IMPROVING VOCATIONAL STUDENTS SPEAKING SKILL

THROUGH ROLE PLAY TECHNIQUE

*Nurdiana Mahdalena Sinurat
** Willem Saragih
Abstract

This study was attempted to improve vocational students speaking skill through
Role Play Technique. This study was conducted by using classroom action
research. The subject of the research was class XI EK 2 SMK Negeri 1 Merdeka,
Berastagi, consists of 21 students. This research was conducted in two cycles. The
instruments of collecting data were diary notes, observation sheet, questionnaire
sheet, interview sheet and tests. Based on the speaking test score, it was found that
the students score kept improving from the first test to the third test. In the
orientation test, the mean score was 37.66, in the first cycle test, the mean score
was 48.33, and in the second cycle test, the mean score was 57.33. There was
improvement of students achievement from 57.33-37.66 about 19.67 points.
Based on the data from diary notes, observation sheet, questionnaire sheet and
interview, it was found that the students agreed that Role Play technique helped to
encourage them to speak, to express the language through appropriate
expressions, to think that speaking is not difficult. Thus, it was found that
teaching-learning process ran well. Students were active and interested in
speaking in the classroom. The result of the research shows that Role Play
Technique can improve vocational students speaking skill.
Key Words: Improve, Speaking, Classroom Action Research, Role Play Technique

Introduction
Entering the post-modernism era, the problem of speaking still occurs.
Speaking as one way to communicate verbally is still need to be improved in the
context of secondary school students achievement. Many students are difficult to
speak English even though the government has created a slogan in 2009 sounds
SMK BISA! to motivate them. While doing her teaching training program in
SMK N 1 Merdeka in Berastagi, the researcher found that there were only four or
five of thirty eight students who were interested in learning English. She asked the
reason to them. They said that English is a boring subject. They did not speak
English because the teacher herself was seldom to do that. She taught them by
only asking them to read the book, do the exercise and drill the conversation.
There were no communication activities in order to make the students more
communicative. The curriculum demand is not fulfilled by the method used by the
teacher.
As a foreign language in Indonesia, there are four skills that should be
achieved namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Of the four skills,
speaking is the most important skill that needs to be developed in a classroom
activity. Speaking serves either a transactional function, in that its primary
purpose is to convey information and facilitate the exchange of goods and service,
or it serves an interpersonal function in that its primary purpose is to establish and
maintain social relations. The students are expected to have a good English
communication in speaking either in the transactional or interpersonal function.
They need it to follow the development of the world globally.

In Indonesia, there are two categories of Secondary School, namely Senior

High School and Vocational High School with two different purposes as well.
Senior High School has a goal to prepare the students to enter a university.
Meanwhile, Vocational High School has a goal to prepare the students to enter a
job field. Thus, the Vocational High School students need a specific English
lesson to reach that goal. Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 3) state that English for
specific purposes is based on designing courses to meet the learners needs.
Government has determined a curriculum as a guideline. In the curriculum
of KTSP 2006, it is stated that the purpose of teaching English in Vocational High
School tends to be more communicative; especially when they get a job training
(PKL). However, the fact is contrary to the expectation as it is stated above that
the curriculum demand is not fulfilled by the method used by the teacher.
Actually, at the speaking level the emphasis of learning should be on free
communication. The teacher supervises a role play, while the activities in the
classroom are dominated by the students. The goal of playing the role actively is
that the students have more chances to use the language.
An old proverb said that practice makes perfect means the more the
students practice the words, the better improvement of speaking they get. It is
very important to create communication activities in the classroom in order to
make the students more communicative. Communication activities are the
activities in which the students are situated into a condition which requires them
to use the target language in doing something to achieve a communicative
purpose.

Role play technique is a way to apply that communicative purpose in the

classroom. This technique concerns more to the problem brought in the play, not
to the ability of the students to run the play. They focus more on the content and
purpose than on the expression (Saragih, 2005: 40 as quoted in Simatupang,2007:
2). This will create a natural conversation atmosphere where they can speak what
they really want to speak according to the role play.
In relation to the problem, the researcher would like to apply this
technique. Hopefully, the students will be interested to communicate in English
and get improvement in speaking.
Research Methodology
In this study, classroom action research (CAR) was applied to improve
the vocational students speaking skill by using Role Play technique. The subject
of research was the XI EK2 which consists of 21 students. Because there were 6
students who did not follow the overall research; the subject of the research that
was considered to be taken became 15 students.
In order to make the action research worked effectively, the planning
step needs to be prepared seriously. In case of the quantitative standard is not
fulfilled in the cycle 1, then in the reflection step, it is necessary to reflect what
happened in the action step and design a revised plan to be done in the cycle 2.
Here is the procedure of role play in teaching (Yoeng, 2012):
1. Introducing and explaining about role play and asking the students to
identify the situation for a role play to stimulate the students interest

2. Giving a topic and situation that will be discussed and discussing

more about the amount of participants.
3. Giving a new vocabulary and language functions based on the topic.
4. Giving a drill to the new vocabulary.
5. Asking the students to create a conversation based on the topic.
6. Asking the students to perform the conversation.
7. Asking the students to give evaluation on the performance
In this research, the data was collected by using test, observation,
interview, questionnaire and diary notes. Each instrument had its own function in
this research.
1. Observation was done to collect data about the activities of the
students during the research done.
2. The observation sheet was taken by the collaborator to provide the
information of the condition happens in the teaching learning
process included the application of Role Play technique, the
students behavior, and the interaction between the teacher and
the students.
3. Interview was done with the class-teacher and the students before
doing the research to know the level of students speaking ability.
The orientation test was in a form of oral test where the students
were asked to speak based on a role and a situation that was given
to them. Then, the students were taught by using role play

technique and took the cycle I test in same form of orientation test
but with a different role and situation.
4. Questionnaires were given to the students in the last meeting of the
research. It was done to know the students response about the
technique used in the research.
5. Diary notes were written to describe every condition that happened
during the research.
Data and Data Analysis
In analyzing the qualitative data, the researcher described the data which
was taken from observation sheet, interview sheet, questionnaire sheet and diary
notes. Meanwhile, the speaking tests were scored by applying the scoring rubric to
compute the improvement of the students achievement whether they had passed
the minimum standard.
The percentage of the students who passed the minimum standard in the
cycle II test was considered to be enough because it was reached by more than
50% of the total students. The improvement of the mean score of the students
from the orientation test to cycle I test was 10.67. Then it increased in the cycle II
test. The improvement of the mean score of the students from the cycle I test to
the cycle II test is 9.00. So, the improvement of the mean score of the students
from the orientation test to test cycle II is 19.67. In the cycle I test, there are 5
students (33.33%) who get point up to 60. In the cycle II test there are 10 students

(66.67%) who get point up to 60. The improvement from Cycle I to Cycle II is
33.34%.
The students achievement in these three tests is varied. In the orientation
test, the lowest score is 25 and the highest score is 55. In the cycle I test, the
lowest score is 25 and the highest score is 75. In the cycle II test, the lowest score
is 35 and the highest score is 70. There are two students (13.33%) who do not get
any improvement scores. There is one student (6.66%) who gets improvement
score about 5 points. There are three students (20%) who get improvement scores
about 10-19 points. There are three students (20%) who get improvement score
about 20-29 points. There are five students (33.33%) who get improvement score
about 30-40 points.
The findings of the research show that Role Play was able to improve
students speaking skill. It was proved by the data which showed that the mean of
the students in the cycle II (57.33) was higher than it was in the cycle I (48.33)
and in the orientation test (37.66).
Conclusion and Suggestion
After analyzing the data, the writer found that the students speaking skill
was improved from the cycle I to the cycle II. While conducting the research in
the two cycles, the researcher could see the improvement from the students in
their participation and ability of the students to speak up was increased. Most
of them felt happy and enjoy speaking English during the research. There was
not any reluctance to speak English anymore.

The improvement was also supported by the increasing of the mean of the
students scores. The mean score of the orientation test is 37.66; the mean of the
cycle I test is 48.33; and the mean of the cycle II test is 57.33.
In line with the result, it is suggested to the teacher to conduct an
enjoyable teaching-learning process; to the students to express everything in the
thought in the condition of relax and happy way; and to those who are interested
to conduct a research related to this study, it is suggested to give a new concept .

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