NAME

: ULFI ISNAENI

ID NUMBER

: 20400112084

TITLE

: Improving Students Speaking through Information Gap Activities

at The Second Grade of SMPN 1 Awangpone

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

This chapter consists of background, research problem, objective of the study, significance of the
study, and the scope of the research.
A. BACKGROUND
Since the globalization era English is used everywhere. English is used as a first language
in some countries and as a second language in some other countries. It is the language of
business, technology, science, popular entertainment, tourism, trade etc. In addition, the majority
of all resources on the internet are in English. Therefore, learning English is important. One of
the skills in English that is stressed most is speaking since someone is considered master in
English when he is able to speak in English. Cameron state, Speaking is the active use of
language to express meaning so that other people can make sense of them, therefore, the label of
productive use of language can be applied to speaking. Speaking is one of the most demanding
skills in the daily life. Every person needs to communicate with others through speaking.
Speaking plays an important role in making a social interaction with another people in order to
gain information. Thus, it is necessary for every people to have a good speaking skill.

The students have to be accustomed to speak utterances orally in the classroom even in
the very simplest way, such as greeting, answering, expressing ideas, giving responses, and the
like. Thus, the students need to have a good speaking ability in order to achieve the objectives of
English teaching and learning as stated in the curriculum.
It is not easy to improve the students speaking ability since there are some factors that
might cause the students speaking problem, it could be caused by internal factors and external
factors. The examples of internal factors are; the students motivation, the students interest, and
the students intelligence, while the examples of external factors are; economic background,
learning materials and teachers performance including their teaching methods. Actually, teacher
usually find problems to guide their students in improving speaking. For instance, the teachers of
English Subject at the second grade students of SMPN 1 Awangpone. They have significant
problems to help their students in improving speaking.
According to researchers previous observation, the researcher occasionally finds
problems including most of students do not have confidence to speak in front of their friend. It
caused by the students feel shy if they are not good in speaking because of less vocabulary and
ungrammatically. Thus, they are not interest to learn more how to speak because they consider
that their friend will laugh them if they are wrong in speaking.
The students problem above are very prominent to solve. The students of mastering
speaking is still low because they are not interest to speak because they do not have good
confidence. Hambly (1992 ) confidence is defined as belief in yourself to be able solve every
situation with calm, confidence is more to do with one's relationship with others. Therefore, it is
possibly dangerous if the learning and teaching process like that. Therefore, the researcher

concerns on a research to overcome and minimize the problems above through implementing
information gap activities in improving speaking.
The researchers concern to choose this information gap activities is an interesting
technique in improving speaking. In information-gap activity, the students should communicate
each other in target language in order to get the information needed to be known by them to
complete the assignments given by the teachers and learners are given the opportunity to work
independently in sharing information. According to Scrivener, the aim of information gap
activity is to get the students to use the language they are learning to interact in realistic and
meaningful ways. In addition, by using information-gap activity in the classroom, all the
students will have opportunity to practice to speak English in class. Therefore, not only the
students with high confidence who will speak English in class, but also the students with low
confidence.
Referring to some previous explanations above, the researcher excites to conduct a
research tittled Improving Students Speaking through Information Gap Activities at The
Second Grade of SMPN 1 Awangpone.
B. RESEARCH PROBLEM
Based on the problem mentioned above, the writer formulated the research question as follows
a. Does information-gap effective to improve the students speaking ability at the second
grade of SMPN 1 Awangpone?
b. How does information-gap effective to improve the students speaking ability at the
second grade of SMPN 1 Awangpone?

C. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The objective of the study are:

a. To see whether or not information-gap effective to improve students speaking skill.
b. To know how information-gap effective to improve students speaking skill.
D. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
This research is concerned about teaching speaking skill through information gap
activities. The significances are expected to give benefit contribution to SMPN 1 Awangpone
both theoretical and practical significance as follows:
Theoretically, this study is expected to give a contribution in teaching English especially
for teaching speaking using information gap. The new research finding about teaching speaking
through information gap can develop the education in teaching learning process especially in
teaching speaking. In addition, the researcher hopes this study can be a reference for the other
researchers who want to conduct an investigation in teaching speaking.
Practically, this study is conducted to determine the effectiveness of using information
gap in teaching speaking to the eighth grade students of SMPN 1 Awangpone. It would be
implemented in the class to give more opportunities to the students to be more active in
speaking. Besides, the researcher hopes this study can give motivation to the students to be
confident to represent their idea, opinion, feeling and many others through speaking. This study
also gives a suggestion to English teachers of SMPN 1 Awangpone to develop successful
information gap in teaching speaking skill as they can identify the major problems faced by their
students in learning speaking skill.

E. THE SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH

To limit the scope of the study, the writer will only discuss such as follows:

a. This study will be done in the eighth grade students of SMPN 1 Awangpone Kabupaten
Bone.
b. This study will talk about the use of information gap activities, which is effective to
improve students speaking. It is done to find the effective way to teach speaking.

CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURES

This chapter consists of previous findings, operational definition of term, basic concept, and
theoretical framework.
A. PREVIOUS FINDINGS
Agus (2014) in his journal entitled Improving Speaking Skill through Information Gap
Technique said that information gap is an activity which requires at least two different
versions of material. Students work together in pairs and each student has different
information on their card, hence they have to talk each other by using the target language in
order to complete it. For example completing a task by obtaining missing information,
conveying telephone, and expressing opinion. It sets up practicing on specific item of
language. It is like more drill than real communication. The research is held by pre-test and
post-test. After comparing the result in the pre-test and in the post-test, he concludes that there
is a significant progress in improving students speaking skill by using information gap
technique. It means that the information gap technique can be used in improving students
speaking skill. To compare with my research, it is same with my own research that discuss
about using information gap toward speaking skill.
Asrobi (2013) in his journal entitled The Effect Of Information Gap Technique and
Achievement Motivation toward Students Speaking Ability said that using information gap
technique, the teacher is able to improve the students speaking ability. In addition,
achievement motivation in learning a foreign language is very important also. The teacher
should be able to create the learning that arouses students achievement motivation in foreign
language learning. Information gap technique as one of innovative techniques in teaching
speaking comes up with the answers to solve the problems in motivation of speaking. By
using information gap technique gives students the chance to work on negotiating meaning

and feel more comfortable to speak. On the other hand, when students work in small groups,
the communicative practice they receive will be maximized. In this way, students also learn to
pay attention not only to communicating the intended meaning, but also to the social context
of the communicative event. To compare with my research, while Asrobi issued about
Achievement Speakings Motivation by using Information Gap, my own research will
concern generally about speaking.
Defrioka (2009) in his journal entitled Improving Students Interaction in Speaking
Class through Information Gap Activities said that Information gap activities can better
improve the students interaction with the teacher and other students. When they were
practicing in pair work and group work, all of them participated. It meant that students
participation in the class also improved. On the other hand, they decreased the amount of
teacher talking time.

B. OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF TERM

Some operational definitions are given to avoid misunderstanding from the readers. The key
terms are operationally defined as follows:
1. Information Gap
Information gap activity is the process of completing the information through exchanging the
information with their friends by asking each other question in order to get complete
information.
2. Speaking
Speaking is process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal to process
information between a student and another student.

C. BASIC CONCEPT
1. Information Gap Activities
Definition of Information Gap Activities
Information gap is one of important aspect of communication in Communicative
Language Teaching. This refers to the fact that in real communication, people normally
communicate in order to get information they do not possess. The communication will be
occurred in each speaking activity using information gap technique if the students can use
their language resources in order to obtain information from the other students.
According to Richard, communicative language teaching theoreticians have advocated the
use of tasks that involve information gap that is learners work on the same task, but each
learner has different information needed to complete the task.
Furthermore, Harmer state that one type of speaking activity involves the so-called
information gap where two speaker have different information, there is a gap between
them. One popular information gap activity is called Describe and Draw. In this activity one
student has a picture which he or she must not show his or her partner (teachers sometimes
like to use surrealist paintings empty doorways on beaches, trains coming out of fireplaces
etc). All the partner has to do is draw the picture without looking at the original, so the one
with the picture will give instructions and descriptions, and the artist will ask questions.
From the statement above, the writer can say that information gap is effective since by
conducting information gap every student has opportunity to use the target language to
communicate. In information gap, students practice to speak English as it is the way to
complete tasks.
Characteristics of Information Gap Activities
Nunan state that Information-gap activity is characterized as follow:
a. In each activity the student is given a task.
b. The information they need for the task is split into two parts (student A and student B), no
student has enough information to be able to do it alone.

c. The students have to ask each other for the information they need and come to a decision
together.
d. The activities are not exercises, but contexts in which the students can use language to

find out about things they genuinely need to know and to share ideas.
Advantages of Information Gap Activities
As stated by Harmer that Information Gap is a key to the enhancement of communicative
purpose and the desire to communicate.
Moreover, Nunan points out that it has been found that small-group, two way information
gap tasks seem to be particularly appropriate for stimulating such language.
In addition, Weir said that one of the advantages of using Information Gap in classroom
is to elicit highly interactive task, and as such comes much closer than most other tasks in

representing real communication.

Disadvantages of Information Gap Activities
Weir sees that there are some problems which might appear when Information Gap used
in the classroom, he stated that there will be a problem if in a pair work information gap, one
of the participants dominates the interaction as his/her partner may have a more limited

opportunity to demonstrate communicative potential.

2. Speaking
Definition of Speaking
Speaking is very important skill. As human being, we need to socialize with one another.
One way to socialize is to communicate. There are some ways to communicate. One of the
ways of communication which used most frequently in humans daily life is speaking. We can
communicate our feelings, ideas, or just information we have to others directly by speaking.
Thus without an ability to speak well we cannot tell others clearly what ideas we have in
mind, what information we have, or even what is our opinions toward something.
Speaking is one of the most difficult aspects for students to master. Pollard state that it is
difficult when learners have to consider and think about their ideas, what to say, language,
grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation in one time and how to react with a person who
communicates with them. Therefore, the teacher should give the students more opportunities

in speaking and create the best environment for them, motivate the students to be braver and
more confident to say something. The teacher also should give attention to some ways that
will help the students to achieve a success in speaking such as the tasks which is used by the
students must be at a right level for the students, challenging tasks which is appropriate with
the material, praising students efforts, creating a good environment by choosing a right
approach to teach.
In addition, Scott Thornbury suggests that the teaching of speaking depends on there
being a classroom culture of speaking, and that classrooms need to become taking
classroom. In other words, students will be much more confident speakers (and their
speaking abilities will improve) if this kind of speaking activation is a regular feature lessons.
To sum up, the writer can say that speaking is important skill that should be learn. In
speaking, student should confident with the other speaker so that they can understand what
topic talk about and can be interactive.
Speaking Competence
Speaking competence is not only the theoretical study but also it is daily activities and
humans need for growing. Speaking skill consists of linguistic performance and linguistic
competence. As according to Chomsky said linguistic performance is the actual use of language
in concrete situation. And also according to William OGrady, states that linguistic competence
is the ability in producing and understanding an unlimited number of utterances.
According to Hornby, to measure the students speaking competence, has five competences
as follows:
a. Pronunciation
Pronunciation as the way in which a language is a spoken, way in which a word is
pronounced. In pronunciation including its aspect like accent, stress, and intonation.
b. Grammar
Grammar is structure system of language. Learners must be given insight into word order,
inflection and derivation into the other meaningful features of the English language. It
will help students to speak fluently.
c. Vocabulary

Vocabulary is range of words known or used by a person in trade, profession, etc. If

students have many vocabularies, it will be easier for him to express his idea.
d. Fluently
Fluency as the quality of being able to speak smoothly and easily. It means that someone
can speak without any hesitation. Someone can speak fluently even though he makes
errors in pronunciation and grammar.
e. Self-Confidence
A student with good grammatical and vocabulary master usually has a big confidence to
express idea, suggestion or answer the question.

D. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Based on the theory of the research, the theoretical framework is described in the following:

CLASS X

CLASS Y

EXPERIMENTAL

EXPERIMENTAL

COMPARATIVE

CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter consists of research method, research setting, research participant, research design,
data collecting technique, instrument, and data analyzing technique.

A. Research Method
This study used in this study is Experimental Research. Ary Donald (2002) state that
experimental research involves a study of the effect of the systematic manipulation of one
variable (s) on an another variable. The manipulated variable is called experimental treatment
or the independent variable. The observed and measured variable is called the independent
variable.
As understood, experimental research is intended to examine a theory or compare
existing theory and describing natural data. Danim (2007) stated that experimental researchs
aim is to accurate cause and effect relationship by expose one or more experimental group and
the result is compared with one or more control group that used non treatment.

B. Research Setting
a. Place
This study will be conducted at The Second Grade of SMPN 1 Awangpone which is
located Awaru, Kelurahan Macope, Kecamatan Awangpone, Kabupaten Bone.
b. Time
This study is projected start from December 12nd 2015 until December 19th 2015.
C. Research Participant
a. Research Population
The population on this research were the second grade students of SMPN 1 Awangpone in
the academic year of 2015/2016. It consisted of 119 students and divided into four classes
(VIII A, VIII B, VIII C, and VIII D).
b. Research Sample
Experiment class is class that given treatment, and contol class is class that not given
treatment, as comparator. For the research, the writer used purposive sampling technique,
as Sugiyono stated that purposive sampling is a technique of sample determination is based
on certain consideration. The consideration of taking the sample is that this sample is based

on recommendation from the English teacher and purposive sampling used because
researcher has difficulties to choose respondent. Based on the explanation above, the
researcher took two classes as the sample that is VIII A consists of 30 students as the
control class and VIII B consists of 30 students as the experiment class. So, the total
sample is 60 students.
D. Research Design
The research design of this research are:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
i.
j.

determine the topic

review the relevant reference
develop a hypothesis
select and assign participants in the group
determining the measurement instruments
determining the variable experimental and control groups
develop treatment / action
collect and analyze data
makes a decision about a hypothesis ( appropriate or not appropriate )
draw up conclusions

E. Data Collecting Technique

a. Observation
Arifin (2012) stated that observation is the technique of data collection is done with less
road and recording observations systematically, logically, the actual situation and in an
artificial situation in order to achieve certain goals. In this research, the researcher use
indirect observation. Dije (2009) stated that indirect observation, the observations made to
an object through the intermediary of a tool or means, whether implemented in real and
artificial situations.
b. Test
Arifin (2012) stated that test is a measurement technique in which there
is a wide range of questions, statements, or series of tasks that must be

done or answered by the respondent. There are two kinds of test, they
are

Pre Test
Ganditama (2014) stated that pre test is a test activity level of students' knowledge of the
material to be delivered , activities conducted prior to pre-test given teaching activities,
the benefits of holding Pre test is to determine the ability of the students' initial lessons
delivered . By knowing the initial capabilities of these students , the teacher will be able
to determine how the delivery of lessons that will be in the sails later.

Post Test
Ganditama (2014) stated that post test is the final evaluation of the material currently
taught on that day has been given in which a teacher provide post test with the intent of
what students already know and understand about the material just given on that day. This
post test results compared with the results of the test Pree has done so it will be known
how far the effect or influence of the teachings that have been carried out , besides once it
is known which part part of the teaching material that is still not understood by most
students.

c. Treatment
Wiyono (2007) stated that treatment is the particular treatment given to the subject.
Treatment used in this study is the information gap that is done on the experimental
experiment class.
d. Questionnaire
Sugiono (2014) stated that questionnaire is the technique of data collection is done by
giving a set of questions or a written statement to the respondent to answer. In this study,

the questionnaire used is close questionnaire. Close questionnaire is a questionnaire in

which the respondent are restrictrd by various options.

F. Instrument
1. Observation check list
Observation check list is a list of questions that an observer will be looking to answer
when they are doing a specific observation of a classroom.
2. Question
Question is a sentence, phrase, or word that asks for information or is used to test
someones knowledge.
3. Paper of Questionnaire
Paper that consist of questionnaire (questions or a written statement to the respondent to
answer).

G. Data Analyzing Technique

The technique of the data analysis used in the research is Quantitative data analysis. This is a
technique used to analyze and count the data, to know the student's achievement in speaking
by using information gap activities.
a. Scoring Students Achievement
'
student sgained score
Score =
100
total score
b. Mean Score
x
x =
N

: mean

x : total score
N : total student
c. Median

F
2
M e=Tb+ p .
f

Tb : Tepi bawah kelas median

p : panjang kelas interval
n : banyak data
F :frekuensi kumulatif

F : frekuensi kelas median