THE EFFECT OF CAROUSEL BRAINSTORMING FEEDBACK TOWARDS STUDENTS' SPEAKING ABILITY OF THE SECOND SEMESTER STUDENTS OF FKIP UIR PEKANBARU CHAPTER I

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Problem

Speaking has been considered as one of the language ability that has to be mastered in learning English. It is supporting by the fact that in mastering this ability, the students have to be able to speak either in the form of structural or functional language. Besides, the students also need to understand when, how and why can communicate with others by considering the culture and social context. Through realizing the challenges faced by the students in mastering speaking, so that the lecturers have to accomplish the student’ needs towards speaking ability.

In Indonesia, English is a foreign language. Learning a foreign language is an integrated process that the learner should study four basic abilities they are listening, reading, writing and speaking. It is used to understand our world through listening and reading and to communicate our feeling, need, and desires through speaking and writing.

In university, especially in the English Department, speaking has been learnt by students at least three semesters. Throughout the course, the students are encouraged to draw oral interaction with their fellow students. Based on academic handbook (Buku Panduan Akademik: 2009), the purpose of speaking course is structured to enhance the students ability to speak in higher level (advance level) with the development of language at the level of seminars, scientific discussions, interviews, academic reports, and debates.

In learning English, especially speaking, the students have been learnt at least three semesters at university. Ideally students are able to use English in higher level. However, the majority of students still have difficulties in speaking. They tend to be passive and they even avoid speaking in English. Almost all of the students are afraid of expressing their opinion and ideas in front of others using English. They are not communicating in English confidently, especially in real situations and they are also afraid of making mistakes. They also only speak for a short time when they give an opinion in English. As result, the students show poor speaking performance because they are not competent in speaking.

Based on the researchers’ observation at English Department of UIR, the researcher has been obtained the information they are; first, students cannot speak fluently, because they did not have self-confidence to speak in front of the class.  Second, the students has incorrect pronunciation, because they seldom to practice their English language. Third, problem is the students have lack of vocabulary mastery. The students usually match the meaning from what they have found in the dictionary with word in a sentence without considering the word in its context. Fourth, problem is lack understanding of grammatical because the students felt bored while study about grammar.

To solve this problem, the teacher should think more about the technique to teach the students in speaking ability. The teacher should consider the techniques that can be applied to improve the students’ speaking ability. One of them that can be used to improve the students’ speaking ability is the use of different technique as one of the components of teaching and learning process should be selected to be appropriate with the students’ condition. The use of appropriate technique can be helpful in making students more interested in the classroom and help them learn material easily.

One of the techniques is Carousel brainstorming. Carousel brainstorming is an accepted teaching technique that activates students' knowledge of a topic through conversation, movement, and group analysis. According to Susan Rubel (Connecticut:2012) A carousel brainstorm allows you to have students pull out and think about what they know about subtopics within a larger topics. Carousel sharing requires students to use their collective background knowledge, which is acquired through other teaching stratagems such as reading about a topic or class lectures. It also enables them to apply this learning to a broader topic area or question for discussion.

Lecturer assesses their classroom and divides the students into groups of three. Mix up the groups so that close friends are separated and dominant students are paired with others who won’t be intimidated. Determine the topic you will be studying and create a series of questions pertaining to the topic. Make certain that these questions are open-ended and cannot be answered by a simple yes or no. They need to be provocative or controversial enough to spark conversation and ideas.

Based on the explanation above, the researcher conducted a research entitled “The Effect of Carousel Brainstorming Feedback towards Students’ Speaking Ability of the Second Semester Students of FKIP UIR Pekanbaru”.

1.2 Setting of the Problem

From the background above, the researcher found students’ problems. First, the students could not speak English fluently yet, because did not have self-confidence to speak in front of the class. They were afraid of making mistakes in speaking English. It made the points of the explanations could be delivered clearly.

The second problem is the students have incorrect pronunciation. This situation happen because the lack of sound similarity between English and the students’ native language. In this situation, students wish that they could speak English fluently but most of them think that English is too challenging for them to master.

Third, students have limited vocabulary. It was caused by two aspects. One of them was the meaning of the word in the dictionary does not ensure the correct used of the word in a particular context. The meaning of word must be learned in context because different context can make different meaning for a word. The students usually match meaning from what they have found in the dictionary with word in a sentence without considering the word in its context. Another aspect came from their ability in mastering various vocabularies which was still low. It made their speaking not fluently. When they spoke, they always stumble in a word that they did not know how to pronounce it in English.

The last problem is students lack understanding of grammatical. This situation causes boring and cumbersome situations of learning for students. Students’ inability to use grammar correctly is also caused by the so far teaching of grammar conducted. The teachers very often teach grammar in isolation. As a result, students do not have opportunity to apply the grammar knowledge in actual discourse or conversation.

1.3 Limitation of the Problem

Based on the problem above there were some problems in which have been found by the researcher in the classroom. In this research, the researcher focused on measure four components of speaking and also the problems that came from stdudents during speaking. (Pronounciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency). Researcher limited those four speaking components.

1.4 Formulation of the Problem

Based on the limitation of the problem above, these research questions are formulated as follows:

Is there any significant effect of Carousel Brainstorming in students’ speaking ability of the second semester students of FKIP UIR?

1.5 The Objective of the Research

The purpose is a standard or benchmark that will target the researcher in conducting research activities based on problems that have been formulated.

Based on problems in question above, the purpose of this research is:

To find out the significant effect of Carousel Brainstorming Feedback towards Students’ Speaking Ability of the Second Semester Students of FKIP UIR

1.6 Hypothesis of the Research

       Based on the consideration of theory and practice on field, there are two hypothesis those might be drawn from the condition. The Hypothesis are;

Ho: there is no significant effect of Carousel Brainstorming Feedback towards students’ speaking ability of second semester students of FKIP UIR.

Ha: there is significant effect of carousel brainstorming feedback towards students’ speaking ability of second semester students of FKIP UIR.

1.7 Needs of the Research  

The finding of this research is expected to give valuable contribution to the followings:

1. To give information for lecturer that debate in speaking class can make teaching learning proses successfully.

2.  To help the students overcome the problem in learning English.

3. To give information to the other readers about the method how to improve students’ English abilty.

1.8 Definitions of the Key Terms

To avoid misunderstanding about the meaning of the terms in this paper, the researcher first of all explains the term used in this research:

1.               Speaking Ability

               Speaking is the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts. It is the way how to utter some expressions through speaking.

2.              Carousel Brainstorming

Carousel Brainstorming (also known as rotating review) is a cooperative learning activity that can be used both to discover and discuss background knowledge prior to studying a new topic, as well as for review of content already learned. This technique allow for small group discussion, followed by whole-class reflections.