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 ELT FORUM 5 (1) (2016) 

 

Journal of English Language Teaching 

 

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

 

 

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING TWO STAY TWO STRAY AS A 

TECHNIQUE IN IMPROVING STUDENTS SPEAKING ABILITY 

(A Quasi Experimental Research at the Tenth Grade Students of SMA Taruna 

Nusantara Magelang in the Academic Year of 2015/2016) 

 

Octavia Puspaning Maharani 

 

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

 

Aticle Info 

________________ 
Article History: 

Received in February 

2016 

Approved in March 2016 

Published in April 2016 

________________ 
Keywords: 

Two Stay Two Stray, 

Speaking, Experimental 

Research. 

____________________ 

Abstract 
___________________________________________________________________ 
This research is about using Two Stay Two Stray technique for teaching speaking in senior high school. Two 

Stay Two Stray is an interactive technique that encourages the participants to be more creative and active in 

group work. This research aimed to find out whether or not Two Stay Two Stray technique is effective to teach 

speaking at the tenth graders of SMA Taruna Nusantara Magelang in the academic year of 2015/2016. The 

research design used was quasi experimental research. Tests and observation checklist were used as the 

instruments to collect the data and information. Before conducting the experiment, try out was given to 30 

students of X-7 to make sure that they were valid and reliable. The researcher used class X-1 as the experimental 

group and X-2 as the control group. Both classes were in the same level, background, and competence. 

The result of the pre-test showed that the mean score of the experimental group was 62.27 and the mean score of 

the control group was 60.47. After the treatment, the mean score of experimental group was 83. 86 and the mean 

score of control group was 77.86. It could be seen that there was an improvement after the treatments dealing 

with their speaking ability. From the t-test computation of the post-test score, the t-value was higher than t-table 

(t-value > t-table = 4.167 > 2.750). Therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected and the working hypothesis was 

accepted. It means that there is a significant difference between the experimental group and the control group.  

The results indicate that Two Stay Two Stray technique is effective in improving the speaking ability at the tenth 

graders of SMA Taruna Nusantara Magelang in the academic year of 2015/2016. It is suggested that the 

findings of this study could be applied regularly and continously or developed by the English teachers to have a 

better speaking teaching. 

 

© 2016 Universitas Negeri Semarang 

 
 Correspondent Address:  

   B3 Building  FBS Unnes  

   Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229 

   E-mail: evergreenoctavia@gmail.com 

 

 

 

 

 

ISSN 2252-6706 



 

Octavia Puspaning Maharani / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (1) (2016) 

2 

INTRODUCTION 

English is getting more and more 

important in communication world. It is used as 

a medium for communication among people all 

over the world in both spoken and written forms. 

English is the first foreign language in Indonesia. 

It is taught in all levels of school in Indonesia, 

including elementary school, junior high school, 

and senior high school. In senior high school, 

English teachers have to make their class 

interesting with various methods, techniques, 

instrument and material in order to stimulate 

students to learn language skills effectively, 

especially in speaking.  

The result of observation that the 

researcher conducted in SMA Taruna Nusantara 

showed that speaking is also the most frustrating 

for students in senior high school. The students 

sometimes face many problems in learning 

English, especially in speaking. The preliminary 

observation revealed that: (1) the students, 

sometimes, know what they want to say but they 

are shy to speak, (2) the students have low 

motivation in learning English, (3) the students 

are less confident because of their low 

motivation, (4) the students are afraid of making 

mistake, (5) many students who want to speak to 

other usually face some troubles such as cannot 

produce their ideas, argument or feeling 

communicatively, and (6) they sometimes can 

understand what other say but cannot be able to 

communicate it. 

In teaching English as a foreign language, 

teachers should teach four language skills 

(listening, speaking, reading and writing) 

particularly in order to make the students able to 

use English communicatively. Teaching speaking 

is considered to be difficult among the four skills. 

Chaney (1998) in Kayi (2006) states that speaking 

is the process of building and sharing meaning 

through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, 

in a variety of contexts. Learning to speak is 

obviously more difficult. It means that more 

effort is required by the students and various 

interesting activities are also required by the 

teacher. 

In order to enable students to express their 

ideas in speaking, teachers should apply creative 

methods and create various strategies. For 

example, in oral language class, the students 

should be taught with cooperative learning 

activity, so that, they can practice English 

communicatively. Cooperative learning is a 

method of learning that involves students to work 

together in groups, obtain knowledge and 

enhance social skills. One of the alternatives 

techniques is using Two Stay Two Stray which is 

developed by Kagan (1994). In this technique, 

there are four people in each group that will 

discuss a topic. Then, two of them will stay as the 

expert and two others will stray to another group. 

The Two Stay Two Stray technique is used to 

encourage students to speak English 

communicatively. 

 

LITERATURE REVIEW 

There have been a number of researchers 

conducted some studies related to the use of Two 

Stay Two Stray technique in improving students’ 

speaking ability such as Arsyanti (2014), Fitriani 

(2014), Zanwar (2014), Tsou (2005), and 

Temerova (2007). From the related of previous 

studies, I am inspired to do an experimental 

research on teaching speaking by using Two Stay 

Two Stray technique. However, this reseach is 

different from the studies above because this 

technique can give the students chances to 

express their ideas communicatively and 

creatively either in their own group or in the other 

group. They also should be active in teaching 

learning process and master the material they 

discussed because they have responsibility to 

deliver the material to the other group. 

 

General Concept of Two Stay Two Stray 

Technique 

There are many techniques in the 

cooperative learning. One of them is Two Stay 

Two Stray. Two Stay Two Stray is a teaching 

technique adopted from One Stay Three Stray by 

Spencer Kagan (1994).  

 The procedure of Two Stay Two Stray 

starts with forming groups of four. Each group 

choose one topics or material that has been 

provided by the teacher. Then, they discuss their 

topic. After that, they choose two members to 



 

Octavia Puspaning Maharani / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (1) (2016) 

3 

stay as the expert of the topic or material that they 

have. The other two members stray, they leave 

their group individually, not as the pair, and sit 

down next to the person as stayers to find out 

what the other groups have done, the Two Stay 

Two Stray technique is used. The stayers explain 

their group’s topic or material that they have 

discussed before. The class discusses, first in 

groups and then as the whole class, how Two Stay 

Two Stray involves components of cooperative 

learning and how it can be used in other contexts. 

 

The General Concept of Speaking 

Speaking is expressing ideas, opinions, or 

feelings to others by using words or sounds of 

articulation in order to inform, to persuade, to 

entertain and that all can be learned by using 

some teaching learning methodologies. 

 Speaking skill in a second or foreign 

language is not easy to be learned. Thornburry 

(2005:1) states that speaking is a part of daily life 

that we take it for granted. The average person 

produces tens of thousands of words a day, 

although some people, like auctioneers or 

politicians, may produce even more than that. So 

natural that we forget how we once struggled to 

achieve this ability until we have to learn how to 

do it all over again in a foreign language. It is 

because foreign language involves other language 

elements, such as grammar, rhythm, fluency, 

pronunciation and intonation. Furthermore, a 

speaker has to think about how to deliver the 

message in order to convey the right meaning to 

audience or listener. 

 

METHODS OF INVESTIGATION 

In this research, I used quasi-experimental 

research design with the use of non-equivalent 

control group design. This study involved two 

groups: an experimental group and a control 

group. This research used pre-test and post-test to 

obtain the data. 

 

Table 1 Research Design 

 Pre-Test Treatment Post-Test 

Experimental Group O1 X O2 

Control Group O3  O4 

 

The population in this study was the tenth 

grade students of SMA Taruna Nusantara 

Magelang in the academic year of 2015/2016. 

The number of the students was 360, which were 

divided into 12 classes. The sample was X-1 as 

the experimental group and X-2 as the control 

group. The instrument of this research was test 

and observation checklist. Before the test is used 

to collect the data, the try-out test was conducted 

to measure the validity, reliability, discriminating 

power, and the difficulty level of the test. To 

measure the significance of the pre-test and post-

test of the both groups, the researcher used t-test 

based on Arikunto (2002). 

 

RESEARCH FINDINGS 

Tryout 

A try-out was given before doing the pre-

test because it was used to know the validity, 

reliability, difficulty level, and discriminating 

power of the rating aspects. The try-out was held 

on Thursday, July 30th 2015. It was given to class 

X-7. The researcher did not use X-1 (the 

experimental group) or X-2 (the control group) as 

the subject in the try-out because the researcher 

wanted to know the quality of the rating scale that 

the researcher used before conducting the 

research. There were 30 students who did the test. 

The mean score was 60.99. The highest score was 

86 and the lowest one was 34. The result showed 

that the items were valid and reliable. 

 

Pre-Test 

A pre-test was given before doing the 

experiment. It is aimed to measure their prior 

ability or knowledge before getting the 

treatments. The pre-test for X-1 as the 

experimental group was held on August 4th, 2015 

and X-2 as the control group was held on August 

5th, 2015. There were 60 students in both 

experimental and control groups who did the pre-

test. 



 

Octavia Puspaning Maharani / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (1) (2016) 

4 

 From the pre-test result, the average 

scores of the students were analyzed.  The 

average score of experimental group was 62.27, 

while the average score of control group was 

60.47. Although the result of pre-test showed the 

difference between the score average of control 

and experimental groups, but it was not very 

significant. It meant that the prior ability between 

experimental and control groups was relatively 

the same before the treatment was given. 

 

Treatments 

In conducting the experiment, the 

treatment was given to the students after the pre-

test. The X-1 as the experimental group was 

taught by using Two Stay Two Stray as a technique 

to learn descriptive text, meanwhile X-2 as the 

control group was taught by classical guided 

teaching.  

 The first treatment for experimental 

group was done on August 11th, 2015 and the 

second meeting was on August 18th, 2015. On the 

other hand the treatments for control group were 

done on August 12th, 2015 and on August 19th, 

2015. After doing the treatment, the researcher 

found that there were some advantages of using 

Two Stay Two Stray Technique. The advantages of 

using Two Stay Two Stray technique are easy to 

learn, building an active teaching and learning 

process, developing students’ cooperation, and 

building the students’ self-confidence. Besides the 

advantages of using Two Stay Two Stray 

technique, the researcher also found out the 

disadvantages of this technique. Firstly, this 

technique needs a lot of time. It needs more 

efforts and good preparation. Secondly, this 

technique also makes the class noisy when they 

do the presentation in each group. It needs a class 

management skill from the teacher, especially in 

terms of the seat arrangement. 

 

Post-Test 

Post-test was done after the treatment was 

given to the experimental class, in which the 

students of experimental class were taught 

descriptive text about places using Two Stay Two 

Stray, whereas students of control class were 

taught by classical guided teaching. Post-test was 

given to both experimental and control groups. It 

is  aimed to measure their ability or knowledge 

after getting the treatments. 

The post-tests for X-1 as the experimental 

group was held on August 25th, 2015 and X-2 as 

the control group was held on August 26th, 2015. 

There are 60 students in both experimental and 

control classes who did the post-test. 

From the post-test result, the average 

scores of the students were analyzed. The average 

score of experimental class was 83.86, while the 

average score of control class was 77.86. It can be 

concluded that the achievement of the 

experimental class who were taught using Two 

Stay Two Stray was higher than the control class 

who were taught using classical guided teaching. 

 

The Significance Difference of Two Tests 

To know the significant difference of the 

experiment, t-test formula was used in this 

research. It was done by comparing the t-value 

and t-table. The t-value was found from the score 

differences between pre-test and post-test both in 

experimental and control groups, while the t-table 

was found by consulting to the critical value on 

the table column.  

The  difference  of  the  means  of  the  

experimental  and  control  groups  was classified 

to be significant if the t-test was higher than the t-

table. To measure the significance of the two 

groups, this formula was used:  

𝑡 =  
𝑀𝑥 − 𝑀𝑦

√(
∑ 𝑥2 +  ∑ 𝑦2

𝑁𝑥 + 𝑁𝑦 − 2
) (

1
𝑁𝑥

+ 
1

𝑁𝑦
)
 

𝑡 =  
21.6 − 17.6

√(
227.2 + 579.2

30 + 30 − 2
) (

1
30

+  
1

30
)

= 4.167
 

Notes: 

t : t-value  

Mx : difference gain of the 

experimental group students 

My : difference gain of the control 

group students 

∑ 𝑥2 : total standard deviation of the 

experimental group  

∑ 𝑦2 : total standard deviation of the 

control group  



 

Octavia Puspaning Maharani / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (1) (2016) 

5 

Nx : the number of students of the 

experimental group  

Ny : the number of students of the 

control group  

The t-table was 2.750. The obtained t-value 

was 4.167 so the t-value was higher than the 

critical value. It can be concluded that there is a 

significant difference between the experimental 

and control groups. This could reject the null 

hypothesis. Therefore, based on the computation 

there was a significant difference between 

teaching speaking using Two Stay Two Stray and 

Classical Guided Teaching. It could be seen from 

the result of the test, the students who were taught 

by Two Stay Two Stray got higher grades than the 

ones taught by classical guided teaching. 

 

CONCLUSIONS 

The purpose of this research is to find out 

whether or not the use of Two Stay Two Stray is 

effective for teaching speaking at the tenth grade 

students of SMA Taruna Nusantara in the 

academic year of 2015/2016. Based on the 

research that has been done, the researcher drew 

some conclusions. 

Firstly, there was a significant difference 

between the students taught by using Two Stay 

Two Stray technique and those who were taught 

by using classical guided teaching. It was proven 

by the calculation of the mean of the post-test 

(83.86) that was higher than the mean of pre-test 

(62.27). The obtained t-value (4.167) was higher 

than the t-table (2.750) which meant that there 

was a significant difference of the post-test result 

between experimental and control groups. 

Besides tests, the researcher also conducted an 

observation to know the students’ improvement 

during the teaching and learning process using 

Two Stay Two Stray technique. The students 

showed positive responses in learning spoken 

descriptive text using Two Stay Two Stray 

technique. The improvement of the students 

during the teaching and learning process using 

Two Stay Two Stray technique was significant. 

Secondly, the use of Two Stay Two Stray for 

teaching speaking at the tenth grade students of 

SMA Taruna Nusantara in the academic year of 

2015/2016 is effective because there was 

improvement of the students’ speaking 

achievement. It helps the students in learning 

English independently, especially speaking skill, 

and develops social skill among students of senior 

high school. Two Stay Two Stray can be used as a 

technique in teaching speaking because it is 

effective, simple, and this  technique gives the 

students new experience in improving their 

speaking skill. By applying this technique, the 

students were encouraged to be active and 

creative. They need to work in group and 

compete with the other groups to solve the 

problem. It gave them more motivation during 

the learning process. In addition, teaching 

speaking using Two Stay Two Stray was very 

helpful for the improvement of the students’ 

speaking ability because in this technique, the 

students did not just listen to the teacher but also 

communicated with the others to discuss the 

material. 

  

REFERENCES 

 

Arikunto, S. 2002. Dasar-Dasar Evaluasi Pendidikan. 

Jakarta: Bumi Aksara 

 

Arikunto, S. 2006 Prosedur Penelitian Suatu 

Pendekatan Praktik. (Rev VI). Jakarta: Rineka 

Cipta. 

 

Arsyanti, Y. 2014. Talking Chip Technique to Improve 

Students’ Speaking Ability and Motivation 

(Classroom Action Research at the Eighth 

Grade of SMP Negeri 6 Pekalongan in the 

Academic Year 2013/2014). Final Project. 

English Department, Faculty of Languages and 

Arts, Semarang State University 

 

Fitriani, Y. 2014. The Use of Two-Stay-Two-Stray 

Technique to Improve Students’ Motivation in 

Learning Reading Comprehention 

(Experimental Research of Eight Grade 

Students of SMP Negeri 01 Petarukan in the 

Academic Year of 2013/2014). Final Project. 

English Department. The Faculty of Languages 

and Arts of Semarang State University 

 

Kagan, S. 1994. Cooperative Learning. San Clamente, 

CA: Kagan Publishing 

 



 

Octavia Puspaning Maharani / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (1) (2016) 

6 

Temerová, L. 2007. How to Improve Students’ 

Communicative Skills. Thesis. Department of 

English Language and Literature, Faculty of 

Education, Masaryk University Brno 

 

Thornbury, S. 2005. How to Teach Speaking. New 

York: Longman 

 

Tsou, W. 2005. ‘Improving Speaking Skill through 

Oral Classroom Participation’ Foreign 

Language Annals Vol. 38 No. 1, pp. 46-55 

 

Zanwar, S. 2014. The Use of Jigsaw Technique to 

Improve Student’s Speaking Ability in Junior 

High School (The Case of the Eighth Grade 

Students of “SMP N” 1 Tembarak in the 

academic year of 2013/ 2014). Final Project. 

English Department. Faculty of Languages and 

Arts. Semarang State University 

 

  

 


