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Journal of English Language Teaching

http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt

THE INFLUENCE OF USING VOICE BLOG ON STUDENTS’ SPEAKING 
ABILITY OF ANALYTICAL EXPOSITION

Ratih Laily Nurjanah

Department of  English, Faculty Language and Arts, Semarang State University, Indonesia

Abstrak

Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengamati bagaimana blog suara 
digunakan untuk mengajar eksposisi analitis lisan dan untuk mengamati 
apakah blog suara memberikan perbedaan yang signifikan dalam menin-
gkatkan kemampuan siswa berbicara tentang analisis eksposisi.Desain 
penelitian adalah eksperimental kuantitatif.Teknik pengumpulan data 
menggunakan Tes lisan, dan rubrik evaluasi.Data dianalisis menggunakan 
formula uji-t, untuk mengetahui apakah ada perbedaan yang signifikan 
antara skor rata-rata kelompok eksperimen dan kelompok kontrol. Hasil 
penelitian menunujkkan skor rata-rata post test kelompok eksperimen lebih 
tinggi kelompok kontrol. Oleh karena nilai t hitung lebih tinggi dari t tabel-, 
maka itu berarti ada perbedaan yang signifikan antara kemampuan  anali-
tis siswa yang diajarkan menggunakan blog suara dibanding mereka yang 
diajarkan tanpa blog suara.

Abstract
The objectives of  the study was to observe how voice blog is used to teach spoken ana-
lytical exposition and to observe whether or not voice blog gives significant difference 
in improving students’ speaking ability of  analytical exposition.To achieve the objec-
tives of  the study, an experimental quantitative research was conducted. Spoken test, 
and rubric of  evaluation were used to collect the data. The technique to analyze the 
data was t-test formula. It was used as a technique to determine whether there was 
any significant difference between the means of  the score of  the experimental and 
the control group or not. The mean score of  the post-test of  the experimental group 
was higher than the mean of  post-test of  the control group. And the t obtained value 
(4.703) was higher than the t critical table (1.67). Since the t-test was higher than the 
t-table, then it means that there was a significant difference of  the spoken analytical 
exposition text score of  the students who were taught using voice blog to the score of  
those who were taught without voice blog.

© 2012 Universitas Negeri Semarang

ISSN 2252-6706

Info Artikel
Sejarah Artikel:
Diterima Januari 2012
Disetujui Februari 2012
Dipublikasikan Agustus 2012

Keywords:
Voice blog
Spoken
Analytical exposition 

 Alamat korespondensi: 
    Gedung B3 Kampus Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229

 E-mail: ratihfbs@unnes.ac.id



Ratih Laily Nurjanah/ Journal of  English Language Teaching 1 (1) (2012)

2

Introduction

Using blog for English teaching and lear-
ning process can be so interesting for students 
because they tend to like using and taking part 
in acitvities familiar to them. The technology, for 
them, represents a fun activity. By blogging, te-
acher feedback can be given instantly in the form 
of  comments or as a response to what the stu-
dents has produced or poted on their blogs. Each 
student is free to demonstrate what they have 
been learning and their thoughts on a given topic, 
ideas, or concepts. Galien (2010), on her journal, 
pointed out the advantageous of  using blog in 
ESL/ EFL classroom; they are: (a) increased peer 
interaction among students, (b) increased teacher 
interaction with the students, (c) students exhibi-
ting more positive emotions about learning, and 
(d) an increased sharing of  ideas among students 
and with the teacher. The use of  voice blog was 
firstly introduced by Yu Chih Sun in his study 
Voice Blog: An Exploratory Study Of  Language Lear-
ning.

Voice blog as a medium for students to 
improve speaking skill helps students to have a lot 
of  chance to practice their speaking skills. First, 
teacher will give them a model how to produce 
good spoken text. The page on voice blog will help 
teacher to show to students. It starts from making 
an outline and draft. Second, The students will 
learn how to select words and sentences which 
are appropriate for them by using mini dictionary 
provided in the blog. This mini dictionary helps 
students to choose some words which may be sui-
table for their thesis.. Third, they will be guided 
by teacher to conceptualize their thoughts about 
an issue by doing a brainstroming. Fourth, stu-
dents are guided to write their concepts into an 
outline or a draft and then post them to the voi-
ce blog. Fifth, they will be helped by teacher to 
organize the outline into meaningful and logical 
sequence, in this case is analytical exposition text. 
Sixth, they ‘memorize’ what they have organized 
and produce it in form of  spoken language to be 
recorded and uploaded to the voice blog to comp-
lete the outline/ draft they have posted before. Te-
acher can evaluate or assess the students speaking 
skill by visiting the pages and giving feedback in 
form of  comments.

methods

I used experimental study to observe the 
improvement of  students’ speaking skill in spo-
ken analytical exposition. Arikunto (2006) says 
that an experiment is the way in which a resear-

cher created a situation or an event which was 
then analyzed in order to find out the effect that 
it made. 

 Each control and experimental group in-
volves 18 students of  eleventh grade of  SMA N 
1 Tuntang as the objects of  the study. This study 
took 5 meetings which were held on November 
19th to November 28th 2011. 

In this study, there a two type of  test, pre-
test and posttest, which were conducted at the 
first and last meeting. The score of  the test is 
based on the some categories. They are grammar, 
vocabulary, fluency, pronunciation and content. 
On each category, there are five items that have 
different score. The score are 1 up to 5 to each 
item in each category, so the total of  all items are 
25. Here, I modified my own rubric of  evaluation 
which is suitable for English as foreign language 
students. The mean score of  each test reached by 
control and experimental group was the result of  

the statistics: M =  ∑x/n
Where : M = mean
∑x= the sum of students’ scores
 n= the sum of students

and then the mean was used to get t-obtained 
value by using this formula:

Voice blog was used during the treatment, 
second to fourth meeting, given to experimental 
group as a medium to improve the students’ spea-
king ability. I used t-test method to observe whet-
her or not voice blog gives significant difference 
(Brown, 2004)

Result and Discussion 

I conducted the pre-test on November 19th 
2011. The students of  experimental and control 
group were introduced to analytical exposition 
and taught about generic structure, lexico gram-
matical features, etc. Students were given models 
how to read an analytical exposition text. Later, 
they were given an issue and were asked to discuss 
the issue in pairs. The issue for this pre-test was 
‘Cigarette and Students’ Last, they had to deliver 
their opinion about an issue orally individually. 
While students delivered their opinions, I recor-
ded their performances. And from each record, I 
wrote the transcript so I could actually catch the 
mistakes or errors made by students by matching 
the record with the transcript and then assessed 
the performances one by one. I assessed the per-

21 n
1

n
1 s

xx t 21

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=



3

Ratih Laily Nurjanah/ Journal of  English Language Teaching 1 (1) (2012)

formances based on the certain chriteria made 
before. From this pre-test, the result was unsatis-
fying, since students made errors and mistakes in 
pronouncing familiar/ common words; such as: 
students, school, etc. They couldn’t perform the 
good spoken texts because they had limited vo-
cabularies so they were not able to expand their 
main ideas. The mean score gained by experi-
mental group was 64,7 and control group gained 
67,5. From the scores, found that t-obtained value 
of  pre-test was -1.478.

The first treatment was done on November 
23rd 2011. The activities in this treatment were 
using voice blog to help students arranging outli-
ne and draft for their spoken analytical exposition 
text. The issue for the treatment was “Free Sex 
among Students”. First, students were reviewed 
the pre-test material about analytical exposition 
in sub-page ‘What to Do’. And then, from this 
page they learned how to prepare a good spoken 
text. It was start by making an outline. In this 
page, they could find an example of  outline so 
they could learn how to make it as the example 
given. This page provided vocabularies to help 
students decide which words were suitable for 
their thesis, whether agree or disagree. Next, stu-
dents did the second step of  preparing a good 
spoken text, it was making a draft. This page gave 
an example of  draft which was developed from 
the outline. The drafts they have made were up-
loaded to the blog  to “Students’ Works” page to 
be viewed by teacher and commented as the feed-
back. Students could view the comments at home 
and revise the drafts for the next performance so 
the process of  teaching and learning didn’t stop at 
school. In this activity, students are helped by voi-
ce blog in choosing words and improving voca-
bularies into an outline and arranging sentences 
with correct tense into a draft by providing mini 
dictionary and examples of  outline and draft. So, 
students’ difficulties which was found in previous 
session (pre-test) may be solved. 

The second treatment was done on Friday, 
November 25th 2011. In this meeting, students are 
helped by voice blog to perform spoken analyti-
cal exposition well by observing the script and 
examples given on the blog. Students  performed 
the speech based on draft they had revised before. 
The performance of  students were recorded and 
uploded to the blog so the teacher could listen to 
them and left comment as feedback. At home, 
students can view the comments and prepare 
themselves to perform the revised version. In this 
session, teacher tried to solve students’ difficulties 
by correcting pronounciation with voice blog as 
the medium. Students still did some mistakes and 

errors even in pronouncing common words such 
‘students’, ‘parents’, and spelling ‘HIV’. 

The third treatment was the last treatment. 
It was done on Saturday, November 26th 2011. 
In this meeting, the students performed the re-
vised version of  their last records and recorded 
by teacher. They compared the last records with 
the recent ones. From this acitivity, I concluded 
that students can accept the comments well since 
most of  the records showed improvement in pro-
nounciation and fluency. Teacher left comment 
again to motivate students in performing the best 
spoken analytical exposition.

The post-test of  the both groups were con-
ducted on November 28th 2011. The students 
were asked to perform the spoken analytical text 
and recorded by teacher. The issue for this post 
test was “Social Networks and students”. From 
the result, students’ score showed improvement 
and the records sound better compared with pre-
test. The step and the chriteria used in this post-
test were same as the pre-test ones. First, students 
were given the issue. And then, they applied the 
steps taught in the treatments. Last, they per-
formed one by one and teacher recorded their 
performances. Teacher wrote the script of  each 
performance and matched the script with the re-
cord. From the analysis found that students of  
experimental group suceeded in improving their 
speaking ability by gaining higher score than the 
previous pre-test. They are able to solve their dif-
ficulties in making some errors and mistakes in 
pronouncing words, expanding their ideas and 
arranging their ideas into proper generic structu-
re of  analytical exposition text. The mean score 
of  experimental group in this test was 90. On the 
other hand, the control group did not show sa-
tisfying improvement since they kept repeating 
the same mistakes and are not able to arrange 
a good analytical exposition texts. The control 
group reached 80 as the mean score of  post-test. 
From the mean scores of  those two groups, the 
t-obtained value of  post-test was 4.594.

This improvement can caused by the use 
of  Voice Blog of  Spoken Analytical Exposition 
in teaching spoken analytical exposition in expe-
rimental group. This blog helps students to solve 
their difficulties in 5 aspects of  scoring speaking 
skill. The difficulty in vocabulary aspect was sol-
ved because voice blog provides mini dictionary 
which helps students to get their words easily but 
still motivates students to enrich their vocabula-
ry knowledge by not providing the meaning of  
words. In this case, students still have to look up 
their dictionary to find the meanng of  the words. 
The students were helped to solve their gram-



Ratih Laily Nurjanah/ Journal of  English Language Teaching 1 (1) (2012)

4

mar difficulties because voice blog provides clear 
example of  how to arrange the words into a good 
analytical exposition. The example was in the 
form of  draft not in the form of  tenses formula so 
students were motivated to conclude from what 
they read. Moreover; they have learned simple 
present tense before. So the draft was purposed to 
keep them in the right track of  arranging words 
into simple present tense. The improvement on 
pronunciation was caused by the chance given by 
teacher via voice blog for students to have a gui-
de in practicing their performance at home. This 
chance happened through the comments from 
the teacher left as the feedback on each student’s 
work in every meeting. This thing also happened 
to the improvement on fluency aspect. Students 
have more time to keep on practicing perform 
their spoken analytical exposition at home be-
cause they were motivated to perform the best 
for the blog since the blog is also visited by ot-
her students. Teacher’s comments also causes the 
improvement on content aspect. By noticing the 
guideline from teacher in developing ideas, stu-
dents were helped to arrange their spoken text 
script with good and relevant content without ig-
noring their own opinion of  the topic.  The effec-
tiveness of  using voice blog is also caused by the 
blog itself. Students nowadays are really close to 
internet and working with internet becomes one 
of  their interests. This blog actually supports the 
process of  non-stop teaching-learning by giving 
chance to students and teacher to communicate 
outside the classroom and school hours. Teach-
er can view the works carefully and give suitable 
feedback, while students are motivated to prepare 
the best performance at home. And this blog also 

gives students complete examples and guides for 
students.

Conclusions

Voice blog can be used to teach spoken 
analytical exposition by guiding students to fol-
low the steps to perform good spoken analytical 
exposition. Voice blog leads students to make an 
outline, draft, and gives students chance to prac-
tice at home so it helps students to solve their 
difficulties in spoken analytical exposition. Voice 
blog is used by teacher as a medium to observe 
students’ improvement by viewing their works on 
the blog and giving them comments as feedback 
for students.

Voice blog can improve students’ speaking 
ability by giving sinificant difference in students’ 
scores. It was proven by the t-obtained value of  
post-test (4.594) which was higher than t-critical 
value (1.67) which means that there was signifi-
cant difference between the score of  post teas of  
experimental group and control group’s.

References

Arikunto. 2006. Prosedur Penelitian: Suatu Pendekatan 
Praktek. Jakarta: P.T. Melton Putra

Brown, H. D. 2004. Language Assessment: Principles and 
Classroom Practices. New York: Longman

Galien, P. and W.L. Bowcher. 2010. Using blogs in 
ESL/EFL teaching and teacher-training. 
Asian EFL Journal. Professional Teaching Ar-
ticles, 42/2: 4 – 23. Online at www.asian-efl-
journal.com/pta-February-2010.pdf  [acessed 
04/05/11]


