Peer Review: Implementing 'Take a Stand' Technique to Improve ET 11 Students' Ability in Giving a Talk and Carrying out a Discussion

Abstract

In ET 11 level, there are lessons which condition the students to carry out the discussion and to give a talk. It always brings problems for the teacher in asking the students to carry out discussion because they do not take it seriously to perform the discussion in English. Moreover, it causes similar difficulty in asking the students to give a talk because they do not do it naturally with regard to some identified problems obtained from the talk videotapes. The most possible cause is that the activity conducted in ‘traditional’ discussion or talk does not stimulate the students to be enthusiastically involved. This study tries to implement a strategy called take a stand’ in stimulating the students to take part actively and devotedly. With some variations of the strategy, the teachers try to give stimulants through small and classroom group work. Theories in Psychology and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) conclude that the role of peers is significant in shaping the adolescents. Each student is given chances to state his/her stand on the statements he/she gets, as the rules of the games always oblige them to do so. The technique is carried out for three meetings in May – June 2013, based on the ET 11 lessons in one cycle of this Classroom Action Research. The techniques for data collection are test (pre and post), observation and questionnaire. The data analysis is especially on whether there is an improvement on the students in giving a talk and the effect of the technique on the students. The conclusion is drawn based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis.