DEVELOPING A COMMUNICATIVE SUPPLEMENTARY SPEAKING E-BOOK FOR JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS Ika Trisnantasari Sri Rachmajanti Hj. Nur Mukminatien School of Graduate Studies, State University of Malang, East Java ABSTRACT This research was conducted to develop a communicative supplementary speaking e-book for the English teachers in SMPN 3 Batu. This product provides the communicative speaking materials with communicative tasks to be applied in teaching learning process. The research design of this research is research and development (R & D) that has been modified from Borg and Gall (1983). The instruments used to collect the data for the needs analysis were interview with the teachers and a questionnaire for the students, about the current materials. Then the data from the needs analysis used a developing a communicative speaking material product. After that, the product needs to be validated by three experts using validation checklist as the instrument in the expert validation. This product was design for the 8th graders of junior high school, academic year 2013/2014, in SMPN 3 Batu. Twenty students from nine classes that were selected by the teachers were chosen as the subjects of the research. Then the instruments used in try-out were an observation checklist for the students’ speaking activity, questionnaire for the students about the try-out material, and observation checklist for the teachers about the try-out material.This e-book contains communicative and interactive speaking materials and tasks to help the teachers’ improve the the students’ confidance using English in various communication situations, both formal and informal. This e-book is also equipped with a manual to help the teachers and the students. It revealed that the result of the try-out from the instruments used in this step was very good which means that the developed product did not need any revision. . Key words: Communicative, E-book, Speaking Skill The growth of the use of English as the world’s primary language for international communication has obviously been continuing for several decades. Therefore, English teaching has been getting more attention (Graddol, 1997: 9). Related to the statement, speaking as one of the four language skills is inevitably very important for people to master, to communicate with each other around the world. As a result, it is important to improve English teaching, especially teaching speaking skills in most countries, including Indonesia. Still related to the speaking skill, one of the most difficult English skills encountered by junior high school students in Indonesia is speaking skill. Therefore, the learning materials of junior high school level should be middle. Besides the material, the teaching of speaking in junior high school is also hit by the crisis of confidence. There are still a lot of junior high school students who feel shy to speak in English even though they have been with the activity to write and read an English book. This occurs because their pronunciation is much less appropriate, and the feelow students often laugh when they hear their own friends speak English with the wrong pronunciation. So, the problem is mostly on their confidence. If their confidence is down, then it is likely they will face difficulties in developing their English skills. So, the problem in learning English is primarily not about grammar and pronunciation, but rather things about confidence and courage to start speaking English. This is because grammar and pronunciation can be trained later after the courage and self-confidence in English has grown. Under that condition, the students must be activated to speak English as a means of communication not only inside but also outside classroom to make them accustommed to speaking English. That is the duty for the English teacher to solve the problems in order to activate their students to speak English confidently. The problems also happened in SMPN 3 Batu. In the preliminary study, by interviewing the teachers, the researcher found out that the students get bored in the English speaking activities in the classroom. Even worse, the learning process in the classroom was still textbook oriented and it made the students passive in speaking because they thought that the teachers know everything. Dealing with this problem, speaking skill should be taught communicatively in the students’ daily life and experience (Richard, 1990: 76). In that way, the students will be active and creative in speaking English. The teachers had an important role in dealing with the students’ problem. Unfortunately, the teachers also had problem in teaching speaking as they did not know the proper communicative material to teach speaking for their students. It happens because of the provided materials in their school do not follow the communicative approach; whereas the appropriate speaking task is communicative task and the concept of communicative speaking was the interaction between two or more people (Ashalatha, 2011: 12). From the preliminary study, it was found out that the teachers of SMPN 3 Batu had their own English materials, but the English materials’ quality are not suitable with what they needs; it only consists of materials and assignments without instructions for the teachers; not attractive, not communicative and monotonous; therefore, they rarely use the materials from the textbook. They said that it was difficult to apply the textbook in class because the situation was not related to the students’ condition in their surrounding area, and there was no manual for the teacher to start teaching speaking to the students. The speaking tasks in the textbook are limited and not communicative. In fact, the textbook provides similar type of uncommunicative activities that are repeated in different topics, the students are bored and less interested in the teaching learning process. Such activities promote neither critical thinking nor problem-solving skills. The students are not interested in using the book, so the teacher tries to find other materials from other relevant sources. Unfortunately, it was not easy for the teachers to choose which textbooks have appropriate materials for the students’ needs. From the previous explanation, it is obvious thought that the teacher really needs a supplementary material to solve the problem. The teachers need a supplementary handbook, which contains communicative speaking materials along with the brief manual how to teach communicative speaking. In this study, the researcher developed supplementary e-book. The supplementary e-book was functionally as an extra material to enlarge the teachers’ knowledge to be effective and professional teaching. Therefore, the final product of supplementary e-book was directed to complete or enhance a new product about communicative speaking activities (Davanellos, 2012: 1). Seeing the times today, as a result of the digital era, more and more textbooks are becoming electronic books (e-books). E-books are coming to be a new trend in the world of information technologies. E-books are said to offer a wide range of interesting teaching and learning. E- books appear to be an efficient means to store and organize information. Thousands of books can be stored in just one computer that can be accessed by many people. In addition, e-books can provide their users with variant contents and full-time availability. For this reason, e- book collections are being more frequently accessed than regular book collections. In this sense, e-books support the mission and vision of digital era in this times (Rosy, 2002: 1). RESEARCH METHOD This product in this study was developed by adopting of communicative approach. The basic idea about communicative approach is learning language successfully comes through having to communicate real meaning. When the students are involved in real communication, their natural strategies for language acquisition will be used, and this will allow them to learn to use the target language (Ali, 2008). The other expert (Swan, 2001: 83) states that a basic concept of communicative approach is 'information gap'. When one student talks to another, it is important that new information should be transmitted across the 'gap' between them. To this end, ingenious exercises are devised in which half the class are provided with data to which the other half do not have access; those who lack the information then have to obtain it by using the language in an appropriate way. This is a powerful approach, and if used intelligently can generate interesting, lively, and useful in teaching learning process. According to communicative approach, the pedagogical solution to the problems of getting students to speak the target language in large EFL classrooms is to engage students in meaningful activities such as the information-gap and the role-play activities (Harmer, 2001: 85; Nunan, 1989: 39). This approach has been previously successful in ESL situations (Harmer, 2001: 51). However, in introducing these activities into the EFL classroom, the pedagogical solution presents two quite sharp challenges: to create meaningful situations for language use, and to overcome affective barriers within the classroom. Information-gap is best used as pair works activity, in order to promote students’ interactions (Long, 1983: 71; Long and Porter, 1985: 91; Pica, Kanagy and Falodun, 1993: 79), which play an important role in generating comprehensible input and language acquisition. One student has information that his/her partner does not have. The goal is for students to use the target language to generate real communication in solving a task (Bygate, 1987: 39). Therefore, this study is designed to use information-gap activities of e-book to fulfill what the teachers and students’ needs. The materials used inside the e-book adapted from the standard of competence, basic competences and indicators of the speaking skill in curriculum 2006 (See Appendix 1) for the 8th grade junior high school in semester 2 with selected topics. In the process of selecting, grading, and developing the materials of communicative speaking inside e-book, the researcher followed the critea of developing material officially mentioned on BSNP (Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan) for junior high school, so that the sources in this research taken in term of adoption, adaptation and newly made by the researcher. This e-book developed as a supplementary material for speaking skill that supported the textbook used by the teacher which evaluated as uncommunicative material. However, the researcher should prepared supplementary material as the students’ need in teaching learning process in order to improve the students’ speaking skill. Therefore the researcher should selected the proper standard competence, and the basic competence for speaking skill by discussing with the teacher in SMPN 3 Batu. The standard competence (SC) is adopted from curriculum 2006. The researcher chose SC.9, it is Expressing meaning in transactional and interpersonal short simple monologue to interact with students’ surrounding; and the basic competence 9.1 adapted is Expressing meaning in transactional (to get things done) and monologues (socialize) using a variety of simple oral language accurately, fluently and acceptably to interact with the environment involves speech acts: asking, giving, rejecting information. The researcher did the research until limited main field testing, so the researcher should developed a sample product that tried out at the main field testing. Therefore the topic in this research made by discussing between the researcher and the teachers, and the topic is ‘School life’. The researcher followed the selected topic by the rule of choosing the topics of the e-book for the junior high school is adopted from Thornbury (2005: 120), where as explained before, the school life is one of the local world of the junior high school students. There are three tasks provided in e-book namely A.1Missing Things in Classroom, B.1 Completing Information Gap and C.1 Ability Bingo. Each title of the task made based on the suitability of provided the speaking activity in each tasks. The source for task A.1 consisted of the material was newly made by the researcher by following the picture gap as one of communicative activities; the picture adapted from the WbW Picture Dictionary (PDF) by Molinsky and Bliss. The picture is about the view of classroom, complete with the students, teacher, and the classroom equipments. The picture chosen because the picture is clear, colorful, attractive and complete as required as the needs. Next, the source for task B.1 consisted of the material was newly made by the researcher by following the information gap as one of communicative activities. The content of the table in this task made by adjusting the student's everyday basic knowledge such as regional name, hobby, and school subject. The last, the source for task C.1 adapted from web page namelly Teach-this by Newton. The content of this task is about the entertaining teaching activity, students circulate, asking questions about the abilities of other students in order to fill in a Bingo Card. This fun game activity teaches students to ask and answer questions the request using the modal verb of ability ‘can’. Students have to demonstrate their ability if possible. The first student to get five names in a row wins. From those information, explicitly, the portion for the adoption is 10% of the whole product while 30 % is adaptation, and 60% of the product was newly made by the researcher. THE RESULT OF STUDY Since this research was intended to develop communicative speaking e-book, the researcher chose the research and development (R & D) as the research design that has been modified from Borg and Gall (1983), which consists of ten phases, but the design was reduced into seven phases: needs analysis, material development, expert validation, first revision, field test, second revision, and final product; the last three (main field testing, dissemination and implementation) were skipped. The instruments used to collect the data for the needs analysis were interview with the teachers about the current materials, and a questionnaire for the students about the current materials. Then the data from the needs analysis used a developing a communicative speaking material product. After that, the product needs to be validated by three experts using validation checklist as the instrument in the expert validation. Then the instruments used in try-out were an observation checklist for the students’ speaking activity, questionnaire for the students about the try-out material, and observation checklist for the teachers about the try-out material. This e-book contains communicative and interactive speaking materials and tasks to provide interactive speaking activities that help the teachers’ improve the the students’ confidance using English in various communication situations, both formal and informal. This e-book is also equipped with a manual to help the teachers in teaching speaking and help the students to speak communicatively. It revealed that the result of the last step, limited test or try-out from the instruments used in this step was very good which means that the developed product did not need any revision. RECOMMENDATION Recommendations are made to be addressed to the users and the further researchers. 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