Agnes Widyaningrum
FBIB (Fakultas Bahasa dan Ilmu Budaya) Unisbank (Universitas Stikubank) Semarang
Abstract
Students learn English in Speaking Class should get enjoyable learning atmosphere in order to help them improve their speaking skill. Teacher‘s role as facilitator contributes in reducing students‘ anxiety when they have chance to speak. Nunan (1995) and Richards (2008) argue that speaking is an important skill in language learning whether it is as EFL or ESL that enable language learners to communicate not only in expressing view point but also in giving responses in their communication. This classroom study supports the idea to give positive suggestion as students‘ feedback given by their peers. Each student has their own chance to review and to be reviewed so that they can perform better in speaking class. This study is conducted in order to improve students‘ speaking skill in speaking class.
Keywords: peer suggestion, students‘ feedback, classroom study
Introduction
Teachers will work best in their teaching practice when they have time to evaluate their students‘
evaluation. Not only teaching but also assessing their students‘ work. If teachers have to spend more time on examining then teaching in most of her time definitely they will have less time to do self-reflection. If they keep doing this, the teachers will have less time for themselves too.
Therefore they need to apply kinds of technique in their teaching practices to support their performance.
One of techniques that teachers can apply is called collaborative learning. This technique involved not only teachers but also students in the process. The intention of applying it is to implement peer review in English class, especially in speaking class. This situation is in line with the idea proposed by Holt that peer criticism is work best on collaborative classroom so that they can face the difficulties and deal with it by the peer reviewing (1999). Manurung said that speaking has the role to motivate and activate learners based on the idea that speaking itself has the role as instructional technique used in the English speaking class (2015).
Vygotsky with the ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) gives a new insight about the presence of adult around children to help them learn something. In this case the adult represent
students‘ peers who are more prominent than their peers while the children represent the peers who have less English ability especially in speaking. The language used by the students is called learners‘ language (Harmer, 2007). In order to help them improve their speaking skill they can learn from their peers‘ comment as the positive feedback.
Speaking is an important aspect in learning English especially in communication. Nunan (1995) and Richards (2008) said that speaking is an important skill in language learning because when students communicate they use English whether it is carried out as EFL or ESL moreover they have to use different kinds of expressions in their communication. Burns and Joyce (1999) also Brown (2001) said that speaking is a productive skill related to the students‘ ability to process information during the conversation. It is productive because students must use language when they communicate such as giving responses, asking and answering to questions, and other expressions. Students need others to communicate therefore the study involved the participation of other students as the peers.
In order to carry out the peer review, this study is conducted on the basis of classroom research as this study is done in the English speaking class.
The classroom research is simplified cycle
ISSN 2580-1937 (Print); 2580-7528 (Online) 13 applied in CAR (classroom action research). The
aim of this study is to investigate the use of peer review as students‘ suggestive feedback in speaking class for semester 4 of FBIB students of the academic year of 2014/1015. The students belong to morning class students and there are only 14 students who took the speaking course called Business Transactional Class.
Methodology
This study is a descriptive study as it describes the phenomenon occurred in English speaking class. The speaking course is called Business Transactional Class and the participants are the four semester FBIB students who took this course. There are 14 students of the academic year of 2014/2015 joined in this course. This is a 2 credit course that the students must take after they passed the Interactional Conversation class.
The study is a classroom study on the basis of the simplified CAR (classroom action research) because the researcher did not apply the reflection phase as part of the cycle. The researcher conducted the study when she became one of lecturers who taught the Business Transactional class.
There are some steps applied in this classroom study as follows:
1. Identification of problem, in this phase the researcher set up a plan of action to understand and improve what is happening.
The researcher identified that students need a way to help them improve their speaking skill therefore the researcher chose to conduct a research when she became one of lecturers of Business Transactional Class. The researcher will try to apply peer review for this English course.
2. Collection and organization of data, in this phase the researcher implemented the plan that is formulated as a research question.
There are 14 students took this course and the study was conducted for 1 semester. Three topics and three different classroom activities are chosen to observe for one semester. They are as follows: 1) In pair-activity (presentation) about Product Presentation; 2) In group-activity about Live Report (role play) and 3) Individual activity (presentation) about Socializing.
3. Interpretation of data, in this phase the researcher observed the effect of the action
and documented all the data. The data are peers‘ rubric, teacher‘s journal and teacher‘s interpretation.
4. Action based on data, in this phase the researcher modified the phase as it was stated that this study is classroom study. The teacher who was teaching Business Transactional Conversation also asked her colleagues about the performance of some students in other classes and noted the information. The information given by the colleagues will be considered as a means for data triangulation too.
Findings and discussion
The researcher found out that most of students give positive reviews when they have to review their peers. The reviews can be used as students‘
positive feedback or suggestive feedback written as peers‘ comments. The findings are as follows:
1. Work in pairs activity about Product Presentation (presentation). There are 6 groups because 2 students were absent when the teachers gave this assignment. The result of peers‘ review shows that 3 groups (50%) got VG for their performance while another 3 groups (50%) got G for their performance.
The teacher‘s review shows that there are 4 groups (66,67%) got VG for their performance while 2 groups (33,33%) got G for their performance.
2. Work in group activity about Life Report (role play). There are 3 groups consist of 4 students in each groups. For this activity only 12 students joined in this class because 2 students were absent. The peers‘ review shows that 1 group (33,33%) got G while 2 groups (66,67%) got VG for their performance. The teacher‘s review shows that 1 group (33,33%) got G for their performance and 2 groups (66,67%) got VG for their performance. In this assignment both peer and teacher reviews show the same result.
3. Individual activity for the topic Socializing.
There are 14 students joined in this class.
The peers‘ review shows that there are 5 students (35,71%) got G for their performance while 9 students (64,29%) got VG for their performance. The teacher‘s review shows that there are 5 students (35,71%) got G for their performance and 8 students (57,14%) got VG for their
14 ISSN 2580-1937 (Print); 2580-7528 (Online) performance and 1 student (7,14%) got F for
his performance because he did not meet the requirement to do this activity.
Conclusion
Based on the analysis the researcher can draw some conclusion as follows:
1. The students when they have the role as peer reviewers they do it seriously though sometimes they tend to give more points for their close friends.
2. The students who were being reviewed can perform better because they know that the will be evaluated by their friends so that the students‘ anxiety is hardly seen in this case.
3. The researcher found out that students‘
speaking skill improve because they can learn from the comments given by their peers that can be used as their feedback for them to perform better in this course.
References
www.sciencediret.com Tahir, Ida Haryani. 2012.
A Study on Peer Evaluation and Its Influence on College ESL Students.
Procedia Social and Behavior Sciences www.sciencedirect.com Manurung, Konder.
2015. Improving the Speaking Skill
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www.iiste.org Usman, Abdurrahman Hi. 2015.
Using the think-pair-share strategy to improve student‘s speaking ability at STAIN Ternate. Journal of Education and Science
Foreign Language Analysis-Spring 2005. Tsou, wenli. 2005. Improving Speaking Skills through Instruction in Oral Classroom Participation.
Journal of Second Language Writing 18 (2009) 30-43. Lundstorm, Kristy and Wendy Baker. 2009. To give is better than to receive: the benefits of peer review to the reviewer‘s own writing.
www.seameo-innotech.org Competency Based- Continuing Education Programme for Teachers Utilizing Distance Education Technologies and Materials. Module 21:
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Oakley, Barbara et al. 2004. Turning Student Group into effective teams. News Forum Press Inc
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