Developing Speaking Skill through Oral Report in an EFL Class in Indonesia

Abdul Gafur Marzuki Institut Agama Islam Negeri Palu, Indonesia E-mail: gbudiperwira@gmail.com Abstract: This Classroom Action Research aims at developing students‟ speaking skill through the application of oral report technique. This research is conducted collaboratively in three cycles in which researcher acts as a lecturer while his collaborator acts as an observer and each cycle consists of two meetings. Data of this research is attained from two main sources namely qualitative and quantitative data. The data shows that In preliminary study, 35.5% students could answer questions given by researcher through interview but the achievement score shows that 13.3% students could fulfill the minimum criteria of achievement. The minimum criterion of achievement is 60. At cycle I, 37% students could participate in oral report and 24.4% students could fulfill the minimum criteria of achievement. At cycle II, 51.1% students could participate in oral report and 42.2% students could fulfill the minimum criteria of achievement. The last is 75% students could fulfill the minimum criteria of achievement from 86.6% students who participated in oral report at cycle III from 45 students. Furthermore, the highest score obtained by student from each of cycles present that in preliminary study is 70 whereas 72.5 at cycle I, 85 at cycle II, and 90 at cycle III. Based on the findings of this research, it can be inferred that the application of oral report technique can develop students‟ speaking skill in using English.


INTRODUCTION
English, a compulsory subject, in which four language skills namely listening, reading, speaking, and writing must be learned by students from schools up to university students. Speaking, like other skills, is placed as one of the significant skills for students to learn (Mudra, 2016;Yustina, 2012). Teaching of speaking skill is fundamental point to prepare students to be able to speak or to use the language in communication. The major part of language lecturers in teaching new language is to direct the class activity for developing, improving, and increasing students" speaking skill (Burns & Joyce, 1997;Fauziati, 2010; (Print ISSN 1410-7546 Online ISSN 2355 Available online at http://journal.tarbiyahiainib.ac.id/index.php/attalim Khamkhien, 2010;McCarthy & O"Keeffe, 2004;Jack Croft Richards, 2008). Moreover, teaching of new language is considered successful if the learners are able to use the language. Therefore, in teaching-learning process, English lecturers must provide students enough time to practicing English speaking skill.

AL-TA'LIM JOURNAL, 24 (3), 2017, (243-254)
In Indonesian curriculum, it has been stated that the objective of teaching English as a foreign language in Indonesia particularly at university level, is designed to make the students able to use the language fluently and accurately in communication. To realize the objectives, teaching speaking skill is considered as necessary point. "Speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information," (Bailey, 2007;Harmer, 2006; Jack C. Richards & Rodgers, 2014).
A successful teaching-learning process can be achieved through good lecturers" preparation, high students" motivation, and appropriate instructional materials. To fulfill these requirements, lecturers must have good competence and apply an appropriate technique in teaching. The appropriate technique applied in teaching speaking can increase students" participation to speak as well as to make them interested to join the class. In fact, though several exertions have been done by English lecturers in teaching speaking to gain adequate students speaking skill, the results still do not meet our expectation. Many students still get difficult in using English in communication. Another fact, many students still use their mother tongues or first languages more than English in English class. If the lecturers want their students to be able to speak English, speaking skill should be taught more than other language skills. In reality, the English lecturers still spend the majority of time in teaching reading and writing skills setting and almost ignore speaking skill. This is not a good balance.
By realizing the importance of developing students" speaking skill, the English lecturers must concern that the time allocated for practicing English should be more provided in teaching-learning process. Then, students should have participated actively to practice English whether in classroom or outside of classroom and the instructional materials should be related to students" interest in order to provoke them to speak. Pertaining to studying English at Islamic Education Department IAIN Palu, the major part is to create its students to be able to speak English fluently and accurately at campus. It is intended to achieve the criteria which are stated in the objectives of teaching. To fulfill the criteria, Faculty of Tarbiyah and Teaching designs its work program. In relation to English programs, one of them is "English Day" stated once a week. It aims at make the students" familiar in using their English. In fact, the program does not meet our expectation. It does not work well because many students do not want to speak English in English area at campus. In this side, the English lecturers need to reflect what problem is about and try to find out the solution.
The researcher assumes several typical problems of learner should be solved by English lecturers; students frequently get breakdown and misunderstanding while speaking, Students use more dominantly their mother tongues in speaking class activities, the communication created among them is frequently uncommunicative, and the lack of vocabulary needed to speak as students often get stagnating in speaking. In this case, the researcher also claims roughly that those problems are affected by the lack of curriculum emphasis on speaking skill, class conditions do not favor oral activities, and examination system does not emphasis oral skill.
Another part should be considered by the English lecturers is the criteria of instructional materials provided for teaching-learning process. Lecturers sometime do not realize in picking up material from textbooks which is not appropriate to students" level and interest. The researcher argues that if the English lecturers use instructional material from textbooks, it should be used as a starting point. The lecturers need to redesign it to be more contextual in order to make students more interested in joining the class. Because, one of the unsatisfactory result of teaching speaking skill in senior high school is the material learned by the students in classroom does not fulfill students" level and interest. Based on the early observation conducted by the researcher during teaching English at Islamic Education Department, some facts were found related to teaching English: (1) the English lecturers assigned the students mostly to do tasks which were presented on textbook, (2) and the English lecturers used dominantly Indonesian than English in leading English class. The researcher assumes that those can discourage students to practice their English. The teaching speaking technique applied by the lecturers at Islamic Education Department at Faculty of Islamic Education and Teacher Training in IAIN Palu do not give much contribution in developing students" speaking skill. It can be seen from the fact that many students cannot speak English fluently and accurately. The researcher further assumes that the inapplicable technique applied by the lecturers probably affected by the lack of students" vocabulary. Although the lecturer applies various techniques, the students" speaking skill will not be developed.
To over-come the problems identified above, the researcher applies oral report technique on the consideration that it can guide students to practice their speaking skill of using English in class. The researcher argues that through applying oral report technique: (1) the teaching of speaking skill can be improved, (3) and the students" speaking skill can be developed. Based on the result of interview in preliminary study conducted by the researcher to the students, some problems were identified concerning with the students" speaking skill.
Those problems are described as follows:

The low participation of the students in speaking class
A rooted point of view among the students that English is a very difficult and complicated language. They also view that English is not entirely used in many work places in Palu. As a result found that they were indifferent when they were in speaking class. To cope with the problems, it is necessary for researcher to find a technique that can provide a good atmosphere in order to increase students" participation in speaking class.

The tedious teaching technique of the lecturer
Teaching technique plays a significant role in determining the success of teaching program. To apply an appropriate teaching technique will present a good output. On the contrary, teaching by applying tedious technique tends to discourage students and to get students de-motivated to join English class. In relation to speaking class, the researcher found that the English lecturers dominantly instructed students to memorize dialogues provided in textbooks. By leaving this technique out of consideration, most of students could not express their ideas in real conversation because of the dialogues. As a consequence, the English Day as stated once a week did not run effectively at all departments in Faculty of Islamic Education and Teacher Training.

The lack of students' fluency and accuracy in speaking
As a matter of fact, the students have been learning English since they sit in elementary school. The reality shows that many students cannot speak English fluently and accurately. From the three problems identified above, it is necessary to conduct research to cope with those problems in order to develop student"s speaking skill through applying appropriate teaching technique for speaking class. In this case, applying oral report technique is a proper solution because the time provided sufficiently for students to practice their speaking skill and the material discussed in class based on students" interest can develop students speaking skill. In addition, the objective of the research is to prove that the speaking skill of the Islamic Education Department students can be developed through applying oral report technique.

METHOD
This research employed CAR (Classroom Action Research) with qualitative and quantitative approach for data analysis. This classroom action research was conducted to develop students" speaking skill focusing on English fluency and accuracy through applying oral report technique. The technique was designed in more adaptable model through spiral of cycle consisting of planning, acting, observing, analyzing and reflecting (Bradbury-Huang, 2010;Brydon-Miller, Greenwood, & Maguire, 2003;Carr & Kemmis, 2003;Reason & Bradbury, 2001;Stringer, 2008).
The researcher employed collaboration research approach. Coghlan & Brannick (2014) argues that collaborative action research involves at least two persons as the main actors of the study action and this research team works together to cope with the problem in a single classroom research. This research was conducted at Islamic Education Department FTIK IAIN Palu (PAI 5), located on Diponegoro 23 Street, Palu, Central Sulawesi Province. The researcher conducted his research to the first semester students in the academic year 2016/2017. The time allocated for teaching English speaking will be 100 minutes per meeting. Despite of the researcher used English interchangeable between English and Indonesia when describing the lesson, classroom activity was directed to more English.
This classroom action research was conducted in cycles, the researcher and his collaborator designed the research into planning of action, implementation of action, observation, and analysis and reflection. The four activities are namely stages (Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixon, 2013Riel, 2010).

Planning of Action
The first activity was conducted by the researcher and his collaborator in this research is planning the action. In this stage, the researcher and his collaborator worked together in designing lesson plan, preparing instructional material, and setting the criteria of success.

a. Designing Lesson Plan
In conducting this research, the researcher applied oral report technique in teaching speaking skill on the consideration that the application of oral .report technique could facilitate students to develop their speaking skill. Therefore, it was important for researcher and his collaborator to design lesson plan addressing to teaching speaking skill. The researcher and his collaborator designed lesson plan through applying four procedures namely building knowledge of field, modeling of the text, joint construction of the text, and independent construction of the text.

b. Preparing Instructional Material
The success in the teaching learning process was also denoted by the availability and applicability of the instructional material. To conduct teaching speaking skill by using oral report technique well, the researcher and his collaborator provided an appropriate topic. The teaching material was addressed to students" level and interest. In order to get students participated in speaking class, the researcher and his collaborator provided material that talking about students" life. To acquire the effective classroom activities in speaking class, the researcher and his collaborator provided material taken from any sources. It was intended to bring students easily in selecting topic for oral report. Kinds of topic provided to oral report were expected to encourage students and increase students" self-confidence to speak speaking. The selected topic of report based on students" level and interest avoided students from making students bored and passive during the teaching learning process.

c. Criteria of Success
In order to attain a precise judgment whether the cycle to be continued or not, the criteria of success should be previously determined. Moreover, the main concept of action research suggests that an appropriate form of analysis will be through discussion of criteria and areas of concern as well as isolated instance of behavior, (Reason & Bradbury, 2001). Therefore, the criteria of success would cover: (1) the result of teaching-learning process, (2) students" learning result. The criteria of success could be determined by some indicators as follows: 1) The amount of students who participated in delivering oral report could reach over than 50% from 25 students as the subject of the research. 2) The minimum criteria of achievement must be achieved by the students is (75) and the amount of students who achieve the minimum criteria of achievement must be over than 50% from 25 students as the subject of the research.

Implementation of the Action Plan
The implementation was truly the realization on what had been constructed in the lesson plan. The researcher and his collaborator were situated differently position to conduct this research. The researcher took position as the lecturer carrying out the class and his collaborator took position as an observer. In conducting class activities, the researcher employed teaching procedures comprised four steps as described in the following.

a. Building Knowledge of Field
This step covered greeting the students, checking students" attendance, describing the objective of the lesson and asking some probing questions to explore the students" prior knowledge and to bridge students to the topic discussed in the next step.
b. Modeling of the Text In this section, the researcher gave students a model of topic.
c. Joint Construction of the Text In this step, the students worked in group to prepare the topic to oral report.
d. Independent Construction of the Text This step comprised the students reported the topic individually, giving correction in term of grammar and pronunciation mistakes, giving students a task or worksheet for oral students report in evaluation phase, and closing the class.

Observation
Observation is a way or process to collect data about any aspect or event that is happening in the teaching and learning process. In this phase, the researcher assigned one of English lecturers at Islamic Education Department as his collaborator to do the observation. The observation was focused on the activities done by the researcher and the students" participation during teaching-learning process took place. The way of researcher to be observed covered the way he conducted the class activities, the way he guided the students to participate in class activities. His collaborator also analyzed the way students conducted oral report. Meanwhile, his collaborator specified the kind and the source of the data collected in order to get accurate data and the reliability of the result. Hence, the researcher prepared the instruments of data collection.

a. Kinds and Source of the Data
Kinds of the data that was collected in this study namely qualitative and quantitative data. Denzin & Lincoln, (2000) ;Silverman, (2006) states that qualitative data appears as words rather than number and quantitative ones appear as number whose meaning is accepted from statistical procedures used. In this research, the qualitative was derived from the data of teaching-learning process, teaching administrative document, and students" participation taken from observation checklists, field notes and portfolios and quantitative data was derived from the data of oral students report in teaching-learning activities through ongoing assessment and product assessment or evaluation result. The criteria of assessment focused on fluency and accuracy by applying scale of oral test criteria.

b. Instruments and Techniques of Data Collection
Data collection was done during and after the teaching and learning process. To attain accurate and reliable data, the researcher used some instruments that comprised observation checklist, field notes, portfolio, and evaluation. Those instruments elaborated in the following.

Observation Checklists
Observation checklist was used for identifying and attaining data on students" participation during teaching and learning process and the researcher in conducting teaching-learning process. The collaborator used observation checklists to observe the researcher on the way he conducted for teaching procedures in term of teaching style, time management, class management, teaching material, giving instruction of a task, and kinds of task. Another part, the collaborator also observed students in term of their participation in responding material explained by researcher, working in group, the way they did oral report, and delivering questions.

1) Field notes
Field note was used to attain data from the field. It covered all information the researcher"s activities in doing the research. Field note was employed to write all events mentioned during conducting the research. Creswell & Miller, (2000); Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw (2001) argues that field notes are written account, what the researcher hears, sees, experiences, and thinks in the course of collecting data and reflecting on the data in qualitative research.

Portfolio
Portfolio was the collection of actual sample of students" work. It covered the researcher"s teaching documents and the result of students" work.

Scale of Oral Testing criteria
Scale of oral testing criteria was used to assess students while doing oral report. It covered the criteria of assessment in term of fluency and accuracy. It was used by collaborator in two parts. First, when the researcher conducted teaching and learning process, his collaborator conducted ongoing assessment. The collaborator assessed students while they did oral report in teaching and learning process. Second, the collaborator assessed students while the researcher conducted evaluation.

Speaking Checklists
Speaking checklist was used to evaluate the way of students reporting the topic. It covered intonation, attitude, style, and diction. Those instruments were constructed to measure the affective of applying oral report technique in teaching speaking skill and the students learning result.

Data Analysis and Reflection
In this classroom action research, the researcher analyzed data by employing scheme or triangulation to obtain validation data derived from the field. It consists of three main steps to analyze data; they are data collection, data reduction and data conclusion. Meanwhile, the reflection refers to the conclusion drawn based on the data obtained from one particular cycle of the research. A classification of the data was made based on the kind and the source of data. The data derived from the results of the ongoing assessment and evaluation assessment were classified as quantitative data while the data derived from the result checklists, field notes and portfolios were classified as qualitative data.
All information derived from data analysis to be compared to the criteria of success. The results of oral students report from ongoing assessment and evaluation phases were analyzed and scored through applying scale of oral testing criteria in the category "1 to 5" toward speaking "fluency, and accuracy." The way students reported the topic was categorized by applying speaking checklist in form of "Yes" if it is conducted and "No" if it is not conducted.
The result of researchers conducted teaching and learning process was analyzed according to the criteria teaching procedure designed toward the teaching speaking activities. The criteria of the categories were in form of "Yes" if the procedure is conducted and "No" if the procedure is not conducted while the result of students" participation was analyzed according to students" response. The categories were in form of "Yes" if students respond and "No" if students do not respond.
The result of supporting data analysis was through two observation checklists. First, the observation checklist toward students" portfolio was categorized in form of "Yes" if it is available and "No" if it is not available. It was applied to obtain data of students" documents available for oral report. Second, observation checklist toward researcher"s document preparation was categorized in form of "Yes" if it is available and "No" if it is not available. It was applied to obtain data of the researcher"s documents available for conducting class activity.
The reflection was the place where the researcher and collaborator analyzed the finding of each cycles. To make an accurate analysis the researcher and his collaborator reflected the data gained from instruments (observation checklist, portfolio, speaking checklist and scale of oral testing criteria).

RESULT AND DISCUSSION
The result of the students" learning in teaching-learning process through applying oral report technique throughout the research was characterized into two different types, i.e. process and product. The students" participation in oral report and oral students report score through class activities and evaluation, which were signed from the first until the final cycle of the research. The oral students report, as a product, was derived from student"s score through three evaluations conducted in three different cycles. It was noted that in the first evaluation of cycle I of the research, the researcher made judgment that the students speaking skill were still low in which the criteria of success which was set up in this research was not fulfilled by the students yet. Students who achieved the minimum criteria of achievement based on valuation result conducted were still under than 50% in Cycle I and Cycle II as well. Related to students" score attained from ongoing assessment in Cycle I and II showed that the mechanical and pronunciation mistakes produced by the students while speaking influenced the requirement of the low scores of students.
The correction of the mechanical and pronunciation mistakes was the resolution action to those matters. James (2013) states that error correction if treated properly, could be thought to be useful for conscious learning. Based on the result found in cycle I, the researcher tried to improve the process through managing time proportionally, providing topic based on students" level, simplifying the text model, and speaking loudly, slowly, and clearly pronunciation in teaching. Meanwhile, the result of students learning attained in Cycle II made the researcher needed to improve teaching-learning process through giving more control to students while working in group, encouraging students, and increasing students" self-esteem especially for the low English level students. After making some teaching improvements, the students made progress in participating aspect. The result showed that Cycle III was the last cycle conducted in this research. It means that the improvement of teaching-learning process made the result that the students speaking skill getting developed significantly.
Likewise, the result of product assessment shows that the students got developed based on students learning result in each cycle compared to the data derived at preliminary study (see figure 1 and 2) and the criteria of success could be fulfilled by the students based on the result of evaluation onducted in Cycle III. Based on the facts above, it can be inferred that the students speaking skill could be developed through applying oral report technique in teaching speaking skill.
This section is concentrated on the discussion of the application of oral report technique in teaching speaking skill and the theoretical perspective technique throughout the action research from assigning groups until its application in four teaching procedures.
The consideration of assigning groups permanently was aimed that the students could interact actively each other and work collaboratively by sharing idea, thought, and opinion in constructing oral report topic. Moreover, the researcher could control the students" activities since the class was very big consisting of 45 students while they were working in group. Johnson and Johnson (1990) state that cooperative efforts result in participants striving for mutual benefit so that all group members benefit from one group member on the way to accomplish shared goals. Similarly, Eggen and Kauchack (1996) state that cooperative learning can give students the chance to interact and learn with students from different ability of background.
Related to the application of oral report technique, the teaching was carried out in four procedures building knowledge of field, modeling of the text, joint construction of the text, and independent construction of the text. As the concept of oral report in which oral report is a presentation of topic to discuss and to inform the listener orally, the four procedures were employed to guide students in constructing topic to report. The researcher gave a model of topic as a sample. Then, the students constructed their own topic to be reported in class. Detail discussion about those procedures is elaborated in the following.

Building Knowledge of Field
The teaching was initialized by greeting students and checking student"s attendance. The next activity was the researcher described the objective of study. Describing the objectives is a very important thing to do before conducting teaching activity because it directs the researcher to achieve the expected result from his teaching plan. Bean (2011) states that clear objectives are critical because they provide the framework for lecturers" thinking as they guide their students "construction" of the topics they are teaching. It means that the objectives of study can direct lecturer in conducting teaching process proportionally in order to bridge students in achieving the target of study successfully. After describing the objectives of study, the researcher asked students some probing questions, "Would you like to report your activity done last weekend?", "what is your plan for next weekend?" as a purpose to explore students" prior knowledge and to bridge students to the topic.

Modeling of the Text
The activities done in this phase determined the kind of topic which was reported by the students. The teaching activity was begun by presenting the students a model of topic concerning a story, information, experience and the like. The model of topic given was intended to enable students to construct theirs. The researcher guided students on how to do oral report. By giving the model, the students could participate to speak in class. Yang & Meinel (2014) stated that "through modeling, the lecturer demonstrates the content and the procedures to be learned." Modeling actively demonstrates the "what" and "how" to complete a given task.
Pertaining to the procedure conducting, the researcher spoke loudly, slowly, and clearly pronunciation in order that students could imitate and repeat the language in teachinglearning process. Furthermore, the prominent thing in conducting English speaking class is the lecturer must speak English fluently and accurately.

Joint Construction of the Text
This activity was the application phase in which the students presented oral report based on the model given in modeling of the text. In this phase, the researcher provided students time to prepare topic through working in group. When the students were ready to report the topic, the researcher invited them to report and assessed their fluency and accuracy.
The students were divided into groups. The researcher found while observed them working in groups in Cycle I that some students did not participate actively and work seriously yet especially for those who possessed low English level. They just relayed on the high English level students in preparing the topic to report. As result, the group was dominated by high English level students both in working and in oral report presentation. To overcome the problems, some real actions were employed such as: controlling students while working in group by giving more attention to low English level students, designing material based on students" interest, and giving more explanation about reported topic. It was intended to avoid the high English level students dominating the oral students report. The result of those treatments conducted by the researcher showed the improvement that students worked actively and seriously in group to the next Cycles.

Independent Construction of the Text
Independent construction of the text was said to be oral individual report phase. The students were required to report the topic individually. In this phase, the researcher corrected students" grammar and pronunciation mistakes in order to minimize errors and mistakes happened later on. By conducting this procedure in the first meeting of Cycle I and II, the researcher found that oral individual report phases were dominated by high English level students. To solve this problem, the researcher gave students who possessed low English level time to practice their speaking skill before presenting oral report.
In addition to oral students report, the researcher observed that in second meeting of cycle I, the students still relayed on the text while reporting the topic. It seemed that the students memorized the text. It made them hesitant to speak and getting brief ideas across. Otherwise, when the researcher collected their text drafts, the researcher found that in fact some students could deliver ideas more than the ideas constructed on the text draft. In contrary, some students could deliver ideas less than ideas constructed on the text drafts. To overcome the problems, the researcher encouraged the students in order to increase their self-confidence to speak. In the first meeting of the last cycle of the research, the researcher provided low English level students time to rehearsal. It was intended to train them to be familiar and to have self-confidence to report the task individually.
The result shows that the low English level students could report their ideas in evaluation phase conducted in Cycle III. It means that the students" speaking skill was developed and oral students report was not dominated by students who possessed high English level anymore. The successful of learning can be achieved if the students want to speak and unafraid to speak.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on the fore-mentioned research findings, some conclusions are taken as follows. 1. To achieve the expected objective of teaching speaking skill through applying oral report technique, English lecturers are required to do such as (1) specifying the objectives, and (2) conducting class activity through speaking slowly, loudly, and clearly pronunciation. 2. Since conducting speaking class through applying oral report technique, the time is provided sufficiently for students to practice their speaking skill.
3. The application of oral report technique by providing material based on students level and interest provokes students to speak and avoid students to speak hesitantly and stagnancy in delivering idea. 4. The rehearsal provided for students before doing oral report can increase students" selfconfidence to speak. 5. By giving the students appreciations after doing oral report can increase their selfesteem. 6. The proportional lesson plan design can direct lecturer enable to achieve learning objective. 7. Besides having some strengths mentioned above, the weakness of the employed oral report technique is identified, that is, the students who possess lack of vocabulary cannot speak longer and feel reluctant to speak.
To follow up the findings, some suggestions are also delivered to be addressed to: the lecturers, the students, and the future researchers.

Lecturers
Considering that the application of oral report technique can develop the students" speaking skill, it is expected that this technique can be one of many alternative techniques to be employed in teaching speaking skill. English lecturers are suggested to disseminate this technique through lecturer"s forum such as: seminar or workshop in order to get valuable improvement.

Students
Learners will never learn if they never make mistakes. The learners can learn from their mistakes. The more learners practice their speaking, the better they have. The more practice will enable learner to speak fluently and accurately.

Future Researchers
Since this study is classroom action