Speech Contest to Improve Students' Fluency in Speaking

. This study is aimed at implementing speech contest to improve students' fluency in speaking. The subject of this research was 15 students of intermediate level of speaking class. The preliminary study indicated that fluency was students' problem in speaking since they tended to produce incomplete sentences with many pauses in performing speaking task. The instruments used to collect the data were test, questionnaire and interview. This technique was a real world speaking task in which it required students to deliver speech on a stage in front of audiences individually. The analytical scoring rubric with four criteria, including fluency, accuracy, content, and method of delivery, was used by three raters to determine students' score. This technique was successfully done in 1 cycle since it met the criteria of success, that was 80% students (12 students), got score 80 or above and 84% students (13 students) showed positive response toward speech contest. Speech contest helped students to show their potential and directed students to work hard eliminating their negative feelings that might hinder their confidence to speak fluently.


INTRODUCTION
Speaking is essential skill that students need to master in order to communicate internationally. The purpose of teaching speaking in higher level of education is basically to improve VWXGHQWV ¶ fluency and accuracy in speaking. Fluency is the ability to speak smoothly, without any hesitation, using natural language. Accuracy is the ability to speak with clear and accurate use of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and intonation.
Both fluency and accuracy are equally important, however, Brown (2007:267) states that ³... fluency may in communicative language course be an initial goal in language teaching, accuracy is achieved to some extend by allowing students to focus on the element of phonology, grammar, and discourse in their spoken outSXW´ 7KLV statement gives view that in the beginning level of teaching speaking, the focus should be directed to build students fluency. In this present study, the speaking course that is investigated by researcher is called survival speaking course. The main goal of this FRXUVH LV WR EXLOG VWXGHQWV ¶ fluency in speaking. Brown (2000) defined fluency as the ability to speak in natural and flowing language. Later, Thornbury (2005) noticed that to speak with natural and flowing language the speaker must consider pause as 4 principles, those are: (1) pauses may be long but not frequent, (2) pauses are usually filled, (3) pauses occur at meaningful transition points and (4) there are long runs of syllables and words between pauses.
However, based on the result of preliminary study, the goal was hard to reach since most students were reluctant and shy to speak. It can be seen from the result of speaking test that was taken in the beginning of the course. The test required students to tell their most interesting experience in 5 minutes. The minimum score to pass the course is 70 and only 20% (3 students) got score above 70. The chief difficulties found by students in speaking were hard to express their idea in spoken language, and were not confident in speaking English. Because of that, students tended to produce incomplete sentences with many pauses.
Several studies have been done to improve students speaking skill with various learning strategies, such as think-pair-share (Usman, 2015), retelling (Rachmawaty & Hermagustiana, 2010) and 4/3/2 (Yingjie, 2013). Think-pair-share is a cooperative learning strategy in which students work in pair to discuss questions given by the teacher. This is done in three steps, students think independently about the question, students shares ideas with their partner about the questions and students share the result of their discussion in front of class. Students feel more comfortable presenting their ideas in front of class with the support of a partner.
Usman (2015) implementing thinkpair-share to the twenty students at the first year of the Islamic Education Department of STAIN Ternate in 2010/2011 academic year majoring in Islamic Studies who attended English course. This strategy met the criteria of success when it is implemented in cycle 2 where students average score is 81.68 (with the minimum standard score 70). Cycle 1 was failed because most students share their ideas by writing on a paper and not doing discussion. In implementing this technique Usman (2015) suggested the teacher to carefully manage VWXGHQWV ¶ activity.
Next, focusing on individual performance, Rachmawaty & Hermagustiana, 2010) investigated the use of retelling technique to the six English students in a remedial class. The data were the record and the transcript of VWXGHQWV ¶ performance. Based on the result of data analysis they draw conclusion that retelling technique is effective to improve students speaking skill. In applying this technique there are two aspects to be considered, Comprehensibility and vocabulary. The problem students encountered is content since they lack of idea to say something. Retelling technique helped students to understand text deeper. In pre-test student understand story less than 80%, yet in posttest they could finish the story. Whereas the familiarity of vocabulary is considered as important aspect to increase VWXGHQWV ¶ fluency, Rachmawaty & Hermagustiana (2010) noticed that in retelling a story began with rewriting the text by deleting some unknown words, then memorizing it. When they had trouble recalling the words in their draft, they tried to continue the story in some ways: by skipping the forgotten words, or trying to speak in a halting manner. In short, when applying this technique, it is important to choose text that is easier to understand by students.
Different from Rachmawaty & Hermagustiana (2010), Yingjie (2013) faced different problem in teaching speaking. Although most students have a good grammar background, rich vocabulary, and some basic language knowledge, their speaking skill did not improve. The problem was there were too many students in class that were 50 students in class. Students had limited time to do individual speaking practice.
To overcome this problem, Yingjie (2013) implemented 4/3/2 activity in every week for three months. This technique was repeated in every week by different topics and contents. Yingjie (2013) noted that there are three principles in conducting this technique, the content and language items must be understandable, there is time for students to do repetitive tasks, and students must speak with different people in a limited number of times. Based on the finding it can be concluded that this technique can increase speaking speed and reduce the pause during conversation and thus, can LPSURYH VWXGHQWV ¶ IOXHQF\ These three studies give insight that a JRRG WHFKQLTXH WR LPSURYH VWXGHQWV ¶ IOXHQF\ in speaking is the one that gives students chance to gain knowledge; to help them with the content in speech practice, and gives students room to practice. However, the previous studies lack of chance for students to perform task individually. The purpose of this present study is WR LPSURYH VWXGHQWV ¶ fluency by implementing speech contest.
Speech contest is one of types of public speaking in which students deliver speech in front of audience. According to Templeton & Fitzgerald, public speaking is having a speaker to stand before the audience to deliver a speech in a structured manner, with the purpose of either persuade, inform or entertain the audience. In this case, speech contest challenge students to increase their confident, speaking in front of many people.
Speech contest is considered as good task for students since it promote autonomous speaking task. Thornbury (2005) stated that ³at there are six criteria for autonomous speaking task, those are productivity, purposefulness, interactivity, challenge, safety, and authenticity. Productivity is speaking tasks need to be maximally language productive for autonomous language use´. In speech contest students are expected to deliver speech in full English. They are not allowed to use L1 (Bahasa Indonesia) in speech production. Moreover, purposefulness means that the task has clear outcome (ibid.). The purpose of speech contest is to make students speak more confident so that VWXGHQWV ¶ IOXHQF\ ZLOO EH LQFUHDVH 1H[W interactivity ³should be performed in situations where there is at least the possibility of interaction´ (ibid.), the interaction is between students and the audience. &KDOOHQJH ³the task should force learners to draw on their available communicative resources to achieve outcome´ LELG . In this case, students work hard to compose speech text and practice before delivering speech. Further, safety, ³learner should feel confident in performing task and they can do so without too much risk. The classroom should provide the right conditions for experimentation, including a supportive classroom dynamic and a nonjudgmental attitude to error´ (ibid.). To make students confident in delivering speech, the lecturer guides students to write text for speech and trains students one by one in delivering speech. The last aspect, DXWKHQWLFLW\ LV ³speaking tasks should have some relation to real-life language use´ (ibid.). The choice of theme for speech FRQWHVW LV UHODWHG WR WKH VWXGHQWV ¶ life that is ³6WUDWHJ\ WR /HDUQ (QJOLVK´ %HVLGHV VSHHFK contest develops VWXGHQWV ¶ public speaking skill. This skill is useful for students ¶ future career.

METHODOLOGY
This study employed classroom action research which consists of four stages namely planning, action, observation and reflection (Latief, 2010: 86-88). The subject was 15 students of intermediate level of speaking class. The planning was to assign students to join speech contest that was conducted in University. Students competed with other students from different classes and departments to deliver speech under the theme ³love´ in 15 minutes. Before joining this competition student was given time to practice in two meetings with the guidance from the lecturer. In meeting 1 student practiced to compose a good speech text while in meeting 2 students practiced to deliver speech in front of class. They learned some methods of delivery in speech including practice the gestures, recite poem or song lyric, or use eye contact.
The speech contest was done at XQLYHUVLW\ ¶V KDOO so that students could speak on a stage. There were three adjudicators WKDW HYDOXDWHG VWXGHQWV ¶ VSHHFK Two adjudicators were the lecturers and one was lecturer from other university. 7KH VWXGHQWV ¶ speech was evaluated based on four criteria, fluency, accuracy, content and method of delivery. 7KH GDWD RI VWXGHQWV ¶ VFRUH IURP the three raters were collected to know VWXGHQWV ¶ VFRUH In addition, a questionnaire ZDV XVHG WR GLVFRYHU VWXGHQWV ¶ response or opinion toward the application of speech contest. This technique is successful if 80% students get score 80 or above and also 80% students show positive attitude toward this technique.

Planning
In speech contest, 15 students who became the subject of this research competed with 25 students from other classes and department to win the contest. In this case, most of the competitors were generally the best students that have good speaking ability. Conversely, not all 15 students were having a good speaking ability background, 13 students (80% students) were considered low, seeing from the result of their speaking performance in the preliminary study. Based on this condition, students might feel discourage. To help students overcoming this condition, in the planning the lecturer gave material and practice about speech, while in other classes the lecturer did not give any practice, students did preparation themselves.
The preparation included teaching students how to compose a good script of speeFK XQGHU WKH WKHPH ³/RYH´. Students did not find difficulty in developing the content, yet they found it difficult to construct sentence grammatically correct. In this case the lecturer gave feedback on VWXGHQWV ¶ WH[W VR WKDW WKH FRQWHQW DV ZHOO DV grammar of the text would be improved.
After this, the lecturer trained students to apply a good strategy to deliver speech. The strategy included how to speak fluently by teaching students to remember they key point in their speech. Besides that, the lecturer taught students to use speech aids including gesture, yes/no question to communicate with audience, and song or slogan to close the speech. During this practice, most students worked hard to speak fluently in front of their classmates (as the audience).

Action
After done with the preparation step, in the next meeting students performed to deliver speech on a stage. Each student was given time 10-15 minutes to deliver speech. 6WXGHQWV ¶ speech was evaluated by three adjudicators, one of which was the lecturer. The adjudicators used analytical scoring rubric that consisted of four criteria, namely fluency, accuracy, content and method of delivery. There were 4 scales for each component: 1, 2, 3, and 4. Score 1 was the lowest while score 4 was the highest. Table  1 showed students score. The average score was 84. The highest score was 95 while the lowest score was 79. There were three students who got score above 90, yet none of them became the winner. This was because many students perform well and the score for the winner was 98. Table 2 showed students score for each component. Among frequency, accuracy, content, and method of delivery; VWXGHQWV ¶ VFRUH RQ IUHTXHQF\ ZDV WKH highest, the three adjudicators gave highest score (4) for most students, it can be seen from the average score for each components on the Table 2. The average score for frequency was 3.7, accuracy was 3, content was 3.5, and method of delivery was 3.2. On the interview, one of the adjudicators explained that most students perform well, they speak fluently but not all speak with correct pronunciation and grammar.  4  3  3  3  81  4  3  3  3  81  3  3  3  3  75  2 PA  3  3  3  3  75  4  3  3  3  81  3  3  3  3  75  3 MKD  4  3  3  3  81  4  3  4  3  87  4  3  3  4  87  4 NA  4  3  3  3  81  4  3  3  3  81  4  3  3  3 4  3  3  3  81  4  3  3  3  81  4  3  3  3  81  8 BO  3  3  4  4  87  3  3  4  3  81  3  3  4  3  81  9 YO  3  3  4  3  81  3  3  3  3  75  3  3  4  3  81  10 NT  3  3  4  3  81  3  3  4  3  81  3  3  4  3  81 Note that f=fluency, a=accuracy, c=content, and d=method of delivery  In statement 1, most students (86.7%, 13 students) agreed that they felt confident in joining speech contest. Motivation played important role to make them confident. The lecturer motivated them to join the contest by giving them reward. The reward was a special gift for the winner. Besides, on the interview, some students revealed that they also got motivation from their close friend. In statement number 2 and number 3, most students agreed that they performed well (86.6%, 13 students) and were satisfied with their performance (80%, 12 students). During performance, some students revealed that the feeling of nervous was inevitable since this was the first time they performed speech contest on a stage with many audiences. Fortunately, most students can handle this feeling by keeping being relax and just enjoyed talking in front of audiences. Also, when students began to feel nervous, they remembered their reason to join speech contest. Besides that, another student explained that he was satisfied with his performance because he felt confident and he learned something important from this event. In statement number 4, most students revealed that they speak fluently during speech (86.6% = 13 students). Most of them prepared well. They applied good strategy to speak fluently, that was by understanding what they were going to say, by making summary and not memorizing all words on the script. Thus, most of them also stated that it was easy for them to express their idea in front of the audiences (80%, 12 students). In statement number 6, most students explained that their speaking ability improved after joining this contest (86.6%, 13 students). The lesson they got after joining this contest was the ability to speak confidently and the strategy to speak in front of many people, therefore they speak more fluent than before.

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
6HHLQJ IURP WKH UHVXOW RI VWXGHQWV ¶ score, questionnaire, and interview, it could be concluded that speech contest could LPSURYH VWXGHQWV ¶ IOXHQF\ LQ VSHDNLQJ 80% students, 12 students, got score 80 or above, although none of them became the winner. Additionally, 84% students, 13 students, showed positive response toward speech contest; therefore, this technique met criteria of success in 1 cycle.
At the beginning students hesitated and not motivated to speak in front of class, after joining speech contest they had valuable lesson and experience, that was speaking in front of people was not daunting experience. Students worked hard and prepared well to deliver speech, thus, most of them spoke well and they got positive responses from the audiences. This activity boosted their confidence.
Speech contest helped students to show their potential and directed students to work hard to make it real. In this case, students eliminated their negative feelings that might hinder their confidence to speak fluently. They focus on performing well and entertain the audiences. They focus on seeking this valuable experience rather than winning.
This technique work best when it is supported with reward and good guidance from the lecturer. In this case, the reward could be medium that motivated students to experience real world speaking practice. The reward should be the thing that most students like best. Besides, since most students speaking ability were low, the lecturer should help them to prepare to perform better by giving lesson on how to compose good speech, how to deliver speech, and also give feedback during practice in a class.
The good impact of speech contest gives insight to the lecturers who teach speaking course that is they should motivate students to join speech contest and motivate them to gain experience from this. The lecturer should help students to prepare by giving them training and reward based on students interest and competences.
This study revealed the use of speech contest to improve stXGHQWV ¶ IOXHQF\ LQ speaking, yet it did not address the FRUUHODWLRQ EHWZHHQ VWXGHQWV ¶ FRQILGHQFH and fluency in speaking. Therefore, for the future researcher it is good to analyze the effectiveness of speech contest from this angle.