Sebuah Kajian Pustaka: Indriani: Implementing Task Planning Duration … 123 IMPLEMENTING TASK PLANNING DURATION IN SPEAKING CLASS Ketut Santi Indriani kt.santi.indriani@unud.ac.id UNIVERSITAS UDAYANA ABSTRACT This study was to find out the extent to task planning duration is applicable and influenced students’ oral presentation in terms of fluency, complexity and accuracy in English as a second language learning process. This study is a qualitative research method. The data were gathered through observation and documentation. The data was analyzed qualitatively by investigating the level of fluency, complexity and accuracy on students’ speech after being given a specific duration of task planning. Then, analyzed data was presented formally and informally.The subjects in this study were 25 learners of an English course institution in Denpasar, at the level of basic-4. Based on the analysis, it was found that task planning duration affects the fluency and accuracy of oral presentation. The longer the duration of the task planning, the higher level of fluency and accuracy of the language will be used by learners. This is caused by the time owned by the learners to plan ideas that would be presented related to the given topic and to formulate these ideas into correct sentences. However, the length of task planning does not affect the complexity of the language used by learners because of the complexity of the language depends on language competence possessed by learners. Although the duration of task planning was increased, the level of complexity of the language used did not change. Keywords: task planning, oral presentation, language learning A. INTRODUCTION Giving assignments to students must be done to determine the students' understanding of the language they are learning. This assignment can be done during class or as homework. For the assignments that can be done out of class hours, students certainly have sufficient time to prepare themselves before working on these assignments. Unlike the case with assignments given during class learning. In general, not much time is allocated for students to plan their task or even no task planning given. When students are given time to plan their task to be performed, students generally will make good use of the preparation time. Guará- Tavares (2016) states that when given the opportunity to prepare themselves, students involve their cognitive and affective abilities independently. The learning method that currently develops is the Student Centered Learning (SCL). Rogers (1983) states that SCL is a turnover of power in a learning process. The turn of the power of teachers as experts into the strength of students as learners. In the SCL method, learners are the focus during the learning process. Learners play an active role during the learning mailto:kt.santi.indriani@unud.ac.id ELTIN Journal, Volume 8/No 2, October 2020 124 process. One of the learning techniques that provide an opportunity for learners to be actively involved in the learning process is the task planning technique. The method of learning using task planning techniques is a method of learning that provides an opportunity for learners to prepare themselves before they actually perform in completing the task. Ortega ( Ellis, 2005) defines task planning as an opportunity to prepare task performance before actual performance. Task planning technique is one of the techniques that apply SCL learning method because in the task planning, learners are given an active opportunity to prepare what they will do during the completion of tasks in the process of language learning. This will provide an opportunity for learners to solve the things that would be obstacles when they complete the task later. Task planning is very appropriate to use when we want to measure students' language production skills, which include writing and speaking skills. In writing activities, there are many things students can do during the task planning. When the teacher provides task planning for students by focusing the preparation activities on the meaning of the word and its form, the level of accuracy in students’ task performance will increase (Sharafi-Nejad et al., 2016). In addition, providing opportunities for students to prepare can reduce the load on the loading process during performance. With reduced cognitive load when doing assignments. Thus, students’ writing will be of higher quality. In addition, collaborating with colleagues when doing task planning tends to motivate students to develop ideas in writing (Haghverdi, Khalaji & Biria, 2013). Seyyedi et al. (2013) stated that in writing ability, task planning has a different impact on the level of complexity, fluency and accuracy. Task planning has a positive impact on the complexity of student writing and has a significant and very positive impact on the fluency of writing. However, task planning has no impact on the level of accuracy in students' writing. Another language production that must be assessed during language learning is speaking ability. In doing speaking assessment, there are three things that must be well prepared by the teachers, those are methods of speaking assessment, scales and raters (Ginther, 2013). Task planning is a part of assessment method.Task planning is also often applied to measure language production skills, especially speaking skills. As with writing skills, there are several things that can be measured when assessing students' speaking skills, those are fluency, accuracy and complexity. Measuring the level of fluency in students' speaking ability can be done by paying attention to the rate of speaking (which describes the number of syllables per minute), the total speaking time and the duration of pause during speech. Meanwhile, to measure the level of accuracy in students' speech can be done by paying attention to words, sentences and phrases errors, syntactic errors as well as lexical errors. To measure complexity, teachers can pay attention to grammatical complexity of the whole units' speech and specific intra-units features (Tonkyn, 2012). Giving students the opportunity to plan their speaking task is expected to help students when they perform the task. Research conducted by Moradi and Talebi (2014) shows that the overall scores of students which includes aspects of fluency and lexical resources increased from pre-test to post-test. Fluency showed a very significant increase when the students did the post-test speaking task performance. If task planning has a positive impact on speaking ability, will the duration of task planning affect students' speaking ability during task performance? This becomes interesting to discuss. Thus, the problem that can be formulated in this study related to the background is how task planning duration affects student’s Indriani: Implementing Task Planning Duration … 125 performance in speaking task in terms of fluency, complexity and accuracy. The scope of this study is student’s performance in speaking in terms of fluency, complexity and accuracy. The purpose of this study is to find the effect of task planning duration on students performance is speaking task in terms of fluency, complexity and accuracy. B. LITERATURE REVIEW There are various concepts of fluency in the speaking aspect, such as the smoothness of speech regarding the speed of speech, the number of pauses during the speech and other observable variables (Fulcher&Davidson, 2007). Lenon (1990) categorizes the fluency of speaking into two; those are speaking in stammering and speaking without stammering. Measuring the level of fluency of speech, this study applies the concept of fluency of speech proposed by Lennon which assesses fluency from the duration of pauses during the talk in a minute. The pause can be silence (the learner does not say a word), say the same word over and over or utter meaningless noises, such as "eeeer ..." or "hmmm", etc. The complexity of language used can be seen in terms of lexical complexity and syntactical complexity. The lexical complexity is seen from the amount of vocabulary used. This study assessed the complexity of the language that learners use in terms of syntactical complexity. The syntactical complexity is an assessment based on the number of complex sentences used to convey ideas. The calculations are based on the comparison of the number of simplex sentences with complex sentences used in a minute. The more complex sentences used then the language used will be more complex. Yule (2010) states that one component of language skills is a grammatical competence that includes the accuracy of the use of words and sentence structure. The accuracy in speaking in this study is assessed by the number of grammatical errors made in one minute. Errors can be in the form of pronunciation (phonological), word choice and grammar. The data from each student’s performance is analyzed based on the three aspects above. C. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This study is a qualitative study that compares the level of fluency, accuracy and complexity in students' speech during students' task performance to determine the effect of task planning duration on students' speaking abilities. The data were collected through observation and documentation. Teh documentation refers to recording technique which is applied to record students’ speech during task performance. Recording is done without being realized by the students in order to keep the task performance process running naturally. The subject of this study is 25 learners in Denpasar Language Center (DLC), an English language course in Denpasar. All learners are at the same level of English proficiency based on the placement test result that is Basic-4 level. This level is the basic level in the General English program at DLC. At this level learners will learn about things related to themselves and life, everyday activities and some important sentence structures. At DLC, the Basic-4 level is divided into four classes; Basic-4A consists of 6 students, Basic-4B and Basic- 4Ceach consists of 7 students and Basic-4D consists of 5 students. The division of this Basic- 4 level is based on class schedule differences; Basic-4A and Basic-4B are held every Monday and Wednesday while the Basic-4C and Basic-4D classes are held every Tuesday and Thursday. The age of learners are varies between 12-15 years. ELTIN Journal, Volume 8/No 2, October 2020 126 The data is collected trough some steps as follow. The four classes are given a speaking task with the same topic about air pollution. Each student speaks in accordance with a predetermined topic with time allotment 3-5 minutes. The Basic-4A class does not get any time for task planning, the Basic-4B class gets 3 minutes for task planning, the Basic-4C class gets 7 minutes for task planning and the Basic-4D class gets 10 minutes for task planning. Recording is done by using digital voice recorder to each learner when performing the task. The recording is done without being recognized by the learners to make the learning process take place naturally and learners are not psychologically affected. The recording is done twice on January 27, 2018 for the Basic-4A and Basic-4B classes and on January 28, 2018 for the Basic-4C and Basic-4D classes. The data analysis is conducted by listening and analyzing the recording of each student from the four classes followed with comparing the task performance of each class based on fluency, complexity and accuracy by taking note for each errors appear in the speech, the fluency of the speech and the complexity of the sentences in the speech. The results of the analysis in this study are presented formally and informally. Informal methods are applied when describing the speaking ability of each learner of the four classes in terms of fluency complexity and accuracy. The formal method of diagramming is applied in comparing the speaking abilities of each class based on the difference in the duration of the task planning. D. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Assessing the ability of learners through assignment is one effective and objective ways in language learning. Assignment can be done by giving the task planning before learners do the task performance. This study examines the effect of task planning duration on students speaking abilities in terms of fluency, complexity and accuracy. Student Speaking Ability in Term of Fluency Language barriers are often experienced by language learners when expressing ideas in the form of a spoken language. These obstacles can be in the form of psychological obstacles or difficulties in finding the right words and expressions to express their ideas (Leong and Ahmadi, 2017). One strategy that can help students overcome these problems is by providing task planning. Task planning aims to provide opportunities for students to prepare themselves. Thus, the obstacles when they do task performance can be reduced. The duration of the task planning is important to note. How long the teacher must give the task planning time and how far the duration of the task planning impact on students' performance must be considered. Fluency is a person's speaking ability to maintain meaningful communication in order to be sustainable despite experiencing communication competency barriers (Richards, 2006). Data analysis in this study shows the effect of task planning duration on student fluency levels as follows. The Basic-4A class did not get any task planning. Task performance is done as soon as the topic is given. Fluency was assessed based on the duration of pauses in one minute. Based on the recording analysis, it is found that the pauses occurred for eleven seconds on average. The pauses occurred in the forms of silence (the learner did not produced Indriani: Implementing Task Planning Duration … 127 0 3 6 9 12 15 Basic-4A Basic-4B Basic 4C Basic-4D any sounds), saying the same word over and over (like in..in ..in by..by..by ..) and saying meaningless sounds (like eeeerr ..). The pauses occurred due to several factors. First, learners were thinking about the idea to be conveyed considering the students did not get a chance to formulate ideas related to the given topic. Second, it was difficult for the learners to find the equivalent English words to express the ideas in their minds related to the given topic. This is caused by the fact that the learners did not have any opportunity to refer to the dictionary in order to find the equivalent of a word in English. Basic-4B got 3 minutes task planning. Pauses also found in the recording of the task performances of Basic-4B class. The average duration of the pauses is seven seconds, three seconds shorter than the Basic-4A class. The pauses are found in the forms of silence, saying the same word over and over as well as saying meaningless sounds. The most common pause form is saying the same word over and over. This happened because the learners did not find the equivalent of a word in English to express the idea in their mind. Basically there had been an idea to be revealed, but did not find the right word. This is because the three-minute task planning given was used only to prepare ideas to be conveyed related to the given topic. The Basic-4C class indicates a decrease of pauses duration during the task performance. It is four seconds on average. The most common form of pauses is saying the same word over and over, such as the the .. the .. the ... This happened because it was difficult for the learners to find the equivalent words in English to express the ideas in their mind. The seven-minute task-planning provided an opportunity for the learners to formulate ideas to be conveyed related to the given topic. There were not any pauses in the form of silence or non- meaningful sounds. The Basic-4D class got ten minutes for the task planning. It is found that there was a significant decrease in the average of pauses duration. It is only one second on average. The very short pauses duration is due to the opportunity of sufficient task planning. Within ten minutes, learners can formulate the ideas to be conveyed and compose sentences that will be used to convey the ideas. This results in the learners could speak fluently without any significant obstacles or pauses during the task performance. Diagram 1. The duration of pauses in second Student Speaking Ability in Term of Complexity The complexity of the language produced by learners is very influenced by the learners’ knowledge of the language being learned, such as the patterns and rules of the language (Housen, Kuiken and Vedder, 2012). Regarding the effect of task planning on the level of language complexity produced by learners, Bamanger and Gashan (2015) state that task planning has a positive effect on the complexity of the language produced. When students ELTIN Journal, Volume 8/No 2, October 2020 128 0 10 20 30 40 50 Basic-4A Basic-4B Basic 4C Basic-4D are given the opportunity to plan their tasks, they well prepare what they want to say and increase their self-confidence to produce more complex speech. The ability to speak in term of complexity was analyzed based on syntactical complexity. It was seen from the comparison of the number of complex clauses to the simplex clauses used in one minute to convey ideas during task performance. In general, spontaneous or non- planning task performance will result in the use of commonly used word or phrase choices (Harmer, 2001). Based on the data analysis in this study, the number of sentences generated by learners from the Basic-4A class in a minute is five sentences on average. These five sentences are simplex clauses. Thus, the percentage of the number of complex sentences used is 0%. The average number of sentences generated in one minute of Basic-4B class is eight sentences with the percentage of the use of complex 37.5%. Based on the analysis of Basic-4C and 4D classes recording data, no difference was found. In one minute, learners from both classes produce an average of ten sentences in a minute. Of the ten sentences produced, the average complex sentences that appeared are four sentences. Thus, the percentage of complex sentences used is 40%. The results of the above analysis show that there is a very significant difference between classes that did not get task planning and the classes that got the task planning. Complex sentences are not found in the language used by learners of the Basic-4A class that did not get the task planning. This is due to the absence of a planned idea to be conveyed related to the topic given since they did not get the task planning. There was no significant difference in term of language complexity used by the classes that got task planning. Learners from these three classes showed nearly the same level of language complexity ranging from 37.5- 40%. This suggests that the duration of the task planning time does not affect the level of language complexity used during the task performance. Diagram 2. Percentage of the use of complex sentences in one minute Student Speaking Ability in Term of Accuracy The ability to speak in term of complexity was analyzed based on syntactical complexity. It was seen from the comparison of the number of complex clauses to the simplex clauses used in one minute to convey ideas during task performance. In general, spontaneous or non- planning task performance will result in the use of commonly used word or phrase choices (Harmer, 2001). Indriani: Implementing Task Planning Duration … 129 Based on the research conducted by Ahangari and Abdi (2011), task planning did not have a positive impact on the level of accuracy of the language produced by the learners. Even though they have been given time to prepare the language they will use to avoid using inappropriate language structures, they still fail to use the proper language structure as they had planned in advance during the task performance under real time pressure. Thus, task planning is declared unable to increase accuracy in the utterances produced by students. The results of data analysis regarding the effect of task planning duration on the students' speaking ability in terms of accuracy in this study showed the following results.The Basic- 4A class did not get the task planning and learners immediately performed the task after the topic was given. Based on the analysis, it was found that learners made mistakes in terms of accuracy as many as seven times in a minute. Such errors include pronunciation errors and grammatical errors. Pronunciation errors occured in both commonly used words and technical terms related to the topic. Grammatical errors occured repeatedly, such as article omission, main verb omission, double marking verb, subject-verb agreement error, and error in tenses. The errors are caused by the lack of opportunities for learners to design sentences in conveying the idea. The pronunciation errors were caused y the fact that the learners had no time to refer to the dictionary to know the correct pronunciation of some words. The Basic-4B class did not show significant differences from the Basic-4A class although the Basic-4B class got three-minute task-planning. The average number of errors is seven errors in one minute resulted from a very short planning time of only three minutes. Learners only had the opportunity to determine the main ideas but did not have the opportunity to formulate sentences to convey these ideas. The errors include pronunciation and grammatical errors. Pronunciation errors occur in commonly used words and technical terms. Grammatical errors made by Basic class-4B learners were less than Basic class-4A. Frequently occured grammatical errors are article omission, main verb omission, double marking verb and subject-verb agreement. The Basic-4C class gets seven minutes' of task planning time. Total error in terms of accuracy (accuracy) is done on average as much as 3 times in one minute. Based on the results of the recording analysis, there is still an error in terms of pronunciation and grammatical structure of the English language used by learners. However, the pronunciation error and grammatical structure are fewer than the number of mistakes made by learners of the Basic-4A and Basic-4B classes. Pronunciation errors occur on average 2 times in one minute and occur only on the pronunciation of scientific terms. Grammatical structure errors occur on average one time in a minute. The errors include article omission, subject-verb agreement, and tenses. No word errors were found in the recording of the Basic-4C class. The reduced number of mistakes made by learners of the Basic-4C class in terms of accuracy compared to the Basic-4A and 4B classes is due to the chance at their disposal to find in the dictionary the pronunciation of words that are considered difficult. In addition, the diminished errors in the grammatical structure of the sentences are also due to the opportunities they have for composing words appropriately in conveying their ideas. The Basic-4D class got for ten minutes task planning. There is a decrease in the number of errors in Basic-4 D class compared to Basic-4C class. The average number of errors made by learners of the Basic-4D is two errors in a minute. The only type of errors that occured is grammatical error and limited to article omission errors. Technical terms used during task performance were pronounced correctly. This is due to the opportunity that the learners had ELTIN Journal, Volume 8/No 2, October 2020 130 to refer to the dictionary to know how to pronounce rarely used technical terms. The less number of errors related to the opportunity they had to compose the sentences correctly in conveying the ideas. Diagram 3. Average numbers of erros in one minute E. CONCLUSION Assessment of the speaking ability in the English learning process can be seen from three aspects; fluency, complexity and accuracy. This study aims to determine the effect of the duration of the task planning t on the speaking ability of these three aspects. Learners from the four different classes were given different duration of task planning. The Basic-4A class was not given the task planning, the Basic-4B class was given a three-minute task planning, the Basic-4C class was given a seven-minute task-planning and the Basic-4D class was given ten-minute task planning. Each class was given the same topic. Based on the analysis, it is found that there is influence of the duration of the task planning to the students ability in terms of fluency. The longer the duration of the task planning is given, the more fluent the speaking. This is due to the readiness of the learners in task performing. The longer the duration of the task planning given, the longer time they had to formulate ideas compile sentences to convey ideas that had. In result, the learners were more fluent in performing the task. In term of the complexity of the language used during the task performance, there was no significant effect of the task planning duration. The learners with longer task planning duration did not show any increase in the use of complex sentences compared to the learners who got shorter task planning duration. This is related to the cognitive factors of learners. All the learners from the four classes are in the same level of English proficiency. Therefor, students ability in terms of language complexity also tends to be the same. Thus, the duration of the task planning did not affect the complexity of the language used. However, the duration of the task planning affects the accuracy of the speech. The longer the duration of the task planning given, the higher the level of accuracy of the language used. This is due to the opportunity for the learners to compose and formulate sentences used to convey their ideas. In addition, the long duration of the task planning was also used to refer to the dictionary to find the correct pronunciation of the technical words used during the task perfomance. Based on the above descriptions, it can be concluded that the duration of the task planning is very influential on the fluency and accuracy of the language used by learners during the task performance. This is due to the opportunity that the students had to think about the ideas that and formulate the sentences that would be used. However, the duration of the task planning time does not affect the complexity of the language used by learners because it Indriani: Implementing Task Planning Duration … 131 relates to the language competence of the learners. If learners have high language competence, then the complexity of the language used also tends to increase and is not influenced by the duration of the planning time. F. REFERENCES Ahangari, S. and Abdi, M. (2011). The effect of pre-task planning on the accuracy and complexity of Iranian EFL learners’ oral performance. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 29, 1950 – 1959. Bamanger, E. M. and Gashan, A. K. (2014). 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