THESIS PROPOSAL

IMPROVING STUDENTS’ SPEKING ABILITY TROUHGH COMUNICATIVE

LANGUAGE GAMES ON EIGHT GRADE STUDENT OF MTS AL – MU’MIN
PERENGGE IN ACADEMIC YEAR 2024/2025

BY:
ANDINI KOMALASARI
200802054

ENGLISH EDUCATION PROGRAM

INSTUTUT PENDIDIKAN NUSANTARA GLOBAL
2024/2025
 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

A. Background of Study

English becomes the most essential language in the world. Many people use it as a
medium of communication and it is easier for people who come from different countries to
make interactions and communication with other using English. Moreover, in the era of
globalization, English plays a key role in many areas including economics, politics, culture,
communication and education. In response to this, therefore, in Indonesia, English is very
important to be mastered.
English takes a role as a foreign language in this country. It also becomes one of the
compulsory subjects that should be taught in junior high school as implied in the government
regulation No. 19/2005 articles 6 verses 1 about the scope of subject in every level of
education in the curriculum
Basically, English consists of four skills to be taught. They are listening, speaking,
reading, and writing. Recently, speaking has played an increasingly important role in
second/foreign language settings as a means of communication in daily life. It is supported by
O’Malley and Pierce’ (1996: 57) finding that is among the four skills, speaking seems to be an
important skill that a learner should acquire since one of the major responsibilities of any
teacher working with
English language learners is to enable students to communicate effectively through oral
language.
Speaking is a kind of either productive or active skill. Though the four skills are
equally important, speaking becomes the most important tool to communicate that needs to be
accomplished. In other words, the goal of language is communication and the aim of speaking
in a language context is to promote communicative efficiency.
As language learners who had learned English intensively, the students should be able
to interact orally with each other through English. Unfortunately, in the real teaching and
learning of speaking in Mts Al Mu’min Perengge VIII , most of the students have difficulty in
their speaking production. From the observation, the students often had difficulty in
pronouncing English words by making some errors. Besides, they also had inadequate ability
in mastering the

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 English vocabulary and functional expressions so that they had no idea to speak.
Furthermore, the students had problems with the motivation and self-confidence. They looked
apathetic and inhibited with the activities that involve oral skills. Many of them felt afraid of
being criticized and humiliated in front of their partners. As the result, they avoided being part
of this kind of activities. The teaching and learning habit also takes a part in causing this
condition worse. There was a little chance for the students to practice their speaking because
the teaching process tended to use LKS (Lembar Kerja Siswa) as a main text book during the
teaching and learning process. According to Dhari and Dharyono (1988) LKS can be defined
as a kind of student’s worksheets as guidance for the students to do some activities. LKS
consists of brief explanation, the purpose of activities, exercises and final test for each
competence. However, the use of LKS in that English class was apt to show that the students
only had activities that involved reading and writing skills. There was no adequate exercise
for the students to develop their oral skill so that they were not used to speaking and had no
motivation.
For these reasons, it is necessary to implement an innovative action research project
that fosters the improvement of oral ability. There are a lot of ways in teaching speaking. One
of them is using communicative language games. According to Reuben (1999: 30) using
activities and games in class encourages active learning, as well as collaboration, and
interactivity.
Communicative language games are supposed to be good activities to solve the
students’ low speaking ability. KTSP (School Based Curriculum) mentions that the purpose of
the teaching and learning language processes of English in Junior High School is to develop
students’ communicative competence in both oral and written forms. Since the focus of the
students learning goal is the communicative competence as the target language,
communicative language teaching (CLT) becomes the popular approach to be applied. The
main technique of CLT is having the students use the target language to carry out creative
tasks such as games, dramas, songs or role-play to attain the communicative goal of the
curriculum. Furthermore, communicative language activities in the form of games not merely
foster the students’ interest in a fun way in their learning process but also can be used to teach
new items and practice language forms to support the students’ language development. As a
result, they will be more confident and be more motivated to have a speaking class.
B. Research Problem
Based on the background above, the researcher formulates the problem of the
statement by question:

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 Is implementing comunictive language games significantly improve students’
speaking skills at MTS Al-Mu’min Perengge?
C. Limitation of the Problem
This research would only concern the implementation of communicative language
games to improve the students’ speaking ability at VIII of Mts Al Mu’min Perengge in the
academic year of 2024 / 2025.
D. Significance of the Study
This research has the benefits as the following:
1. This research can give English teachers additional knowledge and experience on how
to improve the students’ speaking ability.
2. The use of Communicative Games enables the students to improve their speaking
ability in order to be able to communicate orally.
3. The result of the research may become a reference and contribute informative input to
solve the similar problem.

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 CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW

1. Teaching Speaking Skill

A. The Nature of Speaking
Speaking is the productive skill. This is an activity of producing words or sentences
orally. By that skill, people can deliver their ideas, thought and opinion about the world.
Through speaking, people can communicate with others directly or indirectly. It is like what
Brown and Yale (89: 14) state that speaking expresses need-request, information, service, etc.
Mackey (2007: 13) defines speaking as oral expression that involves not only the use of
right patterns of rhythm and intonation but also that of right words order to convey the right
meaning. Chaney (1998: 13) argues that speaking is the process of building and sharing
meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts. Tupan
(1995: 14) also says that language is first spoken. It means that speaking is the basic
competence and the most important skill of language. In addition, Harmer (2007) states that
speaking is a skill which becomes the important part of daily life that it is the way for people
to create social relationship as human being.
From the definitions above, it can be concluded that speaking is the most important skill
of language which is about expressing ideas, opinions, or feelings
to others by using words or sounds of articulation in order to inform, to persuade, and to
entertain.

B. Aspects of Speaking Skill

Brown (2001) states that there are some aspects of speaking such as pronunciation,
vocabulary, fluency, accent, and grammar, that should be mastered in order to be able to
speak well. As a complex activity, speaking has three main aspects as follows:
1) Accuracy
As Marry Spratt and friend stated, accuracy in speaking is the use of correct form
of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. Those three parts involve together in making
accurate utterance.
Pronunciation is a basic quality of language learning especially in speaking ability.
It concerns the way we say, articulate, assimilate, intonate, and stress words. Having poor
pronunciation skill can obscure communication and prevent us from making meaningful
utterances. Harmer (2007) states that pronunciation teaching is not only making the

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 students are able to differentiate sounds and sound features, but also improving their
speaking ability immeasurably such as to concentrate on sounds and be aware of using
stress when producing sound.
Vocabulary is a foundation of a language. To create meaningful utterance or
sentences, it needs to use appropriate vocabulary to express something. In other words, the
requirement for students who want to have a good speaking ability is mastering
vocabulary. McCarty (1990) states that the biggest component of any language courses is
vocabulary. In addition, Harmer (2007) says that if the students have more vocabularies or
at least 1000 words, they can communicate fluently. They do not take a long time in
expressing what they are going to say because they know the words that describe their
ideas.
Grammar is very important in speaking accuracy. According to Nunan (2003:154)
grammar usually can be thought as a set of rules specifying the correct pattern of words at
sentence level. If our conversation is full of grammatical mistakes, your ideas will not get
across so easily. Studying grammar rules will certainly help students speak more
accurately.
Those three parts are very important elements to accomplish the accuracy in the
effort of being able to speak well.
2) Fluency
Fluency according to Mary Spratt and friends (2005:34) is speaking at a normal
speed without hesitation, repetition and with smooth use of connected speech. It deals with
how comfortable students are when they speak, how easily the words come out and
whether there are great pauses and gaps in the student‟s speaking. It is a parameter of
students‟ speaking ability goal. It deals with the quality of the way they speak fluently.
3) Accent
Language accent of one speaker and other is different. This is because every person
has their own way in saying words depending on the cultures the speakers have. Roach
(2009) states that there is no speaker who can be taken to represent a particular accent or
dialect in this world.
C. Types of Spoken Language
Brown (2001:251) divides spoken language into monologue and dialogue. In
monologue of spoken language, when one speaker uses spoken language for any length of
time, the hearer must process long stretches of speech without interruption. In a monologue,
the stream of speech will go on whether or not the hearer comprehends.

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 Monologue is categorized into two subtypes. They are planned and unplanned
monologues. Brown (2001) says that planned monologues usually create a little redundancy
and are therefore relatively difficult to comprehend while unplanned monologues exhibit
more redundancy, which is made for ease in comprehension but the presence of more
performance variables and other hesitations can either help or hinder comprehension. So, it
can be said that planned monologue is well prepared than unplanned monologue which
contains more redundancy.
Meanwhile, dialogues involve two or more speakers and can be subdivided into
those exchanges that promote social relationships (interpersonal) and those whose purpose is
to convey proportional or factual information (transactional). Those subcategories are
classified further into familiar and unfamiliar categories. In each case, participants may have
a good deal of shared knowledge (background information, schemata). Therefore, the
familiarity of the interlocutors will produce a conversation with more assumptions,
implications, and other meanings hidden between the lines. References and meanings have
to be made more explicit to assure effective comprehension within conversations between or
among participants who are not familiar with each other.
The following scheme can give picture to the categorization of each types of spoken
language:

Picture 1. 1 Category of Spoken

D. Problems in Teaching and Learning Speaking
Learners sometimes have some obstacles when they want to talk in the class.
They feel afraid of making mistakes because they are reluctant to be judged by the
hearer. Ur (1996: 121) argues that some possible problems in speaking including:
1) Inhibition. Learners are often inhibited about trying things in foreign language
classroom, afraid to make mistakes or to be criticized, and shy to utter words.
2) Nothing to say. Learners sometimes find fault that they do not have something to
say. In other words, they cannot express themselves.
3) Low or uneven participation. Only one participant talks because some learners
dominate, while other speaks a little or not at all.

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 4) Mother tongue use. In the class, all learners share the same mother tongue, so they
feel unnatural to speak in the foreign language.
Burns and Joyce (1997 as cited in Nunan1999: 231) identify three factors that
may indicate students‟ reluctance to take part in the speaking activity.
1) Cultural factors. These can be related to the students‟ beliefs of the teaching and
learning activities such as (1) they are used to being passive by tending to listen to
their teacher explanation (Teacher-center) and they do not actively speak up in
class, (2) they apt to know that language learning is based primarily on reading
and writing from a work book, and (3) they are not familiar with communicative
and learner-centered approaches to learning and expectations of teacher and
learner roles.
2) Linguistic factors. Linguistic factors are related to the students‟ knowledge of the
language that hampers the students to speak English. They include
(1) difficulties in transferring the language from the learners‟ first language, (2)
problems with the native speaker pronunciation of the teacher, (3) lack of
grammatical understanding, and (4) unfamiliarity with the cultural or social
knowledge required to process meaning.
3) Psychological or Affective Factors. These factors are the important factor that can
widely affect language learning especially speaking. The factors include culture
shock, previous negative social or political experiences, lack of motivation, anxiety
or shyness in class and perceptions. Richard & Renandya (2002: 206) add that the
affective factors related to foreign language learning are emotions, self-esteem,
empathy, anxiety, attitude, and motivation.
From the theories above, those problems in speaking are possible to obstruct
students‟ language development in the teaching-learning process. Thus, in teaching
speaking, teachers should always encourage the students, not allowing students to
become discouraged when they make mistakes. They have to
understand that making mistakes is part of the learning process. Then, the
teachers should provide some classroom speaking activities in which the students can
engage actively.

E. Principle in Designing Speaking Technique

There are a number of practical principles for designing techniques that include
speaking. Brown (2001: 275) proposes seven principles in designing teaching speaking
to help teachers to conduct the speaking class.

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1) Use techniques that cover the range of learner needs, from language- based focus on
accuracy to message-based focus on interaction, meaning and fluency. Teacher is
expected to design tasks and to use techniques that help students to gain and apply all
materials which should be learnt. At the same time, teachers should make any
drilling as meaningful as possible without making students boring.
2) Provide intrinsically motivating techniques. Teacher should try to appeal to students‟
ultimate goals and interests in their need for knowledge, for status, for achieving
competence and autonomy, and for being all that they can be. Helping the students to
see how the activity will give them benefit encourages them to get involved.
3) Encourage the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts. It deals with the
design authentic contexts and meaningful interaction that supported by teacher‟s
creativity in designing the materials.
4) Provide appropriate feedback and correction. The feedback is mostly from the
teacher, but it can be found outside of the classroom. However, it is important for
teachers to give the kinds of corrective feedback that are appropriate for the moment.
5) Capitalize on the natural link between speaking and listening. Because speaking and
listening are categorized as interrelated skills can reinforce each other. It means that
in teaching speaking, the teachers should include listening skill aspect.
6) Give students opportunities to make an oral communication. Teachers can stimulate
the students‟ communicative competence by asking them to initiate conversations, to
nomine topics, to ask questions, to control conversation and to change the subject.
So, teachers should design speaking techniques allowing students to communicate by
using the language.
7) Encourage the development of speaking strategies. Teachers should develop
strategies to help the students accomplish oral communicative purposes. The
strategies include asking for clarification (e.g. What?), asking someone to repeat
something (e.g. Excuse me?), using fillers (e.g. uh, I mean, Well), using conversation
maintenance cues (e.g. Huh, Right, Yeah), getting someone‟s attention (e.g. Hey, So)
and so forth.
F. Assessing Speaking
Brown (2004:140) assumes that while speaking is productive skill that can be
directly and empirically observed, those observations are invariably influenced by
accuracy and the effectiveness of a test taker‟s listening skill, which necessarily
compromises the reliability and validity of an oral production test. It means that the

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accuracy and the teacher‟s/test taker‟s listening skill become the significant aspects
in assessing students‟ oral production.

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 There are five categories of speaking assessment tasks proposed by Brown
(2004:144-182).
1) Imitative. This is types of speaking performance tasks that deal with the ability to
imitate a word or phrase or possibly a sentence. The example of these kinds of tasks
is repetition.
2) Intensive. This category of speaking assessment tasks related to the linguistic
difficulties either phonological or grammatical aspect of language. Kinds of intensive
speaking tasks are direct response, read-aloud, dialogue completion tasks and oral
questionnaires, picture-cued tasks, and translation.
3) Responsive. This kinds of tasks include interaction and test comprehension but at
somewhat length of utterance. Question and answer, giving instruction and directions
and paraphrasing are categorized as responsive speaking tasks.
4) Interactive. Interactive speaking tasks can be described as tasks which produce
interaction either transactional language or interpersonal exchange. Interview, role
play, discussions and conversations, and games can be set as interactive tasks.
5) Extensive. These oral production tasks which are termed as monologue tasks include
speeches, oral presentation, and story-telling.
G. Communicative Language Teaching
1. Interpretation of Communicative Language Teaching
Nowadays, Communicative language Teaching (CLT) has drawn much
attention on discussions both in the literature and in classroom practice, and has become
the mainstream in contemporary methodology for ESL/EFL learning. Communicative
language teaching itself according to Richard (2006:2) can be understood as a set of
principles about the goals of language teaching, how learners learn a language, the kinds
of classroom activities that best facilitate learning, and the roles of teachers and learners
in the classroom.
Meanwhile, Harmer (2001:84) defines communicative language teaching as a
set of beliefs which includes not only a re-examination of what aspects of language to
teach but also a shift in emphasis in how to teach. In other word, both what to teach
aspects which stress on the significance of language functions and how to teach which
concerns to the use of language forms take important part in communicative language
teaching.
From the definitions mentioned above, we know that communicative language teaching
emphasizes the reaching goal of the teaching communicative competence in which the
students are more actively involved to develop their

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ability.
Communicative language teaching has an essential relationship with
communicative competence as Richard (2006) stated that the goal of CLT is the
teaching of communicative competence. There are four aspects of language knowledge
of communicative competence mentioned by Celce Murcia (1995) as cited by Savignon
(1997).
1) Grammatical competence: Knowledge of the sentence structure of a language.
2) Sociolinguistic competence: The ability to use language in a given
communicative context, taking into account the roles of the participants, the
settings, and the purposes of the interaction.
3) Discourse competence: The ability to recognize different patterns of discourse
and to connect sentences or utterances to an overall theme or topic; the ability to
infer the meaning of large units of spoken or written texts; also called textual
competence.
4) Strategic competence: The ability to anticipate imperfect knowledge of
linguistic, sociolinguistic, and discourse rules or limiting factors in their
application such as fatigue, distraction, and inattention. Also, the effective use of
coping strategies to sustain or enhance communication.

A. Characteristics of communicative language teaching

CLT has been popular and widespread in second and foreign language
teaching. Brown (1994) says that it produces a radical change of the traditional
structured teaching methods. Different with the teacher-centered approach, in which
teachers are regarded as knowledge givers and learners as receivers, CLT reflects a
more social relationship between the teacher and the learner.
The learner-centered approach gives students a sense of “ownership” of their
learning and enhances their motivation (Brown, 1994). CLT emphasizes the process of
communication and leads learners to different roles from the traditional approach. The
role of the learner is negotiator between the self, the learning process, and the objective
of learning. Learners are actively engaged in negotiating meaning by trying to make
themselves understood and in
understanding others within the classroom procedures and activities. In this way, they
contribute as well as gain in an interdependent way (Richards & Rodgers, 1986).
In the CLT approach, teacher plays particular roles. First, the teacher facilitates
the communication process between all participants in the classroom. The teacher is

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also a co-communicator who engages in communicative activities with the students
(Larsen-Freeman, 2000). Moreover, the teacher acts as analyst, counselor, and group
process manager (Richards & Rodgers, 1986).
Besides the characteristics of CLT dealing with teacher‟s and learner‟s roles,
CLT pays less attention to the overt presentation of grammar rather than emphasizing
the explicit explanation of grammatical rules, (Brown, 2007). However, CLT does not
exclude grammar. CLT proposes that grammatical structure might be better understood
“within various functional categories” (Brown, 2007, p. 242). In CLT classes, both
accuracy and fluency should be taken into consideration in language teaching, but the
aim is to build fluency. However, fluency should not be built at the expense of clear
communication (Brown, 2007). Errors are considered natural and tolerable during
fluency-based activities.

B. Communicative Activities
a. What Are Communicative Activities?
Every speaking lesson should be based on communicative activities which
achieve two important language learning needs. They encourage the learners to acquire
language knowledge and prepare them for real-life language use. Lieshoff, et al (2004)
state that communicative activities include any activities that encourage and require a
learner to speak with and listen to other learners, as well as with people in the program
and community. It means that achieving the outcome requires the participants to
interact, which means not only speak with a person but also listen to what he or she is
saying and react to it. In implementing communicative activities, Harmer (2001:85)
adds that activities in CLT typically bring the students into real or realistic
communication, where the accuracy of the language they use is less important than
successful achievement of communicative task they are performing.
Littlewood (1981) groups two kinds of communicative activities to be
performed by communicative language learners. Those are the functional
communication activities and the social interaction activities.

1) Functional Communication Activities

The classroom needs communicative activities that emphasize the functional aspect
of communication. Therefore, for example, when learners have a problem to solve,
or information to exchange, they can use whatever language they have. Thus, the

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 main purpose of the activity is that learners should use the language they know to
get meanings across as effectively as possible.
2) Social Interaction Activities
Competent speaker chooses language which is not only functionally effective, but is
also appropriate to the social context he is belonging. Considering that, learners still
aim at conveying the meaning effectively paying greater attention to the social
context in which the interaction takes place such things as formal versus informal
language.

b. Types of Communicative Activities

There are a large number of methodology books and their classification of
communicative activities. They are distinguished based on authors‟ point of view.
However, all of them mention the same or similar communicative tasks with the same
purposes but in different extent. The following are the types of communicative activities
that can be applied for speaking class:
1) Information gap activities
Information gap activities are described by Thornbury (2005:80-84) who claims
that in these kinds of tasks there is a knowledge gap among learners and it can be
bridged by using the language. So, in order to obtain the information, the
communication must be held. Littlewood (1994: 22-26) labels these activities as
functional communication activities. He emphasizes sharing the information
among learners and its processing.
2) Discussions
Discussions are a commonly used activity in a speaking lesson. A topic is
introduced to the students via a reading or a listening passage and then they are
asked to discuss a related topic in order to come up with a solution or a response.
Celce-Murcia (2001- 106) mentions that students need to be reminded that each
person within a group should have a specific responsibility in the discussion –
either keeping time, taking notes or reporting the results made by the group
members.

3) Role plays
A widely-spread and one of the best communicative activities is a role play which
trains the students in the classroom to deal with unpredictable reallife
conversation in an English speaking environment. Nunan (2003- 57) says that

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 roles plays give learners practices to speak in the target language before they
apply it in a real environment. Role play is an essential communicative technique
which develops fluency, promotes interaction in the classroom and increases
motivation. 4) Language Games
A game is an enjoyable activity with a set of rules or terms against each
other (Haldfield: 2005). Larsen and Freeman (2000) agree that games make
students enjoy learning. They also say that if they are properly designed, they
will give students valuable communicative practice.

C. Communicative Language Games

a. The Nature of Communicative language games
As what has been discussed before, communicative language teaching (CLT)
approach applies „communicative activity‟ that intends to immerse learners
in meaning making for a communicative purpose. Communicative language games are
counted as communicative activities in the CLT approach.
Communicative activities in the form of games, according to Larsen and
Freeman (2000), are frequently used in CLT. It implies that through language games the
learners can go beyond the mastery of structures to communicate meanings in real
situations. Hadfield (1990) asserts that communicative games emphasize on
communication rather than the correctness of the language, therefore, are to be found at
the fluency end of the fluency and accuracy aspects.
Shameem and friends (1999) add that communicative games give language
learning a whole new meaning. Learning takes place while the students have fun and
interact socially to perform a task and reach a satisfactory outcome. Thus, games are
used to motivate students to learn, arouse their interest, and develop positive attitudes
towards language learning.

b. The advantages of using communicative language games

There are some advantages that student may get from the use of communicative
language games:

1) Motivating students‟ learning with fun, enjoyment and excitement.

Games are highly motivating (Wright, Betteridge and Buckby: 1984).
Enjoyment, excitement and passion are naturally generated from playing games. As
Haldfield (1990: v) indicates, games are enjoyable activates with a set of rules or

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 terms against each other. Lavery (2001:92) adds that learner forget they are
studying. They lose themselves in the fun of the game and the activity that
motivates them. When pupils are enjoying playing games, at the same time, they
are learning language unconsciously.
2) Giving chances to use language in authentic contexts.
In game situations, learners are exposing themselves to the target language
environment. It is supported by Littlewood (1981) who says that games provide
learners with chances and authentic contexts where they feel the need to use real-
life language to communicate with others meaningfully and purposefully
3) Providing practice on language use and language usage.
Wright, Betteridge, and Buckby (1984) say that many games are designed to offer
learners a density of communicative language practice as conventional drill
exercises, but in a rather meaningful way by working language as living
communication to convey information and opinion. By doing so, learners are
immersed in using the target language in all four skills, which assists them to better
internalize a new language.
4) Creating an enjoyable and supportive learning environment.
Comparing with conventional teaching methods in which many students have
frustrating experiences of language learning, games present language learners with
communicative or problem-solving situations that are enjoyable and relatively
stress free. In game situations, the teacher encourages all attempts at
communication in the target language rather than continuous error correction. Chen
(2005) says that games can give extra practice without inducing boredom. In
addition, through games, classroom environment in which the students learn
without realizing that they are learning can be created. (Deesre: 2002)
5) Promoting interpersonal relations.
Games have benefit to construct cooperative activities involving communicative
interaction which provides many opportunities for cooperative relationships. The
cooperative relationship can be both among students, and between the teacher and
students. Therefore, in game situations the class is often divided into pairs or
groups, which make students naturally, interact with others (Littlewood :1981).

c. Principles in selecting games

There are some principles proposed by Khan (1996) that need to be considered
in choosing games for teaching English.

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1) Which language does the game target?
2) Which skills does it practice? The language skill focus could be any one of the four
major skills.
3) What types of game is it?
4) What is the purpose for using it?
5) Does it fit the students? How could I simplify or make it more complex?
(Many games require modification in use when students‟ needs are taken into
consideration.)
6) How much interaction and participation is there? (Maximum involvement is
something we are pursuing.)
7) Do I like the game myself?
Not all of games can be used in teaching language. So, it is needed some criteria to
determine whether the game is fit with the teaching and learning setting or not in
order to reach the students‟ learning goal.

d. Types of Games
According to Hadfield (1999: v), games can be pictured as competitive games in
which players race to be the first to reach the goal and co-operative games in which
players work together toward a common goal. He also classified the activity into two,
linguistic and communicative games. Linguistic games more concern the correctness of
language in term of grammatical item, while communicative games concern successful
communication.
There are some kinds of games according to Jill Hadfield (1999: v-vi):
1) Sorting, ordering, or arranging games (combining activities).
Players must act on certain information in order to arrange themselves such as
families or people living in the same flat. For example, students have a set of cards
with different products on them, and they sort the cards into products found at
grocery store and products found at a department store.
2) Information gap games
In such games, one or more people have information that other people need to
complete a task. For instance, one person might have a drawing and their partner
needs to create a similar drawing by listening to the information given by the
person with the drawing. Information gap games can involve a one-way
information gap, such as the drawing game just described, or a twoway information
gap, in which each person has unique information, such as in a Spot-the-Difference

16
 task, where each person has a slightly different picture, and the task is to identify
the differences. It can be one side or reciprocal.
3) Guessing games
The player with the information deliberately holds it while others guess what it
might be. These are a variation on information gap games. One of the best known
examples of a guessing game is 20 Questions, in which one person thinks of a
famous person, place, or thing. The other participants can ask 20 Yes/No
questions to find clues in order to guess who or what the person is thinking of.
4) Search games
These games are yet another variant on two-way information gap games, with
everyone giving and seeking information. Find Someone Who is a well-known
example. Students are given a grid. The task is to fill in all the cells in the grid with
the name of a classmate who fits that cell, e.g., someone who is a vegetarian.
Students circulate, asking and answering questions to complete their own grid and
help classmates complete theirs.
5) Matching games
As the name implies, participants need to find a match for a word, picture, or card.
For example, students place 30 word cards, composed of 15 pairs, face down in
random order. Each person turns over two cards at a time, with the goal of turning
over a matching pair, by using their memory.
6) Matching-up games (Jigsaw principle)
Each player is a group who has lists of opinions, preferences or possibilities. Only
one of these is shared by everyone in the group. Through discussion, the group
must decide on a common preference, in order to agree on something such as a
dinner date or choice of afternoon activity.
7) Labeling games
These are a form of matching, in that participants match labels and
pictures.

8) Exchanging and collecting games

In these games, students have a certain card, other objects, or ideas as a group and
then exchange those between groups. The games are based on the barter principle.
9) Puzzle- solving activities

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 The participants in the game pool information in order to solve a problem or a
mystery. For example: What happened on Friday at Tom‟s party?
10) Role-play games
Role play can involve students playing roles that they do not play in real life, such
as dentist. It is used as subordinate to the game for the purpose of language use.
11) Simulation
These activities create an imitation in the classroom of total situation where the
class becomes a street, a hotel, or a supermarket.

e. relevant studies

1.

2.

d. theoret framework

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 CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHOD

A. Research Design
This research was action research study that deals with the use of Communicative
games to improve the speaking skill of grade VIII students of MTS Al Mu’min Perengge . It
focused on the efforts to improve the real condition of the English teaching and learning
process.This research study was implemented in the form of collaborative action research. The
research was conducted collaboratively with the headmaster, the English teacher, and the
students of grade VIII of MTS Al Mu”min Perengge . The team worked together in planning,
implementing and reflecting the action as the structured research which was adapted from
Kemmis and Mc Taggart (1988). The action research had been conducted through the process
below,

B. Research Setting
The setting of the research was at MTS Al Mu’min Perengge . It is located on
Madubaru, Madurejo, Prambanan, Sleman, Yogyakarta. Related to English learning and
teaching activities, MTS Al Mu’min Perengge has 1 English teachers. The
English subject is taught 2 times a week for 80 and 120 minutes for each meeting. The average
number of students for each class is 27 students.
The facilities supporting the English teaching and learning activities in the classroom
are a whiteboard, board markers, an eraser, ± 12 student tables, ± 24 student chairs, a teacher
table, a teacher chair, and a set of LCD.

C. Subject of the Research

The subjects of the research are students at MTS Al Mu’min Perengge grade VIII in
the academic year 2013/2014. The researcher chose VIII class as the subject of the research
with 16 students.

D. Time of the Research

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 The research was conducted in the first semester of the academic year 2013 / 2014.
The observation was done on July 27th 2013 while the research was conducted from July to
September 2013. The study took place according to the class schedule in which the English
subject was taught twice a week every Monday and Saturday. The duration was 80 minutes for
Monday and 120 minutes for Saturday.

E. Data Collection Technique

The data were both quantitative and qualitative data. The qualitative data were
obtained by interviewing the students and teacher, doing observation during the teaching-
learning process and during the implementation of the action in the field. The data were in the
forms of field notes and interview transcript. The instruments for collecting the data were
interview guidelines, observation sheets, field notes, a digital camera, and a mobile phone.
The quantitative data were obtained in the form of students‟ speaking score collected
through the speaking assessments and held twice in this study.
They were pretest and posttest. Pre-test was done to know the students‟ speaking proficiency
while post-test was done to know whether there was a significant improvement on the
students‟ speaking ability before and after communicative games being applied.
To collect the data, the instruments were used to gather the data. The following table
will present the detail instruments used by the researcher.
Table 2.1: Instruments of the Research
NO. INSTRUMENT FUNCTION
1. Pre/post – test to get the information on the students‟ speaking
ability before and after implementing the
actions.
2. Speaking rubric to guide the researcher in scoring the students‟
speaking performances.
3. Interview guidelines to guide the researcher in conducting interview
with the English teacher and the students.

4. Lesson plans to plan the materials and activities used to teach

the students
5. Course grids to guide the researcher to design the learning
materials.
6. Observation sheets to write down the problems, facts, and
and field notes description during the teaching and learning
process.
7. Digital camera to take the pictures during implementing the
actions.

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F. Data Analysis Technique
After collecting the data, they were analyzed both, qualitatively and quantitatively. In
qualitative, researcher analyzed the data from, field notes and interview during the research.
Meanwhile, in qualitative the researcher analyzed from the result of the students‟ speaking
performance tests that had been scored by using speaking rubric.

G. Procedure of the Research

The data were analyzed based on the following procedure:

1. Determining the Thematic Concern-Reconnaissance

This step had a purpose to find out information concerning the students‟ speaking
ability. In the reconnaissance step, some activities were conducted. They included
observing the teaching and learning process, interviewing some students of grade VIII and
the English teacher, and having discussion with the English teacher as the collaborator.
Based on the observations, the interview, and the discussions, the existing
problems were classified. The problems found in this research were related to the students‟
low speaking ability affected by the teaching and learning habit and the students‟
motivation.
After identifying those problems found, the researcher determined some plans to solve
the problems concerning the students‟ speaking ability.
2. Planning
The researcher designed some plans as solutions to the problems to be implemented in the
action research. In this step, some techniques considered suitable to be implemented in
improving students‟ speaking skill are selected. In other words, the researcher determined
the action that would be carried out and also prepared the instruments that would be used
in the research.
3. Action and Observation
After the teacher and researcher had an agreement on the lesson plan, the actions were
implemented in the class. The teaching and learning process were observed and recorded
in the form of field notes and observation sheets. In this step the researcher also identified
some problems that appeared during the teaching and learning process. In addition, the
English teacher also gave some feedback concerning the researcher‟s teaching techniques.
Based on the data gathered from the observations, during the implementation of the action,
the researcher and the collaborators had a discussion. Then, they evaluated the
implementation of the action and try to solve any existing weaknesses or problems in the
next action.
4. Reflection

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 The reflection was done every time after the implementation of the actions. It aimed to
know whether the objective had been achieved or not. The reflection was got from all
involved members, the English teacher and some students of grade VIII through the
observation and the interviews. The successful actions were continued in the next teaching
and learning process, but the unsuccessful actions were modified into the ones that were
more suitable.

H. Validity and Reliability of the Data

To fulfill the validity of the research, five criteria proposed by Anderson cited in Burns
(1999:161) are employed. The criteria are as follows,
1. Democratic validity is a process validity related to the extent to which the research is truly
collaborative. This study tried to fulfill this criterion by doing such interviews with the
students and having discussions with the English teacher in finding and selecting problems
to be solved.
1. Outcome validity is related to the notion of action leading to outcomes that are
“successful” within the research context. This research was expected to be able to solve
more than one problem in the teaching-learning process, for example those which were
related with speaking skills, motivation and involvement.
2. Process validity is related to the extent which raises questions about the process of
conducting the research. Observing classroom activities, making field notes during the
lessons, interviewing students and the teacher, and having discussions with the headmaster
in the scheduled time which initiated the process of this study were expected to fulfill the
validity.
3. Catalytic validity is related to the extent to which the researcher allowed participants to
deepen their understanding of their social realities of the context and their role and the
action taken as the result of these changes. In this case, the students and teachers‟
responses to the changes occurring to themselves were asked to meet validity.
4. Dialogic validity is related to the extent that parallels the process of collaborative enquiry
or reflective dialog with “critical friends” or other participants. Asking the teacher to act as
an observer who observed and reported the students‟ reaction during the teaching and
learning process
fulfilled this criterion.
The data were analyzed based on the field notes and the interview transcript during the
research. To obtain thetrustworthiness, triangulation was used. Burns (1999:163) states that
triangulation is one of the most commonly used and best known ways of checking for validity.
It is aimed at gathering multiple perspectives on the situation being studied. In addition she
also states that triangulation is a way of arguing that „if different methods of investigation
produce the same result then the data are likely to be valid.

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 In addition, to fulfill the reliability of the data, the research involved some source of
data, namely the researcher, the English teacher, the headmaster, and the students of grade
VIII. The researcher triangulated the data by analyzing them using field notes of the teaching
and learning process, the interview transcript, some experts‟ theories and other notes that were
related to the data such as notes of the students‟ improvement, achievements, and errors during
the process. Field notes were used to take the activities done in the class and keep the
supporting documents such as the lesson plan, and the students‟ works. After that, the
interview were conducted to reveal the students‟ feeling about the class activity and to get
some comments, perceptions, and suggestions about the action given by the teacher.

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