefore, this supplementary material is to fulfill the need of English teachers for supporting them to teach English to the eighth grade students.

Here, it was explored the language games that aimed as a supplementary material for the eighth grade students. Reviewing the above issue, the problem and the proposed strategy, research entitled 'Developing Language Games for Teaching English to the Eighth Grade Students of SMP Negeri 1 Tulungagung needs to be conducted to bridge the gap.

Method

The Research and Development (R & D) design employed, since the study was intended to develop and validate educational products (Borg and Gall, 1983). It produced language games as supplementary material for the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Tulungagung. Due to the limited time in conducting this study and the internal use of the product, the procedures of developing the product based on the adapted steps from Borg and Gall model. In this study, the product was designed in seven stages; needs assessment, games development, expert validation, revision I, try out, revision II and finalization.

Needs assessment was intended to obtain as much information as possible about the people that are involved in the program including their interest, opinion, experience, and their activities concerning the product being developed. Besides, it was also conducted to acquire the students’ and teachers’ need in order to be able to design appropriate, practical, and effective product. The main instrument employed to collect data was questionnaire and

Developing language games wass the next step in which the selected games were organized to be presented in the learning experience. It covered the principles and the model of games development. The principles in developing the games were based on the result of the needs assessment and the review of literature concerning games development.

The games should be appropriate with the basic competence stated in the 2013 curriculum, make all students get involved and motivate them in learning of English, be relevant to the language level and characteristics of the students, be meaningful and have fun activities, be easily applied to the classroom environment, accommodate group work and can be applied outside of the class, no time consuming, and provide pictures/cards/board if possible.

These focused on how the preliminary game was developed. There were some steps in developing games adapted from Heinich (1982) including selecting the content, developing the game model, developing the rules, developing the prototype of the game.

The following stage to establish after developing the products was expert validation. This step aimed at knowing whether or not the products culd be tried out to the subjects. The validation was done by a qualified expert and an experience teacher to make sure that the product can be tried out in the class. Checklists were used to ask the expert’s and teacher’s feedback. The expert validated the games in terms of language, content, and description of procedure. The expert was given a validation form as the instrument. There was a checklist on each aspect to be validated with open free space. The analysis of the validation was presented in a descriptive way.

The try out was conducted after the experts validate the product. It was carried out in order to identify some weaknesses of the games and to get input and feedback from the students as well as the teacher; hence the weaknesses diagnosed were used to improve the quality of the games. A checklist was distributed to the students and teacher to find out their opinions on the games. It was carried out to determine whether the games were applicable, appropriate, useful, effective, efficient, and attractive to the user. The data obtained from the checklist given to the students was analyzed quantitatively using percentage. After that, the result was converted into quality level of good, fair, and low.

The result from observation checklist comes into consideration for revision. The revision gives great impact on determining the quality of the product at the finalization. If the revisions accomplish, the final product was ready to release.

The subjects of this study were the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Tulungagung of the academic year of 2014/2015. It was VIII-I class that consisted of 32 students. Beside the students, it also involved the English teacher of SMP Negeri 1 Tulungagung due to the fact that a teacher played a very important role in the teaching and learning process.

Results

From the need assessment stage, the result from the questionnaire distributed to the students indicated that 46.9 % of students were very interested and 43.8 % of them were interested in learning English through games. Half of the class said that it was enjoyable to learn English through games and 37.5% of students declared that games were very enjoyable. There were 40.6 % students declared that games were really needed and 50 % of them said that games were needed. The data showed that games were really needed as learning activities in class as proven by the fact that there were 53.1 % of the students who admitted it. Games with pictures, cards, and board were chosen by 65.6 % students whereas word games were voted by 59.4 % of students. There were 37.5 % of students that preferred guessing games and 31.3 % of them chose the games that involved physical

most favorite activities in class was shown by the result of the questionnaire that there were 75 % students who enjoyed group work and 9.4 % who enjoyed it very much.

The result of the needs assessment indicated that the teacher was less interested as well as did not prefer too much in using games as learning activity in class although she admitted that games were useful when it is applied in the class since the students preferred games than other learning activities. The limited time provided for English was the reason why she seldom used games in teaching learning process. She only chose word games because these kinds of games like puzzle did not consume a lot of time. Most activities she did in the class were doing activities and exercise based on the textbook and student worksheet. In conclusion, the games should have some features in accordance with the result of the needs assessment. They should be various games such that mostly involved group work activities and give them a chance to speak English and to be able to do the learning activity outside the class. It means the games should stimulate students’

activeness and interaction. Besides, games with pictures, cards, and board should be available too.

According to the teacher, developing language games which are appropriate with the basic competence of the 2013 Curriculum was good and very useful for both the students and the teacher. The teacher suggested that the games should be able to be applied in class effectively due to the class size. Besides, they should be in line with the material of the 2013 curriculum as well as the students’ needs and characteristics.

The first step in games development was selecting the content of the 2013 curriculum basic competence for second semester of the eighth grade. The result of previous step was used as a guideline to determine the topics in developing the games.

Due to the limitation of time and resources, not all topics could be covered in the product.

The topics selected were elaborated to develop into eleven games. The next step was developing the game model. There were four activities to do: deciding the type of activity, setting the type of the games, determining the skills, and identifying the resources.

Developing the rules was the next step. It was the activity to set the rules and procedure how to play the game. The last step was developing the prototype of the games. The activity was constructing the draft of the game and the resources/material needed. The developed games consisted of 11 units. The process of developing was by modifying, adapting and reordering the games. The games were in the form of resources book for teachers with two main parts, the teacher’s guide and the photocopiable material. Each unit of game states topic, type of activity, skill, preparation, language focus, steps and additional notes for teachers.

The next step to accomplish was the validation. This stage involved two validators, the expert and the teacher. The expert validated the developed product in term of language, content, and description of procedure. There were some aspects of the game that needed to be revised. The revision is mostly done with the language and the instruction, but it was only partial revision based on the notes and suggestions written by the expert in the free open space provided in the checklist except for game 1. It was suggested to find another game that is more suitable to the content of the 2013 curriculum. There were several parts in each game that should be simplified. In term of language, there are some games that should be revised because several sentences were not written grammatically. Most of the descriptions and procedures did not have a lot of problems with the language.

health was too difficult for eighth grade. So, it was better to find easier material. Besides, the topic was not too relevant with the basic competence since it should be about describing people, animal or object by comparing their characteristics. The Details finally replaced Let’s be healthy because the new one was more suitable with the criteria. As general suggestion, if the games need worksheet or handout, it was better that each group gets more than one worksheet or handout. It would promote the effectiveness since the students could work more easily. The revisions were mostly done with the instructions of the games and there were some suggestions that were added to improve before trying out them in the class. Moreover, there were some aspects suggested to revise by expert, such as the structure of the sentences, the rules of the game, the topic selected, and the tips to maximize the game in the class.

After the stage of validation, the next step conducted was testing the game at the field. This was aimed to gather the data concerning the attractiveness, the practicality and the usefulness of the games. Based on the result of checklist distributed to the teacher, it was concluded that the students were interested and enthusiastic in learning language through games. The data showed that all the games were interesting and there were some games that were categorized as very interesting by the teacher. The data showed that most of the games can be implemented well in the class. It meant that the teacher did not find any difficulties to understand the steps of the games. All the games stimulated interaction among students and make the class become alive.

The second try out checklist was distributed to the students to obtain the some data concerning the attractiveness, the practicality and the usefulness. It turned out that all aspects of criteria met the intended purpose. From the result of the checklist above, it was concluded that the product of the study had met the purpose and the criteria of good games. Some games needed to be revised based on the result of the try out. The revisions were mostly done to the steps of the games since there was not any significant problem when applying the games in the try out stage. The result was used to improve the game for the finalization. The final product consists of eleventh games. The product is in the form of resource book that consists of two parts: the first one is the teacher’s guide and the second part is the photocopiable material. The first part contains the guidelines of how to apply the language games in the class and the second one provides photocopiable materials or forms if it is necessary.

Discussion

Games are effective tools and have many positive aspects (Cervantes, 2009).

According to (2004), games can give teachers to create various contexts in which students have to use the language to communicate, exchange information and express their own opinion. Another advantage is that the games help to create a context in which the students do not realize that language items are being practiced (Toth, 1995). Cross (1992) stated that games reduce tension by adding fun and humor to lessons, and they add an element of competitiveness that motivates students to participate. The most important thing is that they provide a great opportunity for teachers to take a backseat and let the students to the activities (Cervantes, 2009).

Some studies related to the use of games in learning English showed the result that confirmed the theories above. Yolageldili (2011) investigated the effectiveness of using games in teaching grammar to young learners. The result found that games were effective in grammar teaching especially for young learners. Based on the study conducted by Zhu (2012), it was found that teaching and learning English by means of language games was

language acquisition.

Conclusions

The final version of the product is in a form of printed material that consists of two parts: teacher’s guide and photocopiable material. The first part consists of eleven units of games which focus on certain topic, type of activity, skill and language focus as well steps to apply the game in class. Most of the games can be applied well in the class after some revisions suggested by the expert and the teacher. In conclusion the product of this study surely will give advantages for teachers since it provides the language games which are relevant to the basic competence of the 2013 curriculum. The product accommodates various skills of English. It is different from the previous product developed by other researchers. All the games developed were focused only on one skill.

Aside from its benefits, there are still several weaknesses in this media that can decrease its value. This weakness is due to the lack of ability in creating the photocopiable material which cannot provide the better one. The other weakness is that not all the topics in the basic competence can be covered because of the limited time in conducting the study.

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