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 ELT FORUM 4 (1) (2015) 

 

Journal of English Language Teaching 
 

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

 

 

THE USE OF BAMBOO DANCING TECHNIQUE TO IMRPOVE STUDENTS’ 

SPEAKING SKILL IN INTERPERSONAL CONVERSATION 

(A Classroom Action Research at Grade VII Students of SMP IT Insan Cendekia 

Semarang in the Academic Year of 2014/2015) 

 

Linna Endah Nur Wahyuni  

 

English Department. Faculty of Languages and Arts. State University of Semarang 

 

Aticle Info 

________________ 
Article History: 

Received in Juni 2015 

Approved in Juli 2015 

Published in Agustus 

2015 

________________ 
Keywords: 

Bamboo-dancing technique, 

speaking skill, interpersonal 

conversation, action 

research. 

____________________ 

Abstract 
___________________________________________________________________ 
Mostly students of Junior High School have difficulties in their speaking skill, especially in interpersonal 

conversation. It is because they have to concern with the material and also the practice of the conversation itself. 

So, some techniques should be carried out to make speaking easier and interesting. One of the techniques to teach 

speaking is bamboo-dancing technique which is one of cooperative learning technique, in which students are 

placed in two lines to see each other and make conversation (Suprijono (2009:98)). The aim of this study is to 

find out how bamboo-dancing technique can be implemented in improving students’ skill to master interpersonal 

conversation. In order to achieve the objectives, an action research was designed and carried out in this study. 

The participants of this study were 28 students of class VII B of SMP IT Insan Cendekia Semarang in the 

academic year of 2014/2015. Questionnaires, observation guide, and speaking tests were used as the instruments 

for collecting the data. The analysis results of the first and second questionnaires showed that bamboo-dancing 

technique was useful to most of students of SMP IT Insan Cendekia Semarang to improve their learning 

motivation and interesting in interpersonal conversation. Their perception was changed positively after having 

the treatment. It meant that the use of bmboo-dancing technique could ease their problem in speaking in English 

especially interpersonal conversation. The results of the study showed significant improvement of the students’ 

achievement in mastering interpersonal conversation. It is proven by the average results in every test; pre cycle 

test (67), cycle 1 test (73), and post cycle test (79). Moreover, the result of the observation guide showed that 

bamboo-dancing technique changed the students’ learning behaviour being better than before. Based on the results 

of those research instruments, it can be concluded that the use of bamboo-dancing technique as learning technique 

gives the improvement of students’ speaking skill in interpersonal conversation in terms of motivation, attitude 

and mastery.  

 

© 2015 Universitas Negeri Semarang 

 
 Correspondent Address:  

   B3 Building  FBS Unnes  

   Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229 

   E-mail: linnaendah@yahoo.com 

 

ISSN 2252-6706 



Linna Endah Nur Wahyuni / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 

 

 

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INTRODUCTION 

 

Speaking is regarded as a skill which 

is difficult to learn because people have to 

know how to pronounce, how to deliver 

the message of the speech when they speak 

to someone. Besides, they have to know 

how to use the rules of speaking. Speaking 

has some activities, and conversation is one 

of them. As we know, conversation is when 

two people or more talk to each other in a 

formal and informal situation. 

Based on the current curriculum in 

our country that is 2013 curriculum 

especially for the seventh grader students of 

junior high school, they learn about one 

kind of conversation that is interpersonal 

conversation. In interpersonal 

conversation, the students learn how to 

socialize by using spoken language to 

interact with surrounding. Brown (2001: 

274) says that “interpersonal conversation 

is carried out more for the purpose of 

maintaining social relationships than for 

the transmission of facts and information”. 

Interpersonal conversation includes the 

materials for example suggestions and 

offers, greeting and leave taking, asking 

and giving opinion, giving compliments 

and congratulations, etc. For this 

interpersonal conversation material, the 

students have to concentrate to the teacher 

explanation about the material and also the 

ways to practice it. In reality, the seventh 

graders students of junior high school get 

some problems in learning interpersonal 

conversation.  

 There are two common problems 

faced by the students in doing interpersonal 

conversation. First is they don’t know the 

expressions used for stating, asking, giving, 

and also responding to the conversation, 

and the second they also get confused in the 

turn taking, when their turn to ask/ state 

and  when their turn to answer/ give 

responses. The fact that students in the 

seventh graders get difficulties in 

interpersonal conversation is experienced 

by the researcher while doing teaching 

practice in the SMP IT INSAN 

CENDEKIA Semarang. When the 

researcher asked the students to practice 

interpersonal conversation in pairs by the 

theme introducing to others, the students 

did not know who started the conversation 

first, what should be said at the first time, 

and what expressions must be used.  

By seeing these problems, the 

teachers should find other techniques in 

teaching interpersonal conversation. As we 

know that in speaking activities it will 

make the students  always practice the 

conversation, so to make them practice the 

conversation easily, it will be better to place 

the students in a group work/ pairs work as 

elaborated by cooperative learning 

technique in which students learn the 

material in a group work. Related to the 

difficulties faced by the students in 

interpersonal conversation, we need a 

cooperative technique which will make 

students really active and participate in the 

learning process as stated by Slavin (1995) 

that cooperative learning is an instructional 

method in which students are put in small 

groups through which students work 

together to maximize their own and each 

other’s learning. 

Due to the reasons above, the writer 

intended to carry out a research on the use 

of bamboo-dancing technique to improve 

the students’ speaking skill in interpersonal 

conversation. The objectives of this study 

are, the first to describe how bamboo 

dancing technique applied in teaching 

interpersonal conversation material, and 



Linna Endah Nur Wahyuni / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 

 

 

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the second, to describe how the students’ 

improvement in their speaking skill after 

bamboo-dancing had been applied.  

 

METHOD OF INVESTIGATION 

 

The writer uses action research in 

this study. Action research defines as a 

systematic study that combines action and 

reflection with the intention of improving 

practiced (Ebbutt 1985:156 in Cohen 

1994:297). Action Research means the 

researcher does his or her research by 

teaching real students in the real class, 

using steps which were designed by him or 

herself. Besides, one of the characteristic of 

action research is problem solving oriented. 

Then, Wallace (1998) said that action 

research is different from this in that it 

nearly always arises from some specific 

problem or issue arising out of our 

professional practiced, but it is very 

problem focused in its approach and every 

practical in its intended out comes. It 

means that researcher should discover 

something if he or she finds one or more 

problems in the learning activity in the 

class. In this action research there were four 

phases in one cycle for doing classroom, 

there were planning, acting, observing, and 

reflecting (Hopkin1985:50). Research 

design which will be done in this study will 

be applying two cycles. Each cycle consists 

of two meetings. Then, each meeting 

consists of four activities; planning, acting, 

observing, and reflecting as Hopkin to said 

above. It means that if the target was not 

achieved yet in cycle 1, the next cycle must 

be conducted after revising plan. 

Continuing the definition of action 

research, here, I apply the four 

components; planning, acting, observing, 

and reflecting in each cycle. Then, this 

research has two cycles. 

 



Linna Endah Nur Wahyuni / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 

 

 

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The description will be drawn in graphic below: 

 

Figure 3.1: Design of Classroom Action Research (Adapted from Kemmis and McTaggart in Arikunto, 

2006) 

a. Planning 

In this step, the writer explains about what, 

why, when, where, and how the action will be 

done. In planning step of the study, the writer 

prepares everything that will be needed and used 

in the study. The writer prepares such as the 

lesson plan, teaching material, attendance list, 

observation guide, exercises, and also scoring 

technique (scoring sheet). 

b. Acting 

This step is the implementation of the 

planning. This step must follow the plant hat had 

been planned in the planning steps. The writer as 

the teacher may do modification but may not 

deviate from the planning. In this study, the 

writer conducts 2 cycles which each cycle consists 

of 4 meetings. The writer used the same technique 

of teaching interpersonal conversation that is 

using 

Bamboo dancing technique for those 

cycles, but as stated before that the writer had to 

do modification in it when the writer conduct 

cycle 2. It purposes to improve the students’ 

achievement. 

c. Observing 

Observing is execution of observation 

which is done by the observer. In this study, the 

person who acts as the observers is the real 

teacher of the subject study. The observer had to 

note what is happened when the writer does the 

action. 

d. Reflecting 

In this step, the observer had to reflect the 

action which had been done to the writer who 

acts as the teacher in this action research. If the 

result of the first cycle is not good enough, the 

writer should do the second cycle. To support the 

research, the writer used questionnaire and test to 

gather the data. Hopefully, this research could be 



Linna Endah Nur Wahyuni / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 

 

 

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conducted well and could achieve the objective of 

this research. 

In this study, the researcher used random 

sampling technique. As stated by Huck, Cormier, 

and Bounds that the accuracy of the researcher’s 

inference depends on how representative the 

sample is. Thus, to make the sample more 

representatives, most researchers select the 

sample from the population randomly. In 

random sample, each member of population that 

you were sampling had an equal chance or 

probability of being selected as a subject. In this 

study, the researcher took one class from two 

classes that became the member of population. It 

is done by the researcher because the school had 

applied the randomization in students’ 

acceptance. The learning experience background 

of the students is different between one and other 

students since they were from many different 

elementary schools. From the explanation above, 

that is why the writer does not need to hold the 

random sampling again, and the writer is brave 

enough to choose the class 7A as the sample of 

this study.  

 The first instrument in this study used by 

the writer is a test based on Murcia (2001) said 

that perhaps the most difficult aspect of spoken 

English was that it was almost always 

accomplished via interaction with at least one 

other speaker. There were three tests which had 

been conducted during research; they were pre-

test, treatment I test/ cycle1 test, and post test. 

The pre-test given by giving the researcher made 

some oral test; they were interaction test and 

comprehension test about interpersonal 

conversation. After doing pre-test, the writer did 

the cycle 1. In the end of cycle 1, students were 

given simple evaluation to check students’ 

improvement. The form of cycle 1 was the same 

with the pre- test form. Then the last test that had 

to be conducted was post-test. The form of post-

test was just the same with pre-test and cycle 1 

test. In this action research, the writer also used 

the second instrument that was observation guide 

as one of research instruments. The observation 

guide was filled by the writer to know the 

students’ behavior changes as used in 2013 

curriculum when they were taught before and 

after using bamboo- dancing technique in 

interpersonal conversation competence. 

 

RESULTS OF THE STUDY 

 

Then, the result of each test showed that 

there was a good improvement of students’ 

speaking skill in interpersonal conversation 

competence. Then, the improvement of them 

could be seen in the chart below: 



Linna Endah Nur Wahyuni / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 

 

 

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The average score of pretest was only 67. It 

showed that the average in pretest was lower than 

the criterion of the passing assessment of SMP IT 

Insan Cendekia Semarang that had high criterion 

or KKM that is 75. In pretest, almost of them 

were still confused in doing interpersonal 

conversation, especially about what response to 

give and the turn taking. In detail, the writer also 

found that almost students of 7B did not have 

good grammar, proper pronunciation, good 

comprehension, vocabularies, and fluency in 

speaking. 

Then, in cycle 1 the average score was 73. 

Although it showed that the average was still 

lower than the criterion of the passing assessment 

of SMP IT Insan Cendekia Semarang which is 

75, the writer found that many of the students got 

improvement in speaking skill in this first cycle. 

They seemed more confident, more talk active, 

and more attractive in practicing the 

conversation. The students who got improvement 

could be seen for example C-1. In the pretest C-1 

got 68,75 and in the cycle 1 got 81,25. The other 

example C-21 who got significance score from 

62,5 to 81,25. Even though, in the first cycle we 

had been able to see the students’ improvement, 

the writer still had a responsibility to make some 

of students who still got lower score than 75 to 

pass the KKM.  

The average score of post test was 79. It 

showed that the average had passed the passing 

assessment of SMP IT Insan Cendekia Semarang 

which is 75. The improvement from cycle 1 to 

cycle 2 was 6,0 and there were eleven students got 

75 and 14 students got 81,25, and even though 

only three students got the highest score 87,5. It 

was a good improvement, and the average score 

of them was considered to be successful, and the 

comparison M pretest: M post test = 67 : 79. 

Then, it showed that the use of bamboo-dancing 

technique gave a good contribution to improve 

students’ speaking skill in interpersonal 

conversation especially about spoken 

introduction, greeting and leave taking, and also 

apologizing material.  

The result of the post test also showed that 

using bamboo-dancing technique in teaching 

interpersonal conversation gave many good 

impacts. First, English speaking class being 

attractive, interesting, fun, and not boring. 

Second, the students got easy to memorize and 

60

62

64

66

68

70

72

74

76

78

80

Pretest Cycle 1 Cycle 2



Linna Endah Nur Wahyuni / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 

 

 

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understand the expressions used and the turn 

taking. Third, the students seemed more active, 

more confidence, and attractive in practicing 

interpersonal conversation with their friends.  

Test was not the only proof to say that the 

use of bamboo- dancing technique improved 

students’ speaking skill. There were also 

observation guides in this study. The observation 

guide (to know students’ learning behavior) 

showed that the students’ behavior from pretest, 

cycle 1, and post test had improved well. In 

pretest, the writer still found so many students 

were busy by themselves. Most of them did not 

pay attention to the teacher when explained the 

materials, and friends who performed the dialog.  

In cycle 1 the students were more respect 

to the teacher and friends. The students liked to 

pay attention when the writer explained the 

material. Then, when the writer asked them to 

practice the expression using bamboo- dancing 

technique they were very enthusiastic. Not only 

improved their respect, applying bamboo-

dancing technique in interpersonal conversation 

also improved their confidence, honesty, and 

responsibility. 

The improvement of students’ behavior 

changes also appeared in the cycle 2. In cycle 2, 

all students seemed to be nice and good students. 

They always paid attention to the teacher when 

the teacher explained the materials, they always 

did the task very well and on time, and they were 

much more active in questioning, active in 

answering questions, and confident in performing 

dialog in front of the class. 

The other proof which showed that using 

of bamboo-dancing technique in teaching 

interpersonal conversation gave a good 

contribution in interpersonal conversation 

competence was the result of questionnaire that 

was filled by the students as the subject of the 

study. This questionnaire had 8 questions based 

on certain categories; they were about students’ 

interest, the advantage of using bamboo-dancing 

technique in teaching leaning process, students’ 

motivation, the relevancy of using bamboo-

dancing technique in teaching interpersonal 

conversation, and its sustainability. Then, the 

result showed that the students thought that the 

use of bamboo-dancing technique in teaching 

learning process helped them very much. 

Based on the result above, the writer 

concluded that the improvement of the students’ 

speaking skill in interpersonal conversations not 

only proved by the result of the test, but also 

proved by the result of the observation guide that 

was done by the writer, and the result of the 

questionnaire. In short, the writer concluded that 

bamboo-dancing technique really gave a good 

contribution to improve students’ speaking skill 

in interpersonal conversation competence; 

besides, it also changed the students’ learning 

behavior to be better. 

 

CONCLUSSION   

  

Then, the aim of this study was to 

investigate the use of bamboo-dancing technique in 

improving students’ speaking skill in 

interpersonal conversation at seventh grade 

students of SMP IT Insan Cendekia Semarang. 

The students’ achievement could be seen from the 

analysis in the test including pre test, cycle 1 test, 

and post test.  The result showed that the 

implementation of bamboo-dancing technique 

could improve students’ speaking skill, especially 

in interpersonal conversation competence. The 

students’ improvement in speaking skill is 

including some aspect of speaking 

(pronunciation, fluency, grammar, and 

vocabularies). The mean of students’ score from 

pre test to cycle 1 test was improved from 67 to 

73. The next improvement was showed by the 

mean of the student’s result from cycle 1 to post 

test, which is 73 to 79. Both cycles showed good 

result and positive progress which indicated that 

bamboo-dancing technique improved very much 

students’ speaking skill in interpersonal 

conversation competence at seventh grade 

students in SMP IT Insan Cendekia Semarang.  

 And the last aim of this study was to 

investigate the students’ learning behaviour 

before and after bamboo-dancing technique was 



Linna Endah Nur Wahyuni / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015) 

 

 

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implemented. The first evidence could be seen 

from the questionnaire. From the questionnaire, 

the students showed what being expected in this 

study. Based on the questionnaire, it showed that, 

the students’ interest in learning English was 

improved, bamboo-dancing technique improved 

the students’ motivation in learning interpersonal 

conversation materials, the use of bamboo-

dancing technique helped the students very much 

to improve their interpersonal conversation, 

students felt many differences in their speaking 

ability before and after bamboo-dancing 

technique had been implemented, the technique 

was very important to the students so that they 

wanted it to be done continuously. Second 

evidence, students’ behaviour changes was 

showed by the observation guide. Students’ 

learning behaviour had been changed from pre 

test to cycle 1, and from cycle 1 to cycle 2/ post-

test. The students’ behaviour had changed 

including their honesty, discipline, responsibility, 

and also their confidence. In pre test most of the 

students got C in their behaviour score, and in 

cycle 1, most of them improved their attitude in 

B score. Not only in cycle 1, in cycle 2/ post test, 

students also showed their behaviour 

improvement from B to A score. The students’ 

behaviour improvement was concluded very 

good improvement. 

 

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