PROMOTING THE STUDENTS ’ AUTONOMY LEARNING : NEWS PROGRAM , AN OUT-OF-SPEAKING CLASS ACTIVITY Ika Puspitarini

This paper presents the result of the pilot project of an out-of-class; it is the making of a news program with 20-25 minutes duration. The pilot project took place at UIN Malulana Malik Ibrahim Malang; it was conducted benefitted from the familiarity of the young people toward social media. The aims of this task were to promote the students’ autonomy learning by giving them the opportunities to practice their speaking skill, building up their self-confidence, and challenging their creativity. Therefore, the questionnaire, as the self-reflection feedback, consisted of three questions; whether the making of news program gives them the opportunities to practice their speaking skill, builds up their confidence, and challenges their creativity. There were 30 students involved in this pilot project. The result of data analysis showed that most of the participants strongly agreed the making a new program give them a chance to practice their speaking skill, build up their self-confidence, and challenge their creativity. Therefore, making a news program can be an out-of-speaking class activity in order to promote the students’ autonomy learning.


INTRODUCTION
Speaking is generally perceived as the most fundamental skill to acquire.Since the onset of the communicative era, it has been treated as the ultimate goal of language training.In addition, its proper development has become the focus of attention of both teachers and learners.However, it is also a commonly recognized the fact that achieving proficiency in foreign language speaking in classroom conditions is not an easy task.Even advanced learners often finish a language course with the conviction that they are not sufficiently prepared for speaking beyond the classroom.This difficulty results, basically, from the character and inadequate frequency of speaking opportunities in the classroom in comparison to the abundance of natural varieties and genres of oral communication.In fact, selecting the most appropriate types of spoken discourse for classroom practice in a particular language course is a very hard decision.Moreover, it hardly ever reflects the natural occurrence and distribution of communicative situations.
According to Thornbury (2007), the process of developing speaking skills consists of three stages; (1) awareness.It means that learners are made aware of features of target language, (2) appropriation.These features are integrated into their existing knowledgebase, and (3) autonomy.In this stage, learners develop the capacity to mobilize these features under real-time conditions without assistance.It seems that at the advanced level of foreign language proficiency, students and teachers' efforts should be focused on the stage of appropriation and its effective movement towards autonomy in target language use.For that purpose, they need a range of speaking tasks that encourage a considerable degree of independence by relying on extensive oral practice, mainly in the form of student-student interactions as a source of meaningful input and feedback.
Autonomous learner, basically, refers to the learner's responsibility to their own learning process and result; it is the learners' willingness and capacity to control their own learning.Furthermore, Sinclair (1996) believes that learner autonomy does not presently mean that a student should study individually.Cooperation with other members of the society is essential for autonomy to succeed.Autonomous language learning is determined by optimizing or developing learner choice, focusing on the needs of individual learners, and the choice of decision-making to learners.It is also learner-centered which views learners as individuals with needs and rights, who can expand and practice the responsibility for their learning.Therefore, autonomous learners are expected to expand the ability to engage with, interact with, and benefit from learning environments in which are not directly mediated by a teacher.
In news program, presenting the news is not as easy as just standing in front of camera and reading an autocue.Furthermore, reading the news scripts needs some extra work, preparation, and practicing as the news scripts may consist of tricky names or difficult words.In addition, practicing oral expression, pronunciation, and tone are also necessary in reading news in order to build natural and effective communication.Yet, in the making of news program does not consist of reading the news only, it also involves the process of gathering the news.Selecting topics and conducting interviews on selected topics with various people are kinds of activities in gathering the news.To sum up, the process of making news program is not an individual work, but it is teamwork.
Thus, the making news program might be considered as a good activity in speaking class for the students.It has fulfilled the requirements for promoting the students' autonomous learning; the students are able to do role-play as the news anchor so that they are able to practice their speaking skill and work together as a team in selecting the topics and conducting interviews on selected topics.Hence, by the end the class, the students are expected to have improved their communicative skills.Since the process of making the news program is time consuming, the activity of making news program was conducted as the outof-activity in speaking class.
An out-of-class learning constitutes a significant part of language learning since it provides a realistic setting which is quite different from in-class and instruction-based teaching and learning (Coscun, 2016;Guo, 2011;Hoyt, 2015;Hu, 2016).Most language educators believe that learners should be responsible for their own learning and use opportunities to practice language actively outside the classroom.Indeed, the out-of-class activities encourage the students to expand their language experience to outside the classroom by making them aware of existing and available English language opportunities in their surroundings.
Therefore, it is very interesting to investigate the students' attitude toward the out-ofclass The Making of News Program, a pilot project activity in speaking class, in promoting students' autonomous learning.In order to achieve that purpose, the research question is formulated into: "How does The Making of News Program give the students a chance to practice their speaking skill, build up their self-confidence, and challenge their creativity in their process to be autonomous learners?"

METHOD
This paper is aimed to present the students' attitude toward a pilot project of the outof-class activity in speaking class; here, the making of news program.In order to attain the data, the research design employed is a quantitative design by using questionnaire as the tool for data collection.
The questionnaire consisted of fifteen items, in which these items can be categorized into three categories; whether the making of news program gives them the opportunities to practice their speaking skill, builds up their confidence, and challenges their creativity.All the items were meant to be the students' feedback toward the activity so that whether the activity needs improvement and the effectiveness the activity has in order to promote the students' autonomous learning can be investigated further.
There were 30 students involved in this pilot project.They were the students of Mathematics Department of UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang who had finished taking English Course.The questionnaire was distributed to the student after they finished the project.In giving the responses to the items, a Likert Scale of 1 to 4 is used; Strongly Disagree (indicated by Scale 1), Disagree (Scale 2), Agree (Scale 3), and Strongly Agree (Scale 4).

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
The result of the data analysis of the first category, whether the making of news programs gives them the opportunities to practice their speaking skill, most of the studentparticipant stated their strongly agreement.The data above showed how most of the students strongly agreed that during the making of news program they also had a chance to improve their speaking skill.The making of news program allowed them to practice and improve their pronunciation, tone, and oral expression.Moreover, it also allowed them to learn how to build up a natural and effective conversation during interviews and reporting an event.Indeed, they felt responsible for the successful of the news program; they had a sense of being in charge in their learning.Therefore, consistent with the earlier findings (Coscun, 2016;Wu, 2012), the students believed that the activity was beneficial in terms of practicing English speaking and having natural conversations.
The second category on whether the process of making news program help the students to build up their confidence, the result of data analysis showed that the students mostly agreed the items.In the process of making news program, each member of the group represented certain job in news program; one might become the news anchor, reporter, interviewer, interviewee, or a witness of an event.It means that in the process of making news program, the students were also demanded to do role-play.According to Cosun (2016) the benefits to role-play activity was helpful in terms of practicing unprepared speaking, solving problems, practicing English in a fun way, acting skills, vocabulary and pronunciation development, as well as critical thinking skills.It is pointed out that role-playing games are beneficial for vocabulary development (Sylvén & Sundqvist, 2012), and for the development of conversational language (Peterson, 2011).From Gee's (2008) perspective, the entertainment and pleasure experienced while playing games also facilitate language learning.The result from data analysis on the third category, whether the making of news program challenges the students' creativity, showed that most of the students strongly agree with the statement.In this category, the students agreed that they had the authority to decide the topics presented in the news program.They also had the power to create the news related to the topics chosen.According to Zahrei and Gahremani ( 2010 disciplined in their learning situations.Moreover, the making of news program encouraged the students to build up the atmosphere of good teamwork; the discussion and exchanging ideas were the activities that promote good teamwork. As can be realized from the students' feedback on the making of news program as an out-of-class activity in speaking class, the activity of making news program offers many benefits to the students.This activity encourages the students to be an autonomous learner.The relevant literature also provides supportive evidence for the benefits of out-of-class foreign language learning (Pickard, 1996;Coscun, 2016;Guo, 2011;Hoyt, 2015;Hu, 2016) in promoting the students' autonomy learning.Moreover, Stoller (2002) argues that the activities that lead to student-centeredness increase cooperation and motivation; therefore, it raises students' confidence, self-esteem, and autonomy.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS
In nut shells, the making of news program may be as an alternative activity in speaking class which is to promote the students' autonomy learning by giving them the opportunities to practice their speaking skill, building up their self-confidence, and challenging their creativity.However, as this research was a pilot project, further researches need to be conducted in term of investigating the effectiveness of this out-of-class activity in speaking class in any level of education.Furthermore, the questionnaire also needs to be improved; the questions need to be developed and adjusted in order to provide a better research finding.
), an independent autonomous learner takes an active role in language learning; they should decide the objective of their courses, what they should learn, what the activities to use and the length of time to spend on each activity.In other words, the learners should learn to be self-motivated and self-