TEACHING ORAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES IN EFL SPEAKING CLASSES (A Quasi-Experimental Study in a Private University in Kuningan, Indonesia).

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TEACHING ORAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES IN

EFL SPEAKING CLASSES

(A Quasi-Experimental Study in a Private University in Kuningan, Indonesia)

A Thesis

submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master’s Degree of

English Education Department of Postgraduate Studies, Indonesia University of

Education

by.

Yuniarti

1101647

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH EDUCATION

SCHOOL OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

INDONESIA UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

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TEACHING ORAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES IN

EFL SPEAKING CLASSES

(A Quasi-Experimental Study in a Private University in Kuningan, Indonesia)

A Thesis

submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master’s Degree of English Education Department of Postgraduate Studies, Indonesia University of

Education

by. Yuniarti 1101647

This thesis has been approved by

Supervisor,

Prof. Dr. Hj. Nenden Sri Lengkanawati, M.Pd. NIP. 195111241985032001

acknowledged by

Head of English Education Department of Postgraduate Studies, Indonesia University of Education,

Pupung Purnawarman, M.S.Ed., Ph.D. NIP. 196810131998031001

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I hereby state that this thesis is completely my own work, except for due

references are made in the text, and that it contains no material which has been

accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or

institution.

Bandung, August 2015

Yuniarti

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TEACHING ORAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES IN EFL SPEAKING CLASSES Indonesia | repository.upi.edu| perpustakaan.upi.edu

v

TEACHING ORAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES IN

EFL SPEAKING CLASSES

(A Quasi-Experimental Study in a Private University in Kuningan, Indonesia)

Abstract

This study reports on applying the teaching of oral communication strategies (OCSs) in the speaking class to improve students’ speaking skill. This study was designed in a quasi-experimental research. 53 undergraduate EFL students in the English Department of a private university in Kuningan were purposively chosen as the participant of the course. They were grouped into control and experimental classes. The course material of OCSs was adapted from a study conducted by Nakatani (2005). The effects of teaching

OCSs were assessed by 2 types of data collection: the participants’

pre-test and posttest speaking scores, and the transcription from the tests. The first result showed that the most frequently used OCSs in the speaking class were filled pauses, interlanguage-based, false starts, providing active response, first-language-based, and approximation strategy. Then, second, the paired t-test computation of students’ pre-test and posttest scores resulted that the tobs value

was -12.219 (negative value was considered as positive value). When df was 27, the tcrit value at the 0.05 level was 2.052. So, the t

result indicated that tobs was greater than tcrit. Therefore, it can be

concluded that the teaching of OCSs in the EFL speaking class had a significant effect in developing the students’ speaking ability. The third, the questionnaires of students’ perception presented that their attitudes toward the teaching of OCSs in the EFL speaking class were favorable. It indicates that such training activities are relatively applicable to use in the language classroom.

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MENGAJARKAN ORAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

DALAM KELAS SPEAKING BAGI MAHASISWA

PENUTUR ASING

(Penelitian Quasi-Eksperimen di salah satu Universitas Swasta di Kuningan, Indonesia)

Abstrak

Thesis ini melaporkan hasil dari penelitian mengajarkan oral communication strategies (OCSs) di kelas speaking untuk meningkatkan kemampuan berbicara mahasiswa. Penelitian ini dirancang dalam bentuk penelitian quasi-eksperimen. 53 orang mahasiswa penutur asing dari program study Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris dipilih untuk menjadi partisipan. Mereka dikelompokkan menjadi kelas control dan kelas ekperimen. Materi perkuliahan OCSs diadaptasi dari penelitian yang telah dilakukan oleh Nakatani (2005). Efek dari pengajaran OCSs diuji dengan dua jenis pengumpulan data: nilai pre-test dan posttest speaking mahasiswa, dan transkrip dari tes speaking. Hasil yang pertama menunjukkan bahwa OCSs yang paling sering digunakan dalam kelas speaking

adalah filled pauses, interlanguage-based, false starts, providing active response, first-language-based, dan approximation strategy.

Kemudian, yang kedua, hasil penghitungan nilai pre-test dan posttest dengan paired t-test menunjukkan bahwa nilai tobs adalah

-12.219 (nilai negative dianggap positif). Ketika df 27, nilai tcrit pada

level 0.05 adalah 2.052. Jadi, hasil t mengindikasikan bahwa tobs

lebih besar dari tcrit. Maka dari itu, dapat disimpulkan bahwa

pengajaran OCSs di kelas Speaking bagi mahasiswa penutur asing telah menunjukkan efek yang signifikan dalam meningkatkan kemampuan berbicara mahasiswa. Yang ketiga, hasil dari angket persepsi mahasiwa menunjukkan bahwa sikap mahasiswa terhadap pengajaran OCSs dalam kelas Speaking bagi mahasiswa penutur asing sangatlah baik. Hal ini mengindikasikan bahwa pelatihan tersebut dapat diaplikasikan dalam kelas bahasa.

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2.1.4 Classification of Oral Communication Strategies by Nakatani (2005) ... 14

2.1.5 Teaching and Teachability of Oral Communication Strategies ... 19

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Appendices

Appendix A Pre-test Questionnaire ... 122

Appendix B Pre-test and Posttest Materials ... 125

Appendix C Lesson Plans ... 128

Appendix D Strategy Diary ... 149

Appendix E Strategy Questionnaire ... 159

Appendix F Students’ Perspective Questionnaire ... 163

Appendix G Students’ Pre-test Transcription ... 165

Appendix H Students’ Posttest Transcription ... 174

Appendix I Pre-test and Posttest Scores ... 185

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LIST OF TABLES AND CHART

TABLES

Table 2.1 OCSs adapting the conceptualizations by Nakatani (2005) ... 15

Table 2.2 The weighting table to calculate speaking score by Adams and Frith (1979, as cited in Hughes 2003) ... 36

Table 2.3 The converting table of speaking score by Adams and Frith (1979, as cited in Hughes 2003) ... 36

Table 3.1 The characteristics of the study ... 49

Table 3.2 The distribution of pilot questionnaire ... 51

Table 3.3 The distribution of the OCSs use questionnaire ... 51

Table 3.4 The description of research procedure ... 54

Table 4.1 The recapitulation of OCSs used by the students in the pre-test ... 60

Table 4.2 The recapitulation of OCSs used by the students in the posttest ... 61

Table 4.3 The recapitulation of pre-test questionnaire item 1 – 6 ... 67

Table 4.7 The recapitulation of strategy questionnaire item 1 – 4 ... 75

Table 4.13 The pre-test scores of the experimental and control group ... 84

Table 4.14 The normality of pre-test scores in the experimental and control group ... 86

Table 4.15 The descriptive statistics of pre-test scores in the experimental and control group ... 87

Table 4.16 The homogeneity of variance of pre-test scores ... 87

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Table 4.18 The independent t-test of pre-test scores in the experimental and

control group ... 88

Table 4.19 The posttest scores of the experimental and control group ... 90

Table 4.20 The normality of posttest scores in the experimental and control group ... 92

Table 4.21 The descriptive statistics of posttest scores in the experimental and control group ... 93

Table 4.22 The homogeneity of variance of posttest scores ... 93

Table 4.23 The mean of posttest scores in the experimental and control group ... 94

Table 4.24 The independent t-test of posttest scores in the experimental and control group ... 95

Table 4.25 The paired samples statistics of the experimental group ... 97

Table 4.26 The paired samples correlations of the experimental group ... 97

Table 4.27 The paired samples t-test of the experimental group ... 97

Table 4.28 The paired samples statistics of the control group ... 98

Table 4.29 The paired samples correlations of the control group ... 98

Table 4.30 The paired samples t-test of the control group ... 98

Table 4.31 The recapitulation of student’s perceptions questionnaire ... 100

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research Background

The main goal of learning a Foreign Language (FL) is to be able to

communicate using the target language. It means that communication is sending

and receiving message effectively, and negotiating meaning in the communication

with the interlocutor (Rubin & Thompson, 1994, as cited in Ya-ni, 2007). Seeing

this fact, speaking skill seems much more important than reading and writing.

However, in the EFL classrooms, it is common to find learners who are struggling

to communicate their meaning using English.

The phenomenon is not surprising where there are limited practice

opportunities for foreign language learners to communicate in the target language.

There are also some other factors that influence learners’ speaking skill mastery.

First, learners are afraid of making mistakes when speaking in the target language.

Second, Indonesian and English language have different rules of grammar. So, it

is not easy for learners to sustain a conversation in English especially for

low-proficiency level learners. Furthermore, based on the pre-survey, in high schools,

learners used to practice speaking using scripted dialogue. So, they lack the skill

of negotiation in the real-life communication using the target language. Third, the

majority of learners have no idea about how to cope with the situation when they

are confronted with some words they do not know. As the result, they tend to stop

the conversation or leave the message unfinished. Then, MacIntyre, Dӧrnyei, Clement, and Noels (1998) said that the factor that influences students’ speaking performance in the classroom is also because of their unwillingness to use L2 for

communication.

Khan (2010) said that communicating in a foreign language is a complex

multi-faceted skill. Therefore, learners should create some efforts to make

communication using English becomes easier. Then, it is acceptable for learners

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believed that learner’s errors were not seen as negative but positive efforts made

by learners in an attempt to organize their interlanguage. He took the view that

learners make efforts to control their learning, through the use of what he coined

as communication strategies.

Communication strategies itself was firstly introduced by Selinker in his

seminal paper in 1972 (Dӧrnyei & Scott, 1997). But then, the former researcher

who firstly proposed the taxonomy of communication strategies was Tarone in

1978. According to Dӧrnyei and Scott (1997), the notion of second language (L2)

communication strategies was raised with the recognition that the mismatch between L2 speakers’ linguistic resources and communicative intentions often leads to difficulties or breakdowns in the communication. Therefore,

communication strategies are potentially conscious plans for solving what to an

individual presents itself as a problem in reaching a particular communicative goal

(Fӕrch & Kasper, 1983a, as cited in Dӧrnyei & Scott, 1997). The other experts

define communication strategies as a systematic technique employed by a speaker

to express his/her meaning when faced with some difficulties (Coder, 1981) in

communicating in imperfectly known second language (Stern, 1981) to enhance

the effectiveness of communication (Canale, 1983).

It is believed that communication strategies play an important role in the

development of strategic competence. Thus, communication strategies and

strategic competence are interrelated. Canale and Swain (1980) stated that

strategic competence is the major component of communicative competence, defining it as “verbal and nonverbal strategies that may be called into action to compensate for breakdowns in communication due to performance variables or to insufficient competence” (p.30). Scattergood (2003, as cited in Maleki, 2010) thinks that strategic competence is cultivated if teachers create a language

classroom in which communication strategies are taught and practiced.

Nevertheless, teaching communication strategies to language learners has

been the source of some controversy in the past decades. Many researchers have

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experts who cons would agree that strategic competence develop in the speakers’ L1 is freely transferable to target language use (see Bagaerts & Paulisse, 1989;

Bagaerts, Kellerman, & Bentlage, 1987; Kellerman, Ammerlaan, Bagaerts, &

Paulisse, 1990; Paribakht, 1985, as cited in Dӧrnyei, 1995). This means that most

adult language learners already have sufficient competence to communicate

regardless of their L2/ foreign language proficiency levels. Kellerman (1991) concludes that “there is no justification for providing training in compensatory strategies in the classroom…teach the learner more language and let the strategies look after themselves” (p. 158).

In spite of many contradictory views about teaching communication

strategies in the classroom, there are a number of researchers who strongly

supported and conducted some research about it. Dӧrnyei (1995) argues that “most arguments concerning the teachability issue are based on indirect or inconclusive evidence, but it must be noted that some of these data actually appear

to confirm the validity of strategy training” (p. 61). So, communication strategies

training is actually not aimed to introduce the strategies to the learners because as

what is previously mentioned that they have already have it in their first language

system, but rather to make learners aware of the strategies.

A number of research have been done in the area of specific training of

some communication strategies, to seek its potential usefulness. Fӕrch and Kasper

(1986) and Tarone and Yule (1989) reported on four different classroom projects

that successfully incorporated strategy training into foreign language instruction.

Tarone (1981) reported on a study by Piranian investigating learners of Russian,

in which learners who had had some extracurricular exposure to Russian were

found to use strategies more often and more effectively than their peers whose

Russian experience was limited to the classroom. Dӧrnyei (1995), a renowned

expert on communication strategies, piloted a study to obtain empirical data on the

educational potential of strategy training. He found out the possibility of

developing the quality and quantity of learners’ use of at least some

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Nonetheless, most of the above previous studies only focused on strategies for solving learners’ own performance problems, which did not require interaction with others. These studies excluded the aspect of negotiation behaviors used when

learners facing some problems of exchanging messages in the conversation. It is

showed in their pretest and posttest test items which did not include pair work

conversation.

Some studies showed that interaction skill in the negotiation of meaning

between interlocutors is a crucial component for learning the target language. One

of them is a study conducted by Nakatani (2005) in Japan who investigated the

effect of awareness-raising training on oral communication strategy (OCSs) use in

Japanese English class. In his study, OCSs was used instead of communication

strategies because it specifically focused on the oral interaction and interlocutors’

negotiation behavior for solving communication breakdowns. So, the strategies

are used for an oral interaction not just a one-way communication. The result

confirmed that the participants in the strategy training group significantly

improved their oral proficiency test scores.

Based on the related research mentioned previously, OCSs could help

learners to communicate effectively using foreign language and increase their

negotiation skill in the conversation. It is said that the use of communication

strategies could improve learners’ skills for interpersonal communication

(Bejarano, Levine, Olshtain, & Steiner, 1997; Clennel, 1995). For language

trainers (teacher/lecturer), they may teach these strategies to improve students’

speaking skills. Therefore, this study attempted to seek out the effect of teaching

OCSs in the EFL speaking class. OCSs were explicitly taught in this class. As an

experimental study, pre-test and posttest were held to assess the effect of teaching

OCSs, and then the result from the experimental and control group were

compared. The researcher concerns on how teaching OCSs affected some

qualitative and quantitative aspects of strategy use as well as the improvement on

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also were investigated. For further detail, the research questions and aims will be

formulated in the following subchapter.

1.2 Formulation of the Problems

In general, the question is: do teaching oral communication strategies

affect EFL students’ speaking skill. Then, the researcher formulated three research

questions:

1.2.1. What kinds of oral communication strategies are used by the students in

the speaking class?

1.2.2. Do teaching oral communication strategies have an effect on the students’ speaking skill?

1.2.3. What are the students’ attitudes toward the teaching of oral

communication strategies in the EFL speaking class?

1.3 The Purpose of the Study

The present study has an ultimate goal to find out the effect of teaching

oral communication strategies in the EFL speaking class. Specifically, it mainly

aimed at finding answers to the research questions mentioned earlier as follow:

1.3.1 To find out the kinds of oral communication strategies used by EFL

students in the speaking class.

1.3.2 To find out the effect of teaching oral communication strategies to the

EFL students’ speaking skills.

1.3.3 To investigate the students’ attitude toward the teaching of oral

communication strategies in the EFL speaking class.

1.4 The Significance of the Study

According to Richards (2008), the mastery of speaking skill in English is a

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knowledge that learners mostly face difficulties in speaking English due to many

factors mentioned earlier in the background of this study. So, it will be very useful

for students to learn OCSs to overcome their difficulties in conveying message

and maintaining conversation in English.

As such, the result of this study was expected to give some contribution to

enrich the EFL method for teaching speaking skill. Then, hopefully, this study

could be able to make language trainers aware of the necessity of teaching OCSs to improve students’ speaking skill in the EFL classroom in general, and speaking class in particular.

1.5 The Scope of the Study

This current research is limited to seek out the effect of teaching OCSs in

the EFL speaking class in a private university in Kuningan, West Java, Indonesia.

The OCSs used in this study were adapted from the list in a journal article written

by Nakatani (2005). He adapted it from Váradi (1973), Bialystok (1990), Dӧrnyei

(1995), and Dӧrnyei & Scott (1997). Not all strategies were taught in the

classroom because some of them did not reflect the target language production or

part of reduction strategies like first-language-based and interlanguage-based

reduction strategies for instance. The OCSs that were taught in the speaking class

was a group of achievement or compensatory strategies like self-solving strategies

(paraphrase or circumlocution) and help seeking strategies (appeal for help and

asking for repetition) for instance.

1.6 Definition of Key Terms

The following are some of terms which are used for the study and need

exact definition to clarify:

 Oral communication strategies (OCSs) are systematic techniques employed by

a speaker that are specifically focused on oral interaction and interlocutors’

negotiation behavior for coping with communication breakdowns (Nakatani,

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strategies) used by the respondents in their speaking practice to survive in the communication and to show their speaking skill.

 Speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning involving

producing, receiving, and processing information (Brown, 2001). In the present

study, speaking refers to the students’ performance of using English language

in the classroom interaction to communicate or convey their message.

1.7 Outline of the Thesis

This research paper is divided into five chapters. Chapter one mainly

discusses the reasons and purposes of the study. It presents the background of the

study, formulation of the problems, aims of the study, significance of the study,

scope of the study, clarification of key terms (to avoid misinterpretation), and

outline of the thesis.

Chapter two discusses review of the related literature which serves some

concepts adopted for this study and previous study undertaken by others. Chapter

three explains the way this study conducted. It covers the research method,

participants of the study, data collection, and data analysis.

Chapter four contains the analysis and finding of the data collected. The

last is chapter five contains conclusions and suggestions. Conclusion is the

summary of the finding and discussion, and suggestion presents some

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CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter elaborates aspects related to the methods of the study. It contains the

description of research purposes and research questions, research design, research

site, population and sample, research instruments, variable and hypothesis,

research procedures, data collection techniques and data analysis. Afterward, the

explanations will be concluded in the concluding remark.

3.1 Research Design

Since this study seek to find out the effect of teaching OCSs on

undergraduate students’ speaking skill, it employed quasi-experimental method. Quasi-experimental designs are similar to the experimental/ control group

approach except that they make comparisons between the mean performances of

groups that occur normally, or the sample naturally belong to one group or the

other (Brown, 1988; Hatch & Farhady, 1982) without random sampling (Hatch &

Lazaraton, 1991). In this kind of method, one group is given an experimental

treatment while the other did not (Hatch & Farhady, 1982, p. 22). In this study,

the treatment was the teaching of achievement or compensatory strategies of

OCSs in the speaking class. The strategies classified as achievement or

compensatory strategies are help-seeking, modified interaction, modified output,

time-gaining, maintenance and self-solving strategies, etc. Then,

quasi-experimental design was used to test the null-hypothesis (H0); there was no

difference in speaking ability between the experimental and control group and

both groups are from the same populations.

3.1.1 Variable and Hypothesis

Every standard research has at least one dependent and one independent

variable. According to Hatch and Farhady (1982), dependent variable is the

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independent variable. In this study, it was speaking ability. Then, independent

variable is the variable which is selected, manipulated, and measured by the

researcher. In this study, it was OCSs. This study itself aimed to reject the H0

where there was no difference in speaking ability between experimental and

control group after the treatment. The detail characteristics of this study are shown

in the following table.

Table 3.1 The characteristics of the study

Null Hypothesis (H0) There is no difference between speaking ability

of experiment and control groups.

Research Hypothesis (H1) There is a significant difference between

speaking ability of experimental and control groups.

Significant Level 0.05; two tailed

Design Pre-test – posttest control group design Dependent Variable Speaking ability

Measurement Score (interval)

Independent Variable Oral Communication strategies Measurement 1.Treatment to the experimental group

2.Treatment to the control group Statistical Procedure Independent t-test

3.2 Research Site

This study was conducted in a private university in Kuningan, West Java,

Indonesia. It is one of two universities in Kuningan that has English Education

Program. There are three classes in each year, except for 2013, 2014 academic

year which have only two classes. The data was taken in this site because the

researcher works there, so the access was easier. As what Alwasilah (2009) said

that convenience factor should be taken into consideration to support the

researcher to carry out the research.

3.3 Population and Sample

Population can be defined as a group to whom the results of the study are

generalized (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2007). The population was English Department

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sampling because this kind of sampling method helped the researcher to gain

expected result. Fraenkel and Wallen (2007) stated that:

On occasion, based on previous knowledge of a population and the specific purpose of the research, investigators use personal judgment to select a sample. Researchers assume they can use their knowledge of the population to judge whether or not a particular sample will be representative. (Fraenkel and Wallen, 2007, p. 100)

The data was taken in the first year students’ speaking class. Actually, first year students were only distributed into two classes and it was taken as the sample

of this research. Before taking this speaking class, the students had completed 6

years of English study in their junior and senior high school. However, they were

still considered as low proficiency learners. Each class consisted of 25 and 28

students, so the sample was 53 students in total. It was in line with what have been

recommended by Fraenkel, Wallen and Hyun (2012) that, in quasi-experimental

study, a minimum number of samples is 30 individuals per group, although

sometimes experimental studies with only 15 individuals in each group can be

defended if they are very tightly controlled.

3.4 Research Instruments

To collect the data, the first thing to do was developing the instruments.

Fraenkel and Wallen (2007) define instrumentation as the whole process of

preparing to collect data in research. Therefore, the instruments that were used to

collect the data for this research were speaking tests, learners’ strategy diary and questionnaires.

Pilot test was conducted to test the validity and reliability of the speaking

tests. The questionnaires were also have been validated by consulting to the expert

to have logical validity. They can be stated to be valid if they are understandable

by many other people (Newman, 2003). For the detail explanations of the

instruments, it will be elaborated in the following sections.

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The speaking tests were pre-test and posttest in the experimental and

control group. They were in the form of spoken test and were video-recorded. The

scores of pre-test and posttest from both groups were used to find out the effect of

teaching OCSs in the EFL speaking class. They were calculated using t-test in SPSS 18. Then, the recordings from the experimental group were transcribed. The

transcriptions were analyzed using OCSs proposed by Nakatani (2005) as the

framework to answer the first research question.

3.4.2 Learners’ Strategy Diary

Learners’ strategy diary was a note that the students should make to record their plans, monitor, and evaluate their performance. The diary was used for

self-reflective training by the students. So, in every rehearsal, they wrote down their

plan in using specific OCSs. When the students performed the task, they

monitored their own performance according to the guideline that was given by the

teacher (see Appendix D). This process was intended to encourage the students to

intentionally use OCSs in their speaking practices. In the evaluation stage, the

students checked and reflected their learning experiences to develop their

awareness of using OCSs in the communication. This procedure was done in

every session of the treatment, and it was only done by the experimental class

students.

3.4.3 Questionnaires

Questionnaire was essential to obtain data about students’ attitudes toward the implementation of the technique and to answer the third research question.

The questionnaire covered three aspects: students’ experience of using OCSs in their speaking practices/tests, students’ perspective on the usefulness of OCSs and the effect of teaching OCSs to the improvement of their speaking skill. The

questionnaire itself was adapted from a study on the same field by Khan (2010).

The experimental group students were given the questionnaires twice, after the

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misunderstanding when filling it. After the pre-test, the questionnaire was about

strategies that the students used when doing the pre-test (See Appendix A). The

questionnaire consisted of 37 items with the following specification.

Table 3.2 The distribution of pilot questionnaire

No. Indicators Item

questionnaires. The first questionnaire was about students’ experience of using OCSs, students’ perspective on the usefulness of OCSs and the effect of teaching OCSs to the improvement of their speaking skill (see Appendix F). The

questionnaires consisted of 11 close-ended questions which use likert scale with

the options of strongly agree, agree, uncertain, disagree, and strongly disagree.

Likert scale, as part of attitude scale, allows the researcher to measure a subject’s attitude toward a particular concept (Fraenkel, Wallen & Hyun, 2012).

The second questionnaire evaluated the strategies that the students used in

the posttest. It was consisted of 44 items with the following specification (see

Appendix E for detail).

Table 3.3 The distribution of the OCSs use questionnaire

No. Indicators Item

4. What they do when they don’t understand their partner.

19 – 25 7

5. How the students overcome problems with language while speaking.

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6. Reviewing speaking activity. 41 – 44 4

3.5 Research Procedure

In the effort of making the research run smoothly, a simple procedure was

made. Firstly, the speaking test instrument was tried out to test the validity and

reliability of the test items. Secondly, pre-test was conducted for experimental and

control group and the results were collected and analyzed as the preliminary data

about the students’ initial speaking skill. After pre-test, the experimental group students were asked to fill the pre-test questionnaires.

Thirdly, the experimental and control group were given treatment,

different treatment. In general, teaching procedures for experimental and control

group were carried out in the same order started from pre-activities,

whilst-activities, and post-activities. The lesson was opened by a teacher’s presentation of the material and was ended with an individual speaking task for each student.

The difference between experimental and control group lied on the way the

teacher conveyed OCSs materials. In the experimental group, the teacher

explicitly introduced and explained the use of OCSs along with some speaking

tasks related to the OCSs taught in that session. The process was like: review,

presentation, rehearsal, performance, and evaluation. Whereas, in the control

group, the teacher implicitly conveyed communication strategies, in other word,

used conventional technique. However, the speaking tasks were the same as in the

experimental group.

Then, after the treatment, posttest was conducted for both experimental

and control group to get the final output of the treatment. The final stage was

gathering data from questionnaires from the experimental group to assess how

they used the OCSs in their posttest and to get the students’ attitudes toward the teaching of OCSs. In this session also, the students were asked to collect their

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Table 3.4 The description of research procedure

No. Meeting

Material or Classroom Activity Time

Allocation

Interviewing (pair work) Interviewing 2 x 45

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(1979, as cited in Hughes, 2003). Then, the pre-test and posttest recording of

experimental class were transcribed, categorized, calculated and analyzed based

on the list of OCSs proposed by Nakatani (2005) to answer the first research

question (see Appendix G and H).

3.6.2 Score Data Analysis of the Test

This study aimed to find out the effect of teaching oral communication

strategies in EFL speaking class. Therefore, the quantitative analysis was used to

see whether the teaching of OCSs was effective to improve students’ speaking ability. There were two tests (pre-test and posttest) that were applied during the

research. Since this research applied quasi-experimental design, the first step was

finding out the normality of data distribution in both of classes. The result of

pre-test and postpre-test were used to seek the normality of participants’ speaking scores. The calculation were made using SPSS 18. With the hypothesis are as follows.

H0 : The distribution of pre-test/posttest score in the experimental

and control group are normally distributed.

H1 : The distribution of pre-test/posttest score in the experimental

and control group are not normally distributed.

There were some criteria to determine whether the result was accepting or

rejecting H0. According to Hatch and Farhady (1982), the level significance

criteria to determine normality distribution test are as follows.

If the probability > 0.05, H0 is accepted

If the probability < 0.05, H0 is rejected

The second step was seeking the homogeneity of data distribution in both

of classes. It was done by calculating the result of pretest and posttest from both

groups using Ftest. The test was conducted to reject H0 where Fcount > Ftable meant

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meant both element were homogenous. According to Hatch & Farhady (1982), the

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b. There is no significant difference between mean of pre-test score of the

two classes.

c. There is no significant difference between mean of posttest score of the

two classes.

3.6.3 Questionnaire and Strategy Diary

After the questionnaires data were collected, the close-ended questions

results were calculated and analyzed by converting it into percentage using the

frequency base with the formula as follows.

The open-ended questions data were analyzed qualitatively. It was

summarized and categorized based on the classification.

After that, the students’ notes and responses in their strategy diaries were categorized then analyzed using coding and categorizing. The analysis was

looking throughout the data, clustering or grouping similar idea and labeling

them. Afterwards, the data were compared with the result of questionnaires and

presented in the discussion to explore students’ attitudes toward the teaching of

OCSs in speaking class.

3.7 Concluding Remarks

The steps and procedures of data collection and analysis have been

elaborated specifically in this chapter. This present study involved 53 first year

students from the Department of English Education in a private university in

Kuningan. They were grouped into experimental and control group. Then, OCSs

proposed by Nakatani (2005) were given to the experimental group in the

treatment. The OCSs were also used as the framework to analyze the transcription

of pre-test and posttest recording. Questionnaires were distributed to the students

and strategy diary was also used to find out their strategy used and perspective

toward the teaching of OCSs in EFL speaking class. Furthermore, the findings and

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108 CHAPTER V

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

This last chapter presents the conclusions and suggestions drawn from the

research findings and discussions in the previous chapter. The chapter is divided

into two parts. The first part presents the conclusions of the study, while the

second part deals with suggestions relevant to this study.

5.1 Conclusions

The current study was an attempt to support the arguments and previous

research about the teachability of OCSs. This study showed the necessary of

teaching OCSs in the EFL speaking class especially when the students were low

proficiency learners. Being aware of how to use OCSs in the conversation has

helped the students to deal with their communication problems in English. Hence,

the teacher/lecturer who has students with the same condition might apply this

OCSs training to increase the students’ speaking ability.

The findings and discussion in the previous chapter proved that, most

significantly, the students’ speaking skill improved since the students learned to deal with communication problems using OCSs. The OCSs training has mostly

improved their vocabulary mastery where none of them used L1 anymore in the

speaking practices and they started to construct long sentences. It means that they

felt encouraged to speak in English. Then, this training also has made learners

gained their confidence in speaking English in front of their friends. They were

not shy and reluctant to speak anymore. So, it practically solved several speaking

problems mentioned earlier in the research background. However, from the

speaking performances transcriptions and the OCSs used by the students in the

speaking tasks, the OCSs training still could not increase students’ grammatical

competence. Most of the students’ utterances were poorly structured. These

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expressions and the researcher could not choose the appropriate tasks for the

students in the treatment.

Despite of the fact about students’ grammatical competence, the students’ scores in speaking were increased. Its calculation was supported the initial claim

about the effect of OCSs to the students speaking ability. The paired samples t-test calculation of the students’ speaking scores displayed significant difference where

the tobs was greater than the tcrit. It can be concluded that the teaching of OCSs in

the EFL speaking class positively affected to the increase of the students’

speaking ability.

Furthermore, judging from the responses given by the students in the

questionnaires, it was found that the students expressed favorable attitudes toward

the teaching of OCSs in the EFL speaking class. It indicated that such training

activities were relatively safe to use in the classroom. Students felt that this

training has motivated them to speak English more, enriched their vocabularies,

and more importantly helped them to cope with communication problems when

speaking in the target language.

Before the training, when they were asked to speak in English, the students

used to keep grinding to a halt, made pauses for lengthy periods, and often got so

lost that the interlocutor loses patience, or a complete communication breakdown

occurred. After they were introduced to the OCSs and encouraged to use it in the

treatment, finally, they had the ability to solve communication problems by filling

the time with talk so the conversation will still run. Along with that, they also

gained their confidence in speaking English. In sum, the result of the

questionnaires showed that the students had highly positive responses toward the

teaching of OCSs in their EFL speaking class.

The results presented above are far from conclusive since weaknesses were

still found in this research. First, due to the limited number of first year students in

the university where the researcher conducted this research, she could not pick the

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OCSs training probably were not enough to build habit of using OCSs whenever

the students face communication problem when they speak in English. Third, the

researcher did not make observation notes in every session of the OCSs training.

So, this study could not specifically report the progress of OCSs used by the

students in their speaking performances in every session. It was quite unfortunate

since the observation results might be very enriching for the findings in this

research.

Nonetheless, this OCSs training was considered as an introduction for the

students and made them aware that there are many options to solve the problems.

Instead of giving up their message, the students may decide to try and remain in

the conversation and achieve their communication goal. This research also

became the pilot study of teaching OCSs in the Indonesian setting and hopefully

could support the arguments in the previous research conducted by Dӧrnyei

(1995) that communication strategies are teachable in the language classroom.

5.2 Suggestions

5.2.1 Suggestions for Teaching Learning Implication

The study reveals that to some extent, the teaching of OCSs has

significantly improved the students’ speaking skill. Nevertheless, in terms of the

implementation of OCSs training, there are some areas that need improvement,

such as the preparation, the method in introducing the OCSs to the students, as

well as choosing the appropriate materials, activities and task for implementing

OCSs in the classroom.

As an effort to familiarize the OCSs for the teaching learning implication,

there are some suggestions for teacher/lecturer who want to implement this

training in his/her classroom:

1) Teacher should spend extra amount of time in preparing the lesson for the

OCSs training because it will affect the successfulness of the training.

According to the researcher experiences, after the treatment, she realized that

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she did not give the students much exposure to many English expressions and

phrases. So, they could not maximally utilize the OCSs given in the speaking

performances. As the result, there were more than half of the achievement or

compensatory strategies thought in the classroom were rarely used by the

students.

2) Exposure to OCS may take time because this material is usually not part of

the syllabus suggested by the university or government. So, lecturer/teacher

needs to be creative in inserting the OCSs material in their language

classroom. If it is possible, the lecturer/teacher can create a kind of training

outside the scheduled lesson.

3) Choosing appropriate materials and techniques for teaching OCSs to the

students could be tricky. However, for the teaching of OCSs, teacher/lecturer

can enrich the students with everyday matters and topics that will be useful

for them when having a small talk with the other people. As a matter of fact,

letting them to know the cross-cultural issues beyond their everyday matters

can increase their involvement in the aspects of life that happens outside

Indonesia, whether they are aware or not. More importantly, teacher/lecturer

is encouraged to choose the materials and techniques that could represent how

the strategies used in the conversation. So, later on, after the training, the

students can use the OCSs to solve their speaking problems appropriately

and, at the same time, improve their speaking ability.

4) It is also recommended that the students use OCSs to practice their speaking

ability and improve their self-confidence in speaking English. The practice

can be done not only in the classroom, but also outside the classroom with

strangers for instance. Then, it would be great if the teacher/lecturer can

provide the opportunity for the students to speak with English native

speakers. So, they will experience the real situation of speaking English and

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5.2.2 Suggestion for further study

This study, judging from the history, is considered old and not popular

among the current language education researchers. It is also still in its initial stage,

further in-depth investigations should be pursued to add the findings of the present

study. Nevertheless, I hope this study enables us to find the alternatives to

improve the students’ speaking skill especially when they are low-proficiency

level learners. The study showed how the teaching of OCSs became potential to

solve problems in the speaking classroom.

For further research, it will be interesting to see whether the teaching of

OCSs can be applied to the younger learners like high school students with longer

duration of training. Then the researcher should design the research very well.

Make sure, all the instruments are covered to gather the data. So, unlike this

research, it did not use the teacher observation sheet which actually could be very

enriching to support the findings. In addition, this kind of issue also can be

investigated through the research design like case study or action research which

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