JOURNAL REVIEW
Taken from TEFLIN Journal
Volume 21, Number 1, February 2010
Submitted as the assignment of "Applied Statistics"
By Asep Suarman
Student No. : 1007015
English Education Studies
School of Post Graduate
Indonesian University of Education
Bandung
2010
REVIEW ON JOURNAL
"Does Retelling Technique Improve Speaking Fluency?"
Introduction.
"Does Retelling Technique Improve Speaking Fluency?" is the title of journal article being discussed in this very piece of writing. It is available on TEFLIN Journal, Volume 21, Number 1, February 2010. (p. 1-8). The authors of this article are Noor Rachmawaty (
[email protected]) and Istanti Hermagustiana (
[email protected]), (2010) from Mulawarman University, Indonesia. They investigated the effect of retelling technique on students' speaking fluency.
Herewith, I would like to review the strength and criticize the weakness as well, about the presentation: its research and theoretical background, its methods, its data analysis, its findings and its conclusion.
Speaking in English is like face in a body, Professor Nenden said. It shows how well our mastery of English. Through speaking, ones try to use any or all of the language they know, activate various elements of language in their brain, and every one can see how well they are doing (Harmer, 2007 p. 123). For students, the more opportunities to speak, Harmer argues, the more automatic the use of elements becomes. As a result, they become autonomous language users.
Among others, retelling is a helpful activity in getting students to practice speaking skill. It is a valuable way of provoking activation of previously learnt or acquired knowledge (Harmer, 2007). It can also show how well students understand the text they are retelling (Brown, . In line with this, through retelling, teachers can assess how students oral language, reconstruct a passage and prioritizing and sequencing information (Blachoicz and Ogle, 2008).
As the lectures in the institution of English teacher training, Rachmawaty and Hermagustina (2010) think it is necessary for them to improve their students' speaking skill. As the treatment for low-speaking ability students, they use retelling technique and report it to the journal.
Summary
Here is the summary of their journal report.
Background
The aims of their study are to find out the effect of retelling technique on students' speaking fluency and to know the strategies used by those students while retelling a story.
To start the report, they state that learning a new language is both autonomous and a collaborative process. They, then, cite Lindsay and Knight's (2006) opinion about the stages of language learning process from input, noticing, recognizing patterns and rule making, use and rule modification and at last automating.
Further, they relate their study to English language teaching program in Indonesian Universities/colleges where the students are trained to be English teachers at elementary to senior high school level. The students are supposed to take some micro courses like listening, speaking, reading and writing. The students are expected to produce both spoken and written English fluently and accurately.
Additionally, they argue that storytelling is famous technique in second or foreign language classes. One of the reasons, citing Wright (1995 in Xu, 2007), they explain, is because it relies much on words, offering a major and constant source of language experience for children and applicable to different levels and ages.
Then they define retelling - citing Kalmback (1986) and Stoicovy (2004), that a process of rememorizing what we listened to and read - which can promote students' comprehension and understanding of discourse and promote students' ability in rearranging information from the text they have read. Retelling also helps teachers identify the level of students comprehension of what they listen or read.
Method
The subjects of the research were six English students in remedial class. The data collection techniques were recording (and transcribing) the students' retelling English story text and questionnaire in pre and while retelling. The procedures were, after the subject read the story in 30 minutes, and got prepared in few minutes, they retold the story on which were recorded. The recorded data were transcribed and analyzed to figure out the speaking fluency level and comprehension of the text. The questionnaire was used to discover students' strategy in retelling process. Six texts were used as the material of the treatment. The procedure of retelling was similar between pretest and posttest. The data were analyzed by calculating the mean of pretest and posttest. Then, a test of correlation was conducted. Two raters did the scoring of the tests in order to achieve inter-rater-reliability.
The Result and Discussion
According to the researchers, the data gained from the pretest shows that 16% of the participants were good at retelling (got C on rubric of assessment), while 33,3% and 50% obtained 'D' and 'E' respectively. While in the post test, - they say there was an increase: 16,7% of the participants were better at retelling, on the table - 100% of participants were better ( got C+, C, C-). No participant got D or E.
Then, the writers run - they say a correlation test, but in fact it is - t-test to see whether significant advance of students' speaking skill exists in this study. The calculation shows that the t-value of the test scores was 7.77, while the t-table was 2.571. The t-test value is statistically greater than the t-table value.
To end up this subtitle, other aspect, then, were discussed in accordance with participants' progress in retelling the story. The first criterion was comprehensibility. In the pretest, they report, all participants misunderstood the negative sentence to be positive, which was fatal in relation to the content of story. The participants also could only deal with 80% of the whole story. However, in the posttest, after the retelling technique treatment, the participants could reduce the misunderstanding phrases/sentences and were able to finish the whole story. In vocabulary aspect, the participants made a good progress. Some participants succeed in applying different words but had similar meaning with those available in the text.
The strategies used by participants, they found, were rewriting the text, deleting unknown words, and memorizing the text. When the participants had trouble in recalling the words in their draft, they tried to continue the story in some ways; skipping the forgotten words and trying to speak in halting manner. The writers argue that those strategies were in line with strategic competence (Savignon, 1997) such as paraphrasing, repetition, avoidance of the unfamiliar words or terms and word guessing.
2.4 Conclusions and Suggestions
Based on their research findings, they conclude that retelling is considered a technique which can be applied to improve students' speaking fluency. It was indicated by the t-value is higher than t-table; the mean of the post test score is much bigger than pretest. It means that the treatment given to the participants affect their speaking fluency significantly. Then they ended the conclusion by explaining the strategies used by the participants in retelling a story which were making some notes - wherein there were a list of words, phrases, or simple sentences used as a speaking guide- and avoiding unfamiliar words in the texts by using their own words.
The suggestions the writers make are, first, speaking lectures are to implement retelling technique more often than usual to develop students' speaking fluency. Second, students need to actively collect short stories to retell in or outside the class, in pairs or groups. At last, further research is needed to be carried out involving a bigger number of subjects, longer time frame, longer texts and more proficient levels so that more valid and generalizable findings could be gained.
Analysis and Responses of the Presentation
In the background, both writers have made a good introduction and an overview of literature to their research. They put forward the reasons why the study was necessary, what they intent to do and what has already been done related to their issue (Hatch and Farhady, 1982). They refer their theme to some experts' opinion adequately.
However, in my opinion, they lack of covering the burning issues related to their theme, their research objectives or the recent condition on their research site. They only told about the importance of language skills for teacher going to be students. They seem to miss the niche (Emilia, 2008); the gap between what it should be and what the reality is. They do not explain it obviously what is ideally on literature and what is real on the research site. Readers, consequently, cannot see clearly how their study would fill the gap. Exposing the gap and positioning of the study is so important as to convince readers that their study needs conducting.
Their way of writing is gradually coherent and reasonably systematic and scientific. The writers present it in order that it is deserved appreciation. The gradation of the idea is smoothly conveyed. Readers feel secure in reading the text though only few conjunctions were used.
In addition, they succeeded in citing conventionally a number of literatures about both speaking as the dependent variable and retelling technique as the independent variables. They guide readers to figure out the answer for their first aim of their study. Yet, to my view, they miss mentioning the theories or findings related to the second aim of the study: students' (retelling) strategies. They do not describe the review of the literature dealing with the students' strategies of retelling techniques, which is essential to make readers able to compare between the strategies performed by the students and those written on the literatures. They do not thoroughly discuss all theories dealing with the second research objectives.
Related to the research method, the writers have done it very well. They describe quite obviously about the subjects, materials and procedures of data collection and data analysis. Readers easily comprehend them.
However, to my point of view, the researchers do not explicitly tell us about the research design. This is important to give conceptual framework of how the research was done. They seem to me that they did nothing as the treatment but giving the six texts to be retold. No further explanation about how they guided or trained the students to be better on retelling - though it might not be essential. Additionally, to my curiosity, the writers miss telling us what the rubric is like. No clarification was made about other aspect of speaking/retelling. I wonder if the pronunciation and expression in story telling was considered in exercising and testing the students. As they are not the same as fluency, the research result would be quite different, I guess, if pronunciation and expression were judged.
Furthermore, the data analysis, in my opinion, is not so clear that readers do not know for sure whether it was correlation test or t-test. They informed that they planned to employ a correlation test but then, on the following sections, they revealed the t-test. This indicates that they mistook the data analysis test, mistyped it probably or even maybe worse, they did not comprehend the quantitative data analysis. Provided that they run correlation test, why then did they mention the t-table instead of Person product moment or Spearman rank order correlation (Hatch and Farhady, 1982)? This section needs a lit bit correction, I think.
In presenting the data obtained from the pretest and post test, the writers, I guess, do not display it effectively. Since the data analysis was t-test, exactly matched-t test, they should have sorted the data from the biggest score to the smallest one, in order that the data sound well. Readers can see easily, clearly and quickly. I think it is better to display the data in one complete table instead of exhibiting three wasting-space tables like the writers do. Showing the percentage of pretest and post test was rather meaningless and unnecessary. The worse thing related to the table, the writers seem not cautious in discussing the table. They say '16,7% of participant' were better…", in fact it is 100% participants were better. All participants made progress. This indicates that the writers misinterpret or misunderstand the table, I guess. In addition, to my view, they need more discussion about their finding on this part. They should only have displayed and described the data, and no discussion was revealed referring to the aims or questions of their study.
In further section, the writers had done good job. They succeed in discussing the research finding in relation to the aim of the research. They explain students' strategies qualitatively. They even include some examples of subjects' utterances. Though they do not mention the theories earlier, they refer their finding to an expert's opinion. It might be less convincing but at least they show that their study is theoretically back grounded and previously done by other researchers.
On their last subtitle, the writers have made it pretty brief. They conclude their writing by repeating and shortening what they have got from the research. Their conclusion is a kind of summary. There is no other issue available in the conclusion. To close the report, they give very good recommendations and suggestions for readers to keep on their research about retelling or other technique for the sake of English teaching of speaking skill.
Conclusion
In short, the piece of writing reports a quite interesting theme and an adequately valid research. The writers have succeeded in achieving their research objectives. They found that the retelling technique significantly can improve student' speaking fluency and there are some strategies students used in retelling. The writers have reported their research systematically and scientifically valid. However, it still needs some adjustments e.g. exposing the burning issues, presenting effective table of data, mentioning the research designs and data analysis techniques. As the content of TEFLIN journal forum, I guess, the idea of the report is deserved to be appreciated but it is not worth being a model. Additionally, because of its weaknesses, I think, it is not deserved to be the first article of the edition. Wallohu a'lam.
Bibliography
Alwasilah, A. Chaedar. 2003. Pokoknya Kualitatif. Dasar-Dasar merancang dan melakukan penelitian kualitatif. Bandung: Pustaka Jaya.
Blachowicz, Camille and Ogle, Donna. 2009. Reading Comprehension: Strategies for Independent Learners. New York: The Guilford Press.
Brown, H. Douglas. 2001.Teaching by Principles, An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. New York : Addison Wesley Longman.
Emila, Emi. 2008. Menulis Tesis dan Disertasi. Bandung: Alfabeta
Harmer, Jeremy. 2007. How to Teach English. Essex; Pearson Educated Limited.
Hatch, Evelyn and Larazaton, Anne. 1991. The Research Manual: Design and Statistics for Applied Linguistics. Boston, Massachutts : Heinle & Heinle Publisher.
Rachmawaty, Noor and Hermagustiana, Istanti. 2010. Does Retelling Technique Improve Speaking Fluency? TEFLIN Journal, Volume 21, Number 1, February 2010. (p. 1-8)
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