: A Case Study on Doctoral Scholarship Grantees Learning Speaking for IELTS.

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Roslina Sawitri, 2012

Students’ Learning Strategies In Speaking For Ielts

: A Case Study on Doctoral Scholarship Grantees Learning Speaking for IELTS

Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu _v

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This chapter discusses some aspects related to the background of the study. It

includes research questions, purposes of the study, significance of the study,

clarification of the terms, research limitation, and thesis organization.

1.1 Background

From time to time, the number of teachers, lecturers and educators wishing

to study abroad are growing rapidly. Even though the countries they are intending

to go may not be English-speaking countries, these people’s need of speaking English as the main means of communication is inevitable. Nonetheless, for those

people who will be studying in English-speaking countries, their English speaking

ability has become one thing that they cannot do without. In order to achieve

better English skills before they leave for the target foreign country, these people

usually enroll in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses to equip them

with a proper English ability for their prospective studies. Besides that, these

people are required to take English language tests such as the International

English Language Testing Systems (IELTS) and pass some certain scores with the

purpose of being legible to be accepted in the desired university.

IELTS is widely recognized as a language requirement for entering

universities mainly in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu 2 States of America are now accepting IELTS score as an acknowledged tool for

measuring one’s English competence. Speaking skill in IELTS test plays an important role which each IELTS candidate must posses, both for their potential

studies in English-mediated university classes and for achieving the passing

grades in the speaking test of the IELTS.

Speaking test in IELTS involves an approximately 15-minute one on one

interview with an appointed English-native examiner. The 2-minute monologue

speaking in part two is what makes IELTS speaking test such a daunting task for

many of IELTS candidates. The fact that each candidate will face an

English-native interviewer itself has already drawn a scary mental-note, let alone giving a

2-minute speech by themselves based on the topic and questions given in the cue

card provided by the interviewer. It appears that English speaking skill is found as

a real challenge by Indonesians even though they have studied English since in

the elementary school.

Learning strategy is very crucial in learning language because an

appropriate strategy helps learners to be more independent since teachers cannot

always be around when students speak nor have questions about the target

language. This is consistent with Chamot et al. (1999) who state that the goal of

learning strategies is to assist learners in developing awareness of their own

learning. She insists that learners who are aware of their own learning processes,

strategies and preferences, are able to regulate their learning activities and become

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu 3 The teaching in EAP course is intended to provide the participants with an

intense exposure of mastering English in a fabricated highly-stake set of tests

namely IELTS. In this kind of course, participants have a limited time frame to

boost their ability in language learning. As supports by Oxford (2001), learning

strategies could come in handy to facilitate learners in regulating their own

process of knowing, understanding, and learning English, involving themselves

actively in language learning, and in this case, also in accomplishing a certain

required IELTS score. The suitable strategies could also enhance students’ confidence in speaking in English and this very fact could be such a great strength

in improving one’s speaking learning process.

This study attempted to investigate the learning strategies used by the EAP

participants in learning speaking for IELTS test. Moreover, this study was also

expected to reveal some learning strategies that are perceived as the most effective

by them. It is expected that the results of this study will contribute to the

understanding of learning strategies for IELTS preparation. The results may also

be used for further speaking learning for pedagogical purposes.

1.2 Research Questions

The present research investigated the problems that are formulated in the

following questions:

1. What strategies do the EAP course participants use in learning speaking

for IELTS?

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1.3 The Purposes of the Study

This study aims at finding answers to the previous questions:

1. To find out the strategies EAP course participants use in learning

speaking for IELTS speaking test.

2. To find out the strategies are most effective as perceived by the

participants.

1.4 The Significance of the Study

This descriptive study is mainly to elaborate one of the phenomena of English

skills learning in a language course. It is conducted to reveal these doctoral

scholarship grantees’ learning strategies for speaking in IELTS and to discover their opinions about how the English speaking learning is conducted, both in the

language course and in their individual ways. In addition, this study is expected to

disclose these learners’ strategies that are considered most helpful by them. Regardless to the fact that the scope of this present study is limited, the findings of

this research confirm the existing theory on learning strategies.

This study could be one piece of practical information for the English teachers

about students learning strategies for IELTS preparation. In relation to it, students

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu 5 on how to choose the best possible learning strategies for or on their own. This

study could be a reference for the other researchers in the future to do more

advanced analysis on students’ IELTS speaking learning strategy in particular.

1.5 Clarification of the Terms

Following are some of the terms that are used in this study:

(1) Learning Strategy — learning strategies are operations employed by the learner to aid the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information,

specific actions taken by the learner to make the learning easier, faster,

more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective and more transferable

to new situations (Oxford, 2001).

(2) IELTS — or 'International English Language Testing System', is an international standardized test of English language proficiency. IELTS is

accepted by most Australian, British, Canadian, Irish, New Zealand and

South African academic institutions, over 3,000 academic institutions in

the United States, and various professional organizations (wikipedia,

2011).

(3) Speaking test in IELTS — the speaking test is a structured one-on-one oral interview, designed to encourage candidates to demonstrate their ability in

speaking English. It is done in 11-14minutes, consisted of three parts, and

assessed by using four analytical criteria and subscales over 9 band scores

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1.6 Research Limitation

This study is restricted on the issue of speaking learning strategies that the

students of a language course use in learning English speaking for IELTS. This

study illustrates the most suitable and useful strategies based on the students’

personal belief. It also tries to investigate the students’ most preferred learning strategies and whether this type of EAP program, which is an intensive IELTS

preparation course, can provide a different language environment for them as

language learners. However, this study does not attempt to observe other variables

that might influence students’ achievement, such as the participants’ motivation,

gender, and the instructors’ competence.

1.7 Thesis Organization

This thesis is organized in five chapters. The first chapter introduces the

present study. Chapter two discusses the theoretical accounts relevant to the

present study. Chapter three elaborates the research methodology. Chapter four

presents the data analysis and the discussion of the findings. At last, chapter five

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CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter discusses the methodology of the research, which includes an

explanation on how the research is conducted. More specifically, it presents the

research design, data collection method, data triangulation, and data analysis.

3.1 Research Design

This research mainly explored the Ph.D. candidates learning strategies on

an EAP course on International English Language Testing System (IELTS)

preparation in one language center in Bandung. This study was set out to

investigate the participants speaking learning in their EAP course for IELTS test.

Furthermore, it investigated the most effective strategies as perceived by the

course participants.

This research is a single case study that represents a critical test to existing

learning strategies theory on a unique event in an EAP course. It used a

descriptive type of case study since it has been widely viewed as a method that

produces data as many as possible relating to the subjects being investigated. The

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu 23 but not the causal link among its different elements, for that reason is subjective.

This method intends to describe a phenomenon that might go unnoticed.

The data gained from the research was described in an elaborated

explanation mostly in the form of words and sentences. The inferences were made

based on the findings and the data gained from the research were described based

on related literature. Consequently, this study was expected to describe the present

practices of learning speaking for IELTS test.

3.2 Data Collection Method

The section comprises the participants involved and the instrumentation

comprising the questionnaire, interview, observation and the IELTS public result

list in collecting the data for this study. Thus, to fit the purpose of this study, only

this particular IELTS score was used to correlate with their learning strategies.

This study involved a simple four-step data collection method which is illustrated

in the table below:

Step Task Duration

First phase Distributing questionnaire Two days

Second phase Observation aided with videotaping Two days

Three phase Conducting interview Three days

Fourth phase Collecting IELTS public results One day

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3.2.1 Participants

This study was conducted in one language center in Bandung. The

participants of this study were 99 Ph.D. candidates granted scholarships by DIKTI

in 2011 for batch 2012. The participants were divided into four parallel classes to

make the learning activities much more comfortable and possible to handle for

both sides; the IELTS instructors and the participants themselves. The research

involved them because they were given the EAP course the shortest hours, which

was three months, than the other former batches of DIKTI grantees who usually

did that in four and or six months. It was assumed that this particular batch was

putting more efforts in learning English as the preparation of IELTS and

employed more effective strategies for mastering speaking skill.

The participants for this research were taken on census so each of the

students had the same chance of being selected for the sample. Initially, 99

students from all four classes participated in this study. These classes were not

divided based on level of competence, meaning that each class could have

participants from beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. On 6-7 December

2011 when the questionnaire was distributed and the classroom observation was

performed, there were only 86 participants attended the classes. The questionnaire

was returned and fully completed by 80 of them.

Those 80 participants were then classified into three categories of low

achiever, medium achiever, and high achiever based on their score on the pre-test

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu 25 participants’ achievement was based on the IELTS band descriptors (British

Council, IELTS Australia & University of Cambridge public version), on scale of

0 to 9. There were seven low achievers, 34 medium achievers and 32 high

achievers. As much as 10% of each achievement category was taken as the sample

for the interviews. As the result, one low achiever, four medium achievers and

three high achievers were randomly chosen as the interview samples. The

interviews were done in between 16-19 December 2011. These 80 participants

took the real IELTS test on Saturday, 17 December 2011.

3.2.2 Collection Procedures

This section deals with the instrumentation of collecting data, which includes

questionnaire, interview and observation.

3.2.1.1Questionnaire

The questionnaire was used as the main instrument to collect the data. It

was administered to the respondents in order to collect information and identify

their preferences on their strategies in learning speaking and information about the

most effective strategies in learning speaking according to the course participants.

The questionnaire was administered to 80 respondents.

The questionnaire that consisted of 13 questions eliciting students’

strategies in speaking learning were categorized into three: metacognitive,

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu 26 preferences of strategies on a frequency interval scale: never, seldom, sometimes,

often and always. The questionnaire used in this study was modelled on

established instruments by O’Maley et al. (1985, in McCoy, 2011). The language

in the questionnaire was translated into Bahasa Indonesia, the students’ mother

tongue, and kept as unambiguous and as simple as possible to avoid making the

questionnaire unduly lengthy. Negative questions, which can be dubious and

difficult to understand were also avoided (see Appendix 1).

The following is the table of the questionnaire used in this study:

Variable Indicators Descriptions Total of Items Numbers

Speaking

Table 3.2 Indicators of Speaking Learning Strategies Questionnaire

The data acquired from the questionnaire was analyzed manually. There

was also an additional open-ended question at the end of the distributed

questionnaire on other most effective learning strategies to improve speaking

ability as perceived by the participants. The summary of the participants’ answers

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3.2.1.2Interview

The face-to-face semi-structured interview was conducted ten days after

the students completed the questionnaire. Nunan (1992) states that through a

semi-structured interview, the interviewer knows where the interview wants to go

and what will come out of it but at the same time he does not enter the interview

session with predetermined questions. Nunan emphasizes that by this flexibility,

many researchers are in favor of using semi-structured type.

The interview was done after the distribution of the questionnaire in order

to get in-depth answers to the unanswered questions attained by the previous

instrument. The aim of using this interview was to identify the most effective

speaking learning strategies as perceived by the course participants. The interview

itself was carried out based on an interview guideline adapted from Purnomo

(2009), which consisted of 15 with open-ended questions as attached (see

Appendix 2).

The students were purposefully selected for the interview came from each

category of low achiever, medium achiever and high achiever based on the

participants’ pre-test scores. The numbers of the students on each category was

written in small piece of papers which then were folded and put into a glass. The

glass was covered with a paper that was given a small hole and sealed with a

rubber band. The glass was shaken and the random numbers of the students to be

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu 28 The interviews were conducted in unstructured open-ended questions and

an interview guideline was used in order to find out the EAP course participants’

learning strategy for speaking in IELTS test. The interviews were conducted in

Bahasa Indonesia, as it allowed the chosen participants to express their thoughts

more freely. The questions were asking about the 8 interviewees’ reasons to speak

English, with who, when and where do they usually use English, and what are

their problems of speaking in English. Furthermore, they were asked about the

evidence of their English speaking improvement(s), learning strategies that they

chose to use to make their speaking more fluent, and whether there are some

strategies given by their instructors that could be used to help them speaking

English fluently.

There were more questions about the number of IELTS test that the

interviewees had taken, what were their preparations on learning English for

IELTS in the EAP course, and whether they thought that this type of course would

help them to be more fluent in English. At the end, the interviewees were asked

about their own efforts to improve their speaking ability, be it was done inside and

or outside of the EAP course classes, the speaking learning strategies that they

wish to use and or the ones that they liked to do and whether they believed those

chosen strategies were effective to make them fluent in English.

The interviews were recorded and then transcribed one by one soon after

the interviews took place. The transcriptions were then analyzed to enrich the

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu 29 explanation of the interview data is provided in chapter IV. The following is the

question mapping on the interview guideline as in how those interview questions

are answering the research questions:

Table 3.3 The Question Mapping of the Interview Guideline

3.2.1.3Observation

The observation was conducted to investigate the learning activity and the

students’ learning attitude in the classrooms interaction. From observation, the

evidence of the metacognitive, cognitive and socioaffective strategies could be

found. The data were recorded by videotaping the classrooms activities. As states

by Alwasilah (2006), an observation facilitates the researcher to see how the

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu 30 and Chamot (1990) proved that classroom observation is the least useful method

for identifying strategies, therefore this study less focused on the data analysis

from the observation. However, McCoy (2011) argues that even though

observation cannot reliably identify all factors in students’ classroom activities, it

is particularly useful for some.

The students’ learning activity and their attitude towards the learning

session were able to be analyzed through observing their efforts in being active

and interactive with the instructor. In addition, by videotaping, the students’ facial

expressions, gestures and body language could be thoroughly observed. For that

reason, the videotape was put in the corner front of the classroom in order to get a

better view on the whole class situation and on the whole students’ behavior;

whether they have prepared for class, whether they keep notes regarding the

lessons taught, whether they used translation, whether they were willing to work

in pairs, in groups or any other interpersonal contact (O’Malley and Chamot 1990,

Nunan 1992, as cited in McCoy 2011). The observation sheet alone was adapted

from Manurung (2005) that provides three areas for each learning strategy

observed from the students’ classroom interactions includes prompts regarding

what should be observed (see Appendix 4).

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu 31 Jarvinen (2001) pinpoints that in qualitative research triangulation aims to

enhance the credibility and validity of the results since it gives a more detailed

and balanced picture of the situation. He adds that data triangulation can be

achieved through multiple data collecting, sources, procedures and strategies. To

strengthen the findings, the data from questionnaire and interview were

triangulated with the videotaped observation. This study also involved an IELTS

public results list, and because this result comes from an acknowledged

international high-stake standardized test, reliability and validity could be

ensured.

3.4 Data Analysis

The data of this research were analyzed by using a descriptive method.

The data were mostly described in a qualitative way, which is not amenable to be

counted or measured objectively and therefore subjective. The data analysis was

soon completed after the questionnaire was given to all of 80 EAP course

participants. An interpretation was made on the data analyzed by classifying,

analyzing, synthesizing and interpreting the data collected.

The data from the questionnaire was analyzed manually one by one

according to the chosen particular learning strategies used in this study. After this,

a simple calculation of each major category’s frequency was made, so that a

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu 32 through interviews were analyzed to understand the patterns of the chosen

respondents’ answers better in supporting the data found from the questionnaire.

There were all eight interviews and each interview was transcribed carefully.

After all interview recordings were transcribed, they were compared thoroughly to

obtain the data needed for this present study in order to answer the research

question number two. Last of all, the data available from the videotapes was

acquired based on what was seen, heard, and observed during classroom

observation sessions. The videotapes were not transcribed, it was described in a

qualitative way instead. This data was used for the data triangulation process later.

Data analysis that was done all together with data collection was

facilitated to focus and shape the study as it proceeds. To intensify the data gained

from the questionnaire and interviews, other sources like documents such as the

participants’ pre-test scores, the IELTS public results list, and second hand written

inputs by several colleagues on the recorded observation videos, were also

gathered. The findings from the questionnaire were then triangulated with the

findings from the interview and observation. At the end, a conclusion of the

research was made. The table below illustrates the methodology used for this

present study:

Research Question Data Collection Framework

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu 33 2. What strategies are

most effective as perceived by the participants?

Interview Purnomo (2009)

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

This chapter consists of two parts. The first part is the conclusion of the

study based on the preceding findings and analysis of the study. The second one is

the suggestions aimed to address to IELTS instructors and future researchers who

have the same interest to conduct the similar study.

5.1 Conclusions

This study investigated students learning strategies that were used by the

participants of an EAP course on IELTS preparation. Based on the findings and

discussion in the previous chapter, conclusions can be drawn. The finding for the

first research question is that the EAP course participants used socioaffective

strategies (87.21%) the most in learning speaking for IELTS. The second highest

strategy that they used is metacognitive strategies (83%) and the least one is

cognitive strategies (79%). As for the second research question, the study found

that socioaffective strategy is perceived as the most effective in learning speaking

for IELTS by the participants. This is in line with the fact that most of the

participants who used socioaffective strategies of cooperation and clarification

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu 57 have enough score to pass the criteria on entering their desired overseas university

(minimum 6.0).

From the findings, it can also be seen that socioaffective strategies seem to

be quite helpful in adult students’ language learning, especially in preparing for

the speaking test in IELTS. An obvious assumption of the test is that to get the

appropriate score, the participants must be willing to communicate fluently. A

participant who was unwilling and or unable to speak might prevent him from

achieving a 6.0 band score, which requires him to be willing to speak at length

and using a range of connectives and discourse markers. Those interviewees who

are introvert and confessed to “I am not a person who likes much of a talk,” are

the examples of reluctant speakers, that is, achieved low speaking score (5.0). On

the other hand, those interviewees, who are extrovert and have the courage to take

risk, achieved higher speaking score (6.0).

5.2 Suggestions

Although this is a study of learning strategies in one particular language

center, its implication could be extended beyond this specific context. Based on

the findings of this study, which is not to be generalized with other settings, it is

recommended that a language center concerning on IELTS preparation should

have more sessions on speaking practice and IELTS practice tests besides giving

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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | repository.upi.edu 58 have few sessions with the native English speaker instructors on free topic

discussion activities to build the course participants’ confidence in speaking

English.

For the researchers who have the same interest to conduct the similar

study, it is suggested to do the research on a relatively longer EAP course

program for IELTS, in order to see whether they have the same or different

speaking learning strategies and some similar most effective speaking learning

strategies as perceived by the participants. It is also suggested to apply suitable

teaching speaking techniques to minimize the participants’ problems in their

preparation course facing Speaking exam for IELTS and to improve their

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