EEJ 8 (3) 2018 395 - 402 English Education Journal http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej Making a Video as an Alternative Task to Improve the Students’ Motivation to Practice Speaking English: The Case at Grade VII B of SMP N 1 Ungaran Listiani Ruchajat  SMP N 1 Ungaran, Kabupaten Semarang, Jawa Tengah, Indonesia Article Info ________________ Article History: Recived 10 June 2018 Accepted 20 August 2018 Published 15 September 2018 ________________ Keywords: Making a video, alternative task, motivation, speaking English Abstract ___________________________________________________________________ This research investigates making a video, as an alternative task to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English. The case at grade VIIB of SMP N 1 Ungaran.The objectives of this research are to describe how video making task can improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English, to describe how video making task is implemented to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English, and to describe why video making task can be implemented to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English.This is a kind of classroom action research which belongs to descriptive qualitative research. The source of data are the results of students’ responds toward questionnaire given at the end of three cycles conducted by the researcher, supported by the results of students’ interview and students’ tasks.The findings of the research are: most of students liked to do the task since it can make them happy and fun, also be able to improve their confidence and speaking competence. The task also made the students to have motivation to practice speaking English without teacher’s order and outside English class. The task also helps to improve the students’ understanding toward the lesson materials and speaking competence.Based on the findings, the researcher suggests the other teachers to apply video making task in their class to improve their students’ motivation to practice speaking English using an appropriate topic. © 2018 Universitas Negeri Semarang Correspondence Address: Jalan Diponegoro No.197 Ungaran, Indonesia E-mail: wiwin.taawb@gmail.com p-ISSN 2087-0108 e-ISSN 2502-4566 Listiani Ruchajat/ EEJ 8 (3) 2018 395 - 402 396 INTRODUCTION Language is a means of communication in both spoken and written form. To communicate means to understand and to express information, ideas, feeling and to develop knowledge, technology, and culture. The ability in communication reflects discourse ability which means the ability to understand and produce spoken and written form of language realized in four language skills that is listening, speaking, reading and writing. It is expected that the learners are able to communicate and yield discourse in a certain literacy. The literacy level includes performative, functional, informational, and epistemic. The teaching learning in junior high school is targeted at accomplishing the functional level in order to be able to communicate in spoken and written form to overcome the daily problems, and the learners are able to use language to meet the daily needs such as reading newspaper, recipe, instructions, etc. In Indonesia, English is one of the foreign languages being learned and used, but it is not used in daily activities. It is often used only in limited fields because there are not a lot of people who master and are able to use it well, either in written or spoken. Therefore many English learners find difficulties in learning the language since there is limited possibility to practice and use it in their daily life. It becomes a big problem for English teachers since it is fact that most of Indonesian students tend to be passive speakers in English, where according to my experience, this condition is caused by some factors such as the students’ fear to be laughed by other students, the students are afraid of making mistake, the students do not know or have an idea of what they want to talk about, the students do not know how to convey their meaning, the lack of vocabulary, not interesting learning activity and unfriendly teacher. These conditions need the teacher’s efforts to be solved in order to improve the students’ English proficiency. Learning language needs a long process. It needs a right and strong desire and motivation. It needs a lot of practice, patience, time, energy, and thought. It cannot be done instantly. It involves many factors, such as the students, teachers, instructional materials and media, goals, curriculum planners, and decision makers. Being an English teacher is challenging for me since I teach in a favorite school where most of the students are good and potential students who have good willingness to know and learn something, and also have good family that always supports their study. They tend to have eagerness to meet every given assignment and learn faster in every material given. I am sure that they have ability to do leaning activities more than common students. But I get difficulties to encourage my students to practice speaking outside the English class’ activities in their daily life. They only practice their English while they are with me in English class or when they meet me. It is challenging and build my curiousity because as a teacher I should be creative in designing learning activities in which they should not only be a chance to transfer knowledge, but hopefully they can also be triggers for students to be aware of the need to practice their English individually outside their class’ activities and not because of teacher’s order, in order to improve their English including in speaking ability. And this is one of good characters that they should own as the basic character foundation to be better Indonesian. Moreover, this year is the fifth year since the school running a regulation that students are not allowed to bring their mobile phone at school and they will get score if they break it. This regulation was made by the school after some teachers found that some students used their mobile phone for playing games during a lesson, cheating during a test, and watching blue movies with their friends at school. As a teacher, I think this regulation is not fully wise to run because it does not really solve the problems. Moreover, in this case, teachers and school has losen their responsibility to educate students. They have losen an important moment to teach students a lesson that they should have Listiani Ruchajat/ EEJ 8 (3) 2018 395 - 402 397 awareness about what they should do and should not do with their mobile phone. Teachers should give guidance and positive activities that can enggage students to positive thoughts especially in using their mobile phone. Hopefully they will have awareness for not using their mobile phone negatively although there is nobody supervising them. Related to their low motivation to practice speaking, I propose an action research to overcome the problems. In the research, I will propose the use of video making as an alternative task to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking. First, it hopefully can be an interesting activity because nowadays most of students are good actors and actresses since they often watch people’s acting and expression from their uploaded video in internet that can be good examples. It seems that acting is common for most of students. Secondly, while doing this activity, students can hopefully be happy because they seems playing something, but actually they are learning. Furthermore, especially for improving the students’ competence to speak in English, teachers can provoke the students to make video which can stimulate them to practice speaking English outside the class’ activities that hopefully becomes one of the ways to break down their passiveness in practicing their English. Reasons for Choosing the Topic This research is aimed to investigate that video making task can be applied to improve the students motivation to practice speaking which is conducted based on four main reasons. The first is that the students did not want to do the activities of the task done in the teaching and learning process again after the process ended. It is not good for them since they must practice their English again and again if they want to improve their English. So, I try to promote video making task to improve the students’ intrinsic motivation to practice speaking by themselves without teacher’s order. The second is that video making task can improve the students’ abilities and confidence in speaking English. The third is that video making task can help to build the students’ awareness to use their mobile phone wisely and positively. The fourth is that through video making task, the students can also improve their creativities. This kind of task which is given to be done by the students should be a good task that can make the students active to get involved in the process of learning. It should be a task that can be useful and meaningful for the students. In line with it, Rusiana (2011) found that to improve the students’ participation in speaking, teacher should give students the appropriate tasks which were challenging, interesting, useful, meaningful, and relevant to their life. Therefore, video making task is one of appropriate tasks to give to the students. Video making task that will be used in this research is relevant since it provides students real activities and gives them real experiences which could realize the importance of English in the real context and it can hopefully motivate students to practice speaking a lot. It has the same point of view with Sasmedi (2004). He said that using students’ own pictures through pair work as teaching strategy could nurture the students’ motivation in improving their ability to speak English. Dealing with this, in the research, students will be asked to use the real things around them such as their best friend, their family, and their favorite song helped by their friend. It means that they will use something they are familiar that will hopefully nurture their motivation to do the video making task. Liuolienė and Metiūnienė (2006) made a conclusion in their research that students’ wishes and needs to work independently depend on their motivation, attitude and responsibility. The higher motivation, the more autonomous learning students want to have in this learning process. Related to that conclusion, video making task can hopefully be a trigger for students to practice the activities again and again by themselves outside the class that means that it can improve students’ motivation to practice speaking. Listiani Ruchajat/ EEJ 8 (3) 2018 395 - 402 398 Statement of the Problems The present research is designed as a descriptive qualitative study. It focuses on the analysis of the results of the students’ responds toward the given questionnaire which aims to reveal the use of video making task to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking. The main problems were formulated into the following research questions, how video making task can improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English, how video making task is implemented to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English, why video making task can be implemented to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English. Objectives of the study Based on the background of the study and also the statement of the problems, the main objective of this study was to discover the use of video making task to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking. The objectives of the study in detail were to find out how video making task can improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English, to find out how video making task is implemented to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English, to find out why video making task can be implemented to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English. The results hopefully will be useful for others, especially English teachers, to improve their students’ English speaking competences. Theoretical Framework This research focuses on video making task which is promoted by me, the researcher, to be implemented in teaching and learning activities, especially speaking activities, as an alternative task which can be used to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking individually after class without teacher’s order. The following are the theoretical framework of the research. First, teacher found that students have low motivation to practiace speaking English after class without teacher’s order. Second, teacher give a video model related to the topic being discussed to be watched and discussed by the students. Third, students try to make their own monolog using their own information. Then, they practice to present it orally by helping each other with their friends. Fourth, hopefully, students can get the knowledge about the materials learned, like the activities done, and become motivated to practice to do it again. Fifth, students will have high motivation to practice speaking English after class individually, without teacher’s order. Figure 1. The Theoretical Framework METHOD This was a classroom action research. It used the procedures proposed by Carr and Kemmis (1986) cited in Mill (2000). I did this research using three cycles which consisted of four steps: planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. The steps in the second cycle were Students get knowledge Listiani Ruchajat/ EEJ 8 (3) 2018 395 - 402 399 determined based on the result of the reflection of the first cycle and the steps in the third cycle were determined based on the result of the reflection of the second cycle. In order to get the needed data, questionnaires was given to the students at the end of each cycle as the primary sources of data and to support the analysis, interviews were conducted at the end of the last cycle. The interviews were conducted to 7 students chosen randomly. It used descriptive qualitative method which was considered as an ideal method because it aimed to analyze, describe and interpret the data of students’ responds toward the given questionnaire, students’ interview, and students’ works. The subjects of the research were 24 students of grade VII B of SMP N 1 Ungaran, Academic Year 2013/2014 which consists of 17 female and 7 male students. They belong to one of two special classes that consist of students who had been chosen based on the result of a talent test which is used by the school to determine the most potential students who will get different teaching and learning activities than other students. Their characteristics are as follows. They are teenagers around eleven to twelve year old, they have learned English for about one to four years, they have good eagerness to learn something, and they have good talent to be good English speakers. The data were obtained to be analyzed were the results of preliminary research which was conducted before conducting the first cycle, self reports in the form of questionnaires which were given to each student at the end of each cycle, self reports in the form of interviews with the randomly selected learners at the end of the last cycle, the results of students’ tasks. Dealing with this, in the research, students were asked to use the real things around them such as their best friend in the first cycle, their family in the second cycle, and their favorite song in the third cycle, helped by their friend. It is in line with Harmer (2007: 124-132), who suggests some speaking activities. One of the activities that is relevant to this research is favorite objects. Teacher gives opportunity to students to tell personal stories for example about their favorite objects. It means that they used something they were familiar that hopefully nurtured their motivation to do the video making task. Setiawan (2018) states, in order to improve the students’ learning achievement, speaking activity should be applied in a project based. In this research, students did the task in a project. They had to be able to work organized and finish the task in the time determined by teacher. Each student has a different background and ability as shown in Khabbazbashi’s study (2017). His study showed that participants’ different levels of background knowledge were shown to have a systematic effect on performance. That was why in this research, students worked in a group. They helped each other to do the activities. So, students who had low ability were helped by their friend to overcome their problems. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Before conducting the first cycle, the researcher had run the preliminary research by giving the students questionnaire to be answered, dealing with their ways of thinking toward learning English and their motivation to practice speaking English. From the data, we can see that all students think that learning English is very important to do especially for their future. Almost all of them feel that learning English is interesting. All of them like to learn English and want to be able to speak in English, but there are 58,33% of them do not have highly motivation, although all of them want to improve their speaking competence and realize that they must practice speaking regularly to improve it. There are some reasons why many of them are not motivated to practice. One of the reasons is they do not get support from people around them such as their parents and their brother or sister at home. Most of them only practice speaking with their friends at school in the teaching and learning process or do it alone Listiani Ruchajat/ EEJ 8 (3) 2018 395 - 402 400 at home. These become a trigger for the researcher to conduct the research. The following are the discussion based on the data from three cycles conducted, supported by the results of interview of six students chosen randomly. Video making task can improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English. Most of students liked video making task because it was fun and interesting. It also could improve their confidence and pushed them to practice their speaking skills. There are few students who did not like the task, it may be caused because they belong to introvert students that make them shy to practice speaking. Teacher has to help and motivate them to do the task. Teachers should pay attention to the difference of students’ characteristics. Some students need teachers’ attention more than the others because of their characteristic, especially the introvert students who usually tend to get difficulty when they must practice speaking. Milchatun (2015) says English speaking ability not only focuses on the knowledge of language that the learners have, but also focuses on the personality dimension that will affect them in presenting their knowledge of English and they know how and when to present it. Almost all of students thought that the task encouraged them to practice speaking in English because it was interesting and fun. They thought that the task could motivate, force, and help them to practice speaking to improve their speaking competence as well as their confidence, although it was not easy for them to do the task. By using thing around the students such as their friend, their family, and their favorite song, the task was easy to be understood to be done by them. This is in line with Sasmedi’ findings (2004). He said that using students’ own pictures through pair work as teaching strategy could nurture the students’ motivation in improving their ability to speak English. Video making task was challenging, but also interesting for most of the students. The task made them having fun and enjoying to practice speaking English. When the students can have fun and enjoy doing the task, it means that they have good motivation to practice speaking English. Almost all of students agreed that video making task is useful and meaningful for them. It is because by doing the task, they can practice speaking and get new vocabularies. They liked to do the task because, again, they could improve their speaking skills. These findings are relevant with Rusiana’s findings (2011), because the video making tasks were challenging, interesting, useful, meaningful, and relevant to their life. The students got problems in doing the task since it was not easy for them to do. Based on the results of the interview, the task was not easy to do because the students had to be confidence and made preparation before doing it, such as to practice their pronunciation and prepare their confidence to speak in front of other people. All students agreed that the task given in three cycles match with the learning materials. It is a good sign that the task can be accepted by all students. Dealing with doing the task in group or individually, most of students liked doing it in group since they could help each other and it made them having fun with their friends and family, although there are some of them prefer to do it individually because they got difficulties to work together with other people. Beside doing task in group, most of students also preferred to do the task individually, since they would be more confidence and would not be shy to other people. Almost all students were happy doing the task because it was fun and interesting and they could learn more to speak English. Moreover, by doing the activities of the task, they could be more confidence and if they felt confidence, they would do the task well. Furthermore, video making task can also improving the students’ creativity, since it is not easy to do the task. The students got difficulties to do the task and it pushed them to do some strategies in order to finish the task. It was not a matter for them because finally they could find a way to finish the task with their creativity. Listiani Ruchajat/ EEJ 8 (3) 2018 395 - 402 401 After doing the task, most of students are eager to do the activities of the task again without teacher’s order or to do it outside the English class by their own. It is a proof that video making task can work well as the researcher’s plan. Video making task is implemented to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English done in some steps of procedure as follows. The first, the students are given a video with the same topic of the task as a model to be observed and discussed in group related to its social function, generic structure, and language features. Teacher facilitates the activities. The second, the students try to make their draft of text using their own information to make their video, by imitating the organization of text of the model video. The third, the students practice to make their own video by helping each other with their friend or their family. The procedure will be easy to do by the students if the step is done in order. Furthermore, the topic of the task should be determined wisely by teacher, since the students tended to get more difficulties when the topic needed other people’s participation. In the first and the third cycle, the students could overcome the difficulties got, but in the second cycle, they got more difficulties since some parents did not want to cooperate to do the task. This made some students needed more extra time to ask for their parents’ help to finish the task. Video making task had been proven to be able to be implemented to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English, because almost all students liked to do the task and want to do the activities of the task again without teacher’s order. In this research, the researcher found that there is also improvement in the students understanding toward the lesson material being learned, especially descriptive text and also in the students’ speaking competence, especially their fluency to deliver spoken text and their pronunciation. These findings were in in line with those of Liuolienė and Metiūnienė (2006), where almost all students finally shew their motivation, attitude, and responsibility to work independently without teacher’s order outside the English class. It was also proven that the higher motivation, the more autonomous learning students want to have in the learning process. CONCLUSION The research was aimed to seek answer for three formulated research questions, to find out how video making task can improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English, to find out how video making task is implemented to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English, to find out why video making task can be implemented to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English. The findings of the research show that video making task can improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking English because most of the students liked to do the task since the task could make them having fun and improve their speaking competence and also their confidence. Although the students got difficulties in doing the task, the difficulties made them to be creative, so that they could finish the task given. Most of the students stated that their motivation to practice speaking English had been improved as well as their confidence to speak in English. It is also proven that video making task can be implemented to improve the students’ motivation to practice speaking. It is because in the process, they could understand the procedure easily. The students did the task by imitating the organization of spoken text used by the model video, using their own information. 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