Improving Students' English Speaking Skill Through Content-Based Instruction

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IMPROVING STUDENTS’ ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL

THROUGH CONTENT-BASED INSTRUCTION
(A Classroom Action Research in the Second Grade Students of Business English
Department of CsV&TC, China in the Academic Year of 2010/2011)
By
LI HUI
S890809216
Thesis
Submitted to Fulfill One of the Requirements for Getting
Graduate Degree in English Education
ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

GRADUATE SCHOOL
SEBELAS MARET UNIVERSITY
SURAKARTA
2011
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APPROVAL
IMPROVING STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL THROUGH

CONTENT –BASED INTRUCTION

By
LI HUI
S890809216
This thesis has been approved by the Consultants of English Education Department of
Graduate School of Sebelas Maret University Surakarta, on 25th February, 2011.
Consultant I Consultant II
Dr. Ngadiso, M.Pd Drs. Gunarso Susilohadi, M.Ed

NIP. 19621231 198803 1 009 NIP. 195403151 198503 1 002
Approved by
The Head of English Education Department
Graduate School
Sebelas Maret University
Dr. Ngadiso, M.Pd

NIP. 19621231 198803 1 009
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LEGITIMATION FROM THE BOARD OF EXAMINERS
IMPROVING STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL THROUGH

CONTENT –BASED INTRUCTION

By
LI HUI
S890809216
This thesis has been examined by the board of thesis examiners of English Education
Department of Graduate School of Sebelas Maret University Surakarta, on 31st March
2011.
Board of Examiners Signature

Chairman : Prof. Dr. Joko Nurkamto, M.Pd ………………………..
Secretary : Dr. Abdul Asib, M.Pd …………………………
Examiner I : Dr. Ngadiso, M.Pd …………………………
Examiner II : Drs. Gunarso Susilohadi, M.Ed ………………………….
Surakarta,…………………..2011
The Director of Graduate Program of The Head of English Education

Sebelas Maret University Department of Graduate School of
Sebelas Maret University
Prof. Drs. Suranto, M.Sc., Ph. D Dr. Ngadiso, M. Pd

NIP. 19570820 198503 100 4 NIP. 19621231 198803 100 9
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PRONOUCEMENT
This is to certify that I, Li Hui, alias Vivienne Lee who writes this thesis entitled
IMPROVING STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL TRHOUGH CONTENT-BASED
INSTRUCTION (A Classroom Action Research for Students of Business English
Department of CsV&TC, China in the Academic Year of 2010/2011).
It is my original work, not plagiarized or made by others. Anything related to
other’s works are written in the quotation, and the sources are listed on the Bibliography.
If this pronouncement proves not true, I will accept any consequences or

academic punishment, including withdrawing or cancelling my academic degree.
Sincerely Yours!
Surakarta, 21st February 2011
Li Hui
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MOTTO
“Do as you would be done by others.”

or
“Don't do unto others what you don't
want others do unto you."
己所不欲勿施於人
By Confucius
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DEDICATION
This thesis is dedicated to:
ü My Dear Parents who gave birth to me, brought me up, and educated me.
ü My God Father who always supports and encourages me to take the graduate school.
ü My Friends who helped me a lot.
Li Hui, 21st February, 2010
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The writer realized that the accomplishment of this thesis would not run well
without any help from the others. Therefore, here she wishes to give her sincerest
gratitude and appreciation to the following people who helped her a lot:
1. Prof. Drs. Suranto, M. Sc. Ph. D as the Director of Graduate School of Sebelas Maret
University who has given his permission to write this thesis.
2. Dr. Ngadiso, M. Pd as the Head of English Education Department of Graduate School,
and also as the first consultant who has given his guidance theoretically, practically,
and patiently in conducting the research.
3. Drs. Gunarso Susilohadi, M. Ed, as the second consultant who has given his guidance
theoretically, practically, and patiently in conducting the research.
4. All the lectures of English Education of Graduate School of Sebelas Maret University
Surakarta, for their lectures, guidance, suggestions, and criticism.
5. Yin Wenhui, the Head of Business English Department of CsV&TC, China who has
given his permission to study and to conduct this research in the college.
6. The collaborator, Zeng Yun, who always helped the writer to conduct this research in
the class.
The writer realizes that this thesis is still far from being perfect. Hence, any
criticisms or suggestions from the readers and users are welcome to the writer in order to
make improvement. In the same time, the writer hopes that this thesis can be useful for
other writers, teachers, and students.
Surakarta, February 21st, 2011
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ABSTRACT
Li Hui. S 890809216: Improving Students’ Speaking Skill through Content-based

Instruction (A Classroom Action Research at Third Semester Students of Class 0902 of
the Business English Department of Changsha Vocational & Technical College, China).
Thesis, Surakarta: English Education Department, Graduate School, Sebelas Maret
University, 2011.
The research is aimed at (1) finding whether and to what extent content-based
instruction improved the students’ speaking skill; and (2) describing the teaching and
learning situation when content-based instruction was applied in the speaking class.
This study applied action research technique to conduct the research to improve
students’ speaking ability through Content-based Instruction (CBI). Hopkins mentions
that action research is a research which combines as substantive act with a research
procedure; it is an action disciplined by enquiry, a personal attempt at understanding
while engaged in process of improvement and reform. This research consisted of two
cycles, with four meetings in each cycle; while each cycle consists planning, action,
observation, and reflection. The research was conducted at CsV&TC, China; the subjects
of the research were the students of second grade in the academic year of 2010-2011. In
this research, there were two types of data: quantitative data and qualitative data. The
quantitative data were collected through test, namely pre-test and post-test. The
qualitative data were collected through observation, questionnaire, and interview to the
students. The quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics; find out the
mean of the scores in the test and the significant improvement of the scores using t-test of
non-independent variable. The qualitative data were analyzed using
Constant-Comparative Method suggested by Glaser and Strauss consisting of the
following steps: (1) comparing incidents applicable to each category; (2) integrating
categories and their properties; (3) delimiting the theory; and (4) writing the theory.
The research findings indicated that CBI was effective in two aspects: (1) in
improving students’ speaking ability: students’ speaking level increased; students could
answer the teacher’s questions; students could fluently communicate with their friends by
using correct grammatical forms and appropriate vocabulary with good pronunciation;
the use of mother tongue was reduced; (2) in improving class situation: the atmosphere in
the whole class became alive; students enjoyed the speaking activities; there were many
chances for students to practice their speaking skill; students had great motivation to
learn speaking; speaking became easy and fun to the students.
The results of this study showed that CBI was effective and beneficial to improve the
students’ speaking competency and the classroom situation.
Key words: Content-based Instruction, Speaking Skill
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TABLE OF CONTENT
COVER PAGE…………………………………………………………………....... i
APPROVAL PAGE…………………………………………………………… ....... ii
LEGITIMATION PAGE………………………………………………………. ...... iii
PRONUCEMENT………………………………………………………………...... iv
MOTTO………………………………………………………………………… ..... v
BEDICATION…………………………………………………………………. ...... vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT……………………………………………………... ...... vii
ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………… ....... viii
TABLE OF CONTENT………………………………………………………… ..... ix
LIST OF ABBREVIATION…………………………………………………… ...... xi
LIST OF APPENDICES………………………………………………………. ....... xii
LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………. .... xiii
LIST OF FIGURE AND GRAPH………………………………………………. .... xiv
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION……………………………………………… ... 1
A. The Background of the Research…………………………… .. 1
B. The Formulation of the Problem…………………………… ... 6
C. The Objective of the Study………………………………… ... 7
D. The Benefits of the Study………………………………….. ... 7
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE……………………. ...... 8
A. Speaking………………………………………………….. ...... 8
1. The Nature of Speaking……………………………… ...... 8
2. Speaking in Second Language………………………. ....... 10
3. Teaching Speaking…………………………………… ...... 12
4. Testing Speaking……………………………………… ..... 18
B. Content-Based Instruction………………………………… .... 22
1. The Nature of Content-Based Instruction……………. ...... 22
2. Theoretical Support…………………………………… ..... 23
3. The Advantage of Content-Based Instruction…………..... 26
4. Content/Material Selection……………………………. .... 27
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5. The Implementation of Content-Based Instruction……..... 29

C. Rationale…………………………………………………… ... 32
D. Hypothesis…………………………………………………..... 33
CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY……………………………......... 34
A. The Setting of the Research………………………………. ..... 34
B. The Subject of the Research………………………………...... 34
C. The Method of the Research……………………………… ..... 35
D. The Procedure of the Research…………………………… ..... 37
E. Techniques of Collecting the Data………………………. ....... 39
F. Technique of Analyzing the Data………………………… ..... 40
CHAPTER IV RESULT OF THE STUDY…………………………………… ..... 42
A. Introduction………………………………………………. ...... 42
1. The Condition before the Research………………………. 43
2. Students’ Ability in Speaking ………………………. ....... 44
3. Classroom Situation………………………. ....................... 46
4. Student’ perception about speaking …………………….... 46
B. Research Implementation…………………………………...... 50
1. Cycle 1………………………………………………… .... 51
2. Cycle 2………………………………………………… .... 75
C. Findings and Discussion…………………………………… ... 96
1. The Findings …………………………………………. ..... 96
2. Discussion ……………………………………………. ..... 103
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION, IMPLICATION, AND SUGGESTION…… ....... 107
A. Conclusion………………………………………………… .... 107
B. Implication………………………………………………… .... 109
C. Suggestion…………………………………………………. .... 110
BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………… ..... 112
APPENDIXES…………………………………………………………………. ...... 116
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LIST OF ABBRIVIATION
CBI = Content-Based Instruction

CBCs = Content-Based Classrooms
CsV&TC = Changsha Vocational & Technical College
BEDS = Business English Department Students
T = Teacher
S = Student
Ss = Students
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LIST OF APPENDICES
Appendix Page
1. The List of Interview Questions in Pre-research Stage ………………………… .116
2. Blue Print of the Pre-test ……………………………………………………….. .117
3. Learning Implementation Plan of Cycle 1 ……………………………………… .119
4. Learning Implementation Plan of Cycle 2 ……………………………………… 124
5. The Result of Pre-test from the First Rater …………………………………….. .129
6. The Result of Pre-test from the Second Rater ………………………………….. .130
7. The Computation of the Final Score of Pre-test ………………………………… .131
8. The Result of Post-test Cycle 1 from the First Rater …………………………… .132
9. The Result of Post-test Cycle 1 from the Second Rater………………………… .133
10. The Computation of Students Score in Cycle 1 ………………………………… .134
11. The Result of Post-test Cycle 2 from the First Rater……………………………. .135
12. The Result of Post-test Cycle 2 from the Second Rater………………………… .136
13. The Computation of Students Score in Cycle 2 ……………………………….. 137
14. The Computation of the Field Note of Cycle 1 ……………………………….. 138
15. The Computation of the Field Note of Cycle 2 ……………………………….. 141
16. Questions for Interview after the Implementation of Cycle 1 ………………… 145
17. Questionnaire form Given after the Implementation of CBI …………………. 146
18. Samples of Students’ Questionnaire Products ………………………………… 147
19. The Questionnaire Result Conducted after the Implementation of CBI………. 149
20. The Sample form of Classroom Observation Sheet ………………………….... 151
21. Students’ Worksheet for Cycle 1 Meeting 1 …………………………………… 152
24. Students’ Worksheet for Cycle 2 Meeting 1 ……………………………… ....... 164
25. Students’ Worksheet for Cycle 2 Meeting 2 ………………………………. ...... 168
26. Students’ Worksheet for Cycle 2 Meeting 3 ………………………………. ...... 172
27. Pictures of Teaching and Learning Process ………………………………. ....... 176
28. Certification Letter from the College………………….. ..................................... 179
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1 The Research Schedule ……………………………………………….. ... 34

Table 4.1 Process of the Research ………………………………………………. ... 42
Table 4.2 Result of Pre-research ………………………………………………… ... 43
Table 4.3 Feature of Students’ Speech …………………………………………...... 44
Table 4.4 Result of Interview ……………………………………………………. ... 47
Table 4.5 Speaking Difficulty …………………………………………………… ... 48
Table 4.6 Overall Implementation of the Research ……………………………… .. 50
Table 4.7 The Implementation of Cycle 1 ……………………………………….. .. 51
Table 4.8 The Implementation of Cycle 2 ………………………………………. ... 75
Table 4.9 The Comparison of Students’ Speaking Score in Each Cycle ………… .. 93
Table 4.10 The Comparison of Percentage of Students Passing Grade in Each Cycle 94
Table 4.11 Summary of the Research Findings …………………………………… 96
Table 4.12 Students’ Responses towards the Implementation of CBI ……………. . 102
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LIST OF FIGURES AND GRAPHS
Figure 3.1: Action Research Protocol ……………………………………………… 37

Graph 4.1 The Scores of Student’s Speaking Competence ………………………… 98
Graph 4.2 Improvement of the Students’ Speaking Competence ………………….. 99
Graph 4.3 Improvement of Students’ participation ………………………………… 101
CHAPTER I
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INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Research
Following the reform and opening-up policy, China is progressing toward a global
modernized economic society. English as an international language plays a more and
more important role in many parts of our life. It is being used in international business,
politics, education, agriculture, science, technology, etc. Therefore, English has been
made as the most popular foreign language learned by many students in the world.
In China, English is not only regarded as a second language, which is widely used
in both formal and informal occasions, but also considered to be the initial foreign
language that is being learned compulsorily since middle school till university level for
many years (Actually, in recent years, the English course has been started since primary
school). Therefore, English as a major course must be learned and mastered by every
student.
Since the beginning of nineteen-nineties, The Vocational & Technical Colleges
in China developed at very rapid speed. The objective of this kind of college is to provide
practical talents in the field of production, technology, service, management, etc. There is
no exception for the Changsha Vocational & Technical College (CsV&TC).The goal of
this college is to help the students to master the particular skills for their specific working
fields. According to an investigation among all the students in the Business English
Department of CsV&TC, nearly 70-80% students will choose International Business as
their future career. However, The International business is a trade conducted in different
countries. It involves using the English as a communication tool to deal business with
people from different countries, while communication places great emphasis on the
speaking capacity. People who can read, listen and write, but cannot speak will not be
considered as a professional business man in the international business field.
Because of this, one of the goals of the Business English Department of
(CsV&TC) is to improve the students’ speaking skill and get them to be ready in their
future job position. Thus, both the working skill and the speaking ability in the
curriculum of the Business English Department of CsH&VTC (Changsha Higher
Vocational & Technical College) are highly stressing. The main target and final goal of
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the students in the speaking class of Business English Department, therefore, is to have
the oral communication capability. That is the students should be able to communicate
with people on the daily commercial aspect accurately, fluently and appropriately.
According to Johnson (1998: 3), fluency refers to the absence of pauses and
other indices of word-finding (or grammatical) difficulty. It is the natural language use or
“the maximally effective operation of the language system so far acquired by the
students” in situation where the learner’s focus is on the effective communication of
meaning. Accuracy means to the similarity to native speaker’s grammar in the case of L2,
or to prescriptive grammar in the case of L1. Accuracy embraces both formal correctness
and appropriateness. It is deals with the production of structurally correct instances of L2.
The concept of appropriateness is that language use is inevitably influenced by the
context in which it is being used. All choices about aspects of language use, such as
vocabulary and syntax, do not in really involved reference to the exact requirements of a
fixed and unvarying ‘standard English’, so much as locate what is being written or said in
terms of the varying degrees of formality that English language so uniquely allows, and
within the richly varied register of the language (Jon and John, 2000: 107).
All in all, the students of the Business English Department should master the
basic and specific speaking skill which is related to their daily life and future career. The
students should have the capacity to blurt out the basic and specific English focus on the
communication of meaning with the production of the structurally correct instances of L2
in terms of varying the degrees of formality that the English language allows.
However, there has a bitter case between the objective and the present situation
in the speaking class of Business English Department of CsV&TC (Changsha Vocational
& Technical College). The speaking ability of the speaking class of BEDS (Business
English Department Students) is still low, unsatisfying, and far from the expectations.
This can be seen especially in the class of 0902. Students in this class have low learning
motivation and interest; they don’t pay much attention to the class; they cannot answer
the teacher’s questions orally; they feel shy, nervous, and lack of confidence when asked
by the teacher to answer questions or to conduct a presentation; in addition, they cannot
fluently express their ideas by using appropriate vocabulary and correct grammatical
forms; the students only can speak the first two or three sentences, and then totally get
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stuck and speak their mother tongue during the presentation; moreover, they often feel
hesitate to pronounce the words, and most of them mispronounce the words. The
students’ low speaking ability must be dealing with the teaching and learning process.
From the observation and interview with the teachers and students in the class of 0902,
the causes of the problem can be mainly concluded as the follows:
Firstly, the text books chosen as teaching materials in the speaking class were
long sentence-based stories without providing any communicative or meaningful
activities to prompt the students’ speaking ability. Meanwhile, the content in the text
books was going far away from the practical English (in the students’ opinion), which
made the students feel it was useless or no meaning to attend the speaking class.
Moreover, in the speaking class, the students were asked by the teacher to answer
questions after reading the text loudly or silently, which made them feel very bored and
thus reduce their interest in the speaking class.
Secondly, the speaking class was teacher-centered. It was the teacher who did
most of her talk. The teacher often conveyed the content or knowledge of the text book to
the students without letting the students make their own practice. Only these students
whose minds were wandering around were asked by the teacher to answer the questions
passively. Yet it was not confidently and fluently answered.
Thirdly, the students were reluctant to speak in the speaking class. They often
complained that they didn’t know how to say it (something related to the topic) in
English as they were lack of relevant vocabularies related to that topic. They were also
afraid of being humiliated by their classmates or teacher as they couldn’t produce correct
pronunciation and speak the English fluently.
Fourthly, because of the environment condition and also because the English
language has different grammar structures from Chinese, it was not easy for the students
to speak it as fluently as their native language. That’s to say, it took a long time for the
students to express or explain their ideas or thoughts. Thus, some short-tempered students
spoke their native language in the speaking class, instead of the English.
According to the objective and the conditions mentioned above, it is very urgent
and necessary for the teacher of speaking class to make every effort to change some of
these situations into positive ones. In line with this, the researcher found the
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Content-Based Instruction (CBI) as an appropriate and effective approach that is

especially suitable for the students in the Business English Department of Vocational &
Technique College. CBI is designed to provide second-language learners instruction in
content and language. Content refers to the information or subject matter that we learn or
communicate through language rather than the language used to convey it (Richard,
2006: 28). In other words, content is interpreted as the use of subject matter as a vehicle
for second or foreign language teaching/learning.
Content-Based Instruction (CBI) is a significant approach in second language
acquisition (Brinton, Snow and Wesche, 1989 in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-based_instruction). One central principle that
supports the theory of second language acquisition is that “people learn a second
language more successfully when they use the language as a means of acquiring
information, rather than as an end in itself” (Richards and Rogers, 2005: 207). Met (in
http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ass/article) also states that natural language
acquisition occurs in context, which is never learned and divorced from meaning, and
CBI provides a context for meaningful communication to occur.
CBI supports language learning in the following seven reasons:
First, with CBI, students are exposed to a considerable amount of language while
learning content. In content-based classrooms (CBCs), teachers and students explore
interesting content while students are engaged in appropriate language activities,
reflecting the learning the students carry out in other content-area classes, the resultant
language learning activities, therefore, are not artificial or meaningless exercise.
Second, students are taught useful language that is embedded within relevant
discourse contexts rather than as isolated language fragments. In CBCs, students have
many opportunities to attend to language, to use language, and to negotiate content
through language in natural discourse context. Thus, CBI allows for explicit language
instruction, integrated with content instruction, in a relevant and purposeful context.
Third, students in CBI classes have increased opportunities to use the content
knowledge and expertise that they bring to class. The use of coherently developed
content resources allows students to call on their own prior knowledge to learn additional
language and content material.
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Fourth, CBI generates increased motivation among students; in CBCs, students are
exposed to useful and authentic materials, and also get involved in the demanding
activities which can lead to intrinsic motivation. Motivation and interest usually arise
partly from the recognition that learning is occurring and that it is worth the effort, and
partly from the appropriate matching of increasing student knowledge of a topic with
increasing task (or learning) challenges.
Fifth, CBI supports such learning approaches as cooperative learning,
apprenticeship learning, experiential learning, and project-based learning. It also lends
itself well to strategy instruction and practice, as theme units naturally require and
recycle important strategies across varying content and learning tasks.
Sixth, CBI allows greater flexibility and adaptability to be built into the curricular
activity sequence. Because additional subtopics and issues can be incorporated into the
course, teachers have many opportunities to adjust the class to complement the interests
and needs of the students.
Seventh, CBI lends itself to student-centered classroom activities; in content-based
classrooms, students have opportunities to exercise choices and preferences in terms of
specific content and learning activities.
Therefore, with CBI, both the teacher and the students can achieve their goals in
the teaching and learning process. In CBI, the content plays the central role, and language
is used to communicate meaning. The language teaching focuses on how information and
meaning from meaningful content are utilized in discourse or texts, not in single
sentences. The importance of attending mainly to meaning and not to language form, and
the consideration is for the needs of the learner. Furthermore, in the CBCs, the students
learn through doing and are actively engaged in the learning process. They do not depend
on the teacher to direct all learning or to be the source of all information, they can learn
through peer input and interactions. They will assume active, social roles in the
classroom, and involve interactive learning, negotiation, information gathering, and the
co-construction of meaning. In addition, the authentic and meaningful contents will
motivate the students to make greater connections between topics, elaborations with
learning material, and can recall information better.
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Based on the analysis above, it is believed that the content-based instruction is an

effective approach to overcome the problem of improving the student’s speaking skill.
B. Formulation of the Problems

Based on the background above, the problems of this study are as the following:
1. Can and to what extent the Content-based Instruction improve the students’
speaking ability of Business English Department of CsT&VC?
2. How is the teaching and learning situation when Content-based Instruction is
applied in the speaking class?
C. The Objective of the Study
Based on the analysis of the causes of the problem, the objectives of this research is
to know:
1. whether and to what extent Content-based Instruction improves the students’
speaking skill of Business English Department of CsT&VC.
2. the teaching and learning situation when Content-based Instruction is applied in
the speaking class.
D. The Benefits of the Study

1. For the Business English Department of CsV&TC
This research can both expand and enrich the English language teaching
instruction for the Business English department, consequently to improve the
teaching quality in this College.
2. For the English teacher or lectures
The approach conducted in this research can be used as another choice of
teaching approach in the speaking class. Besides, it will also be found to be the
best way for teachers to conduct the specific knowledge to their students.
3. For the students
The result of this research can improve the student’s speaking skill with the view
that learning is fun. Furthermore, it will help the students to master the specific
working skills which are related to their future career.
4. For other researchers
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This research can function as additional references or sources to carry out or

conduct further research about language learning and teaching.
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
A. Speaking
1. The Nature of Speaking
Speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing
and receiving and processing information (Florez and Cunningham cite form Brown,
1994; Burns & Joyce, 1997 in http://www.ericdigests.org/2000-3/adult.htm). Its form and
meaning depend on the context in which it occurs, including the participants themselves,
their collective experiences, the physical environment, and the purposes for speaking. It
is often spontaneous, open-ended, and evolving.
Rizvi (2006: 92) also states that speaking is an interactive communicative process that
involves speakers and listeners. In communicative process, speakers need to learn to adapt
their talk to the listeners; use a range of ways to express themselves; use talk to clarify
their ideas and sustain their talk to develop thinking and reasoning.
Speaking is not the oral production of written language, but involves learners in
the mastery of a wide range of sub-skills, which, added together, constitute an overall
competence in the spoken language (McDonough and Shaw, 2003: 133).
Bukart (1998 in http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/speaking/spindex.htm) state that
language learners need to recognize that speaking involves three areas of knowledge:
- Mechanics (pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary):
It is the ability to use the right words in the right order with the correct
pronunciation.
- Functions (transaction and interaction):
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It is about the knowledge of knowing when clarity of message is essential

(transaction/information exchange) and when precise understanding is not
required (interaction/relationship building)
- Social and cultural rules and norms (turn-taking, rate of speech, length of pauses
between speakers, relative roles of participants):
It refers to the understanding of how to take into account who is speaking to
whom, in what circumstances, about what, and for what reasons.
In our lives, we use talk in different ways for different purpose and audiences. As a skill that
enables us to produce utterances, when genuinely communicative, speaking is desire-and
purpose-driven, in other words we genuinely want to communicate something to achieve a
particular end. This may involve expressing ideas and opinions, expressing a wish or a desire to
do something, negotiating and/or solving a particular problem, or establishing and maintaining
social relationships and friendships.
Burnett and Myes (2004: 24) put forward the following spoken language that may be used in
many different ways:
Explaining suggesting discussing reporting
Instructing speculating arguing narrating
Summarizing negotiating clarifying directing
Persuading planning informing presenting
Questioning disagreeing analyzing hypothesizing
Evaluating describing expressing feelings reasoning
Speaking English can be particularly difficult because, unlike reading or writing, speaking
happens in “real time,” it requires the simultaneous use of a number of abilities which often
develop at different rates. Generally, there are at least five components of speaking skill
concerned with it such as following (Widiastuti cited from Syakur 1987: 3, in
http://etd.eprints.ums.ac.id/332/ ):
a. Comprehension
Oral communication certainly requires a subject to respond, to speech as well as to
initiate it.
b. Grammar
It is needed for students to arrange a correct sentence in conversation. It is in line
with explanation suggested by Heaton (1978: 5) that the student’s ability to manipulate
structure and to distinguish appropriate grammatical form in appropriate ones. The utility
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of grammar is also to learn the correct way to gain expertise in a language in oral and
written form.
c. Vocabulary
One cannot effectively communicate or express their ideas both in oral and written
form if they do not have sufficient vocabulary. So, vocabulary means the appropriate
diction which is used in communication.
d. Pronunciation
Pronunciation is the way the students produce clearer language when they speak. It
deals with the phonological process that refers to the component of a grammar made up
of the elements and principles that determine how sounds vary and pattern in a language.
e. Fluency
Fluency can be defined as the ability to speak fluently and accurately. Fluency in
speaking is the aim of many language learners. Signs of fluency include a reasonably fast
speed of speaking and only a small number of pauses and “ums” or “ers”. These signs
indicate that the speaker does not have to spend a lot of time searching for the language
items needed to express the message (Brown. 1997: 4).
2. Speaking in Second Language

Many language learners learning a second language regard speaking ability as the
measure of knowing that language. These learners define fluency and accuracy as the ability to
converse with others, much more than the ability to read, write, or comprehend oral language.
They regard speaking as the most important skill they can acquire, and they assess their progress
in terms of their accomplishments in spoken communication. The speaking ability in a second
language can more or less be divided into two categories: accuracy and fluency (Cotter Hue in
http://hubpages.com).
a. Accuracy focuses on the correct use of grammar, vocabulary, and other skills. In most
lessons, the teacher builds accuracy in the early stages through controlled or semi-controlled
activities. Students practice a pattern, and use the language in context. Drills, scripted
dialogues, and short questions which promote the language are all common examples in any
level of lesson.
b. Fluency is the ability to speak smoothly and clearly. With advanced students, it also refers to
the ability to participate rather than react to a conversation. Activities which focus on fluency
often appear towards the end of the lesson, when more open ended (yet focused) activities
appear.
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According to Florez (1999, in http://www.cal.org/caela/scb/IV) a good speaker of a

second language usually acts as the following:
- producing the sounds, stress patterns, rhythmic structures, and intonations of the
language;
- using grammar/structures accurately;
- assessing characteristics of the target audience, including shared knowledge or shared
points of reference, status and power relations of participants, interest levels, or
differences in perspectives;
- selecting vocabulary that is understandable and appropriate for the audience, the topic
being discussed, and the setting in which the speech act occurs;
- applying strategies to enhance comprehensibility, such as emphasizing key words,
rephrasing, or checking for listener comprehension;
- using gestures or body language; and
- paying attention to the success of the interaction and adjusting components of speech
such as vocabulary, rate of speech, and complexity of grammar structures to maximize
listener comprehension and involvement (Brown, 1994).
Based on the descriptions above, it can be concluded that speaking is an interactive
communication process that involves speakers and listeners. It is often conducted in
different ways, in different circumstances, and for different purpose, involving not only
the knowledge of mechanics, but also concerned with the function, and social and
cultural rules to the competence that the learners are able to speak with people fluently,
and accurately use the right words (vocabulary); put them in the correct order (grammar);
sound like a native speaker (pronunciation); even produce the right meaning
(comprehension).
3. Teaching Speaking
a. The goal in teaching speaking
Speaking is a crucial part of second language learning and teaching. Despite its
importance, for many years, teaching speaking has been undervalued and English
language teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or
memorization of dialogues. However, today's world requires that the goal of teaching
speaking should improve students' communicative skills, because, only in that way,
students can express themselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules
appropriate in each communicative circumstance.
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Nunan (in Kayi, 2006, in http://iteslj.org/Techniques) states that teaching speaking

is to teach the students to:
1) Produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns
2) Use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the second
language.
3) Select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social setting,
audience, situation and subject matter.
4) Organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence.
5) Use language as a means of expressing values and judgments.
6) Use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses, which is called
as fluency.
Baker and Westrup (2003: 5) also put forward the following reasons to practice
speaking during a lesson:
1) Speaking activities can reinforce the learning of new vocabulary, grammar or
functional language;
2) Speaking activities give students the chance to use the new language they are
learning
3) Speaking activities give more advanced students the chance to experiment with the
language they already know in different situations and on different topics.
All this helps students to learn English better and succeed.
In line with the statements above, the goal in teaching speaking skill, therefore, is
communicative efficiency. That is, learners should be able to make themselves
understood, using their current proficiency to the fullest. They should try to avoid
confusion in the message due to faulty pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, and to
observe the social and cultural rules that apply in each communication situation.
b. Guidance for Teachers in Teaching Speaking

There is some guidance for English language teachers while teaching speaking
(Kayi, 2006, in http://iteslj.org/Techniques):
1) Provide maximum opportunity to students to speak the target language by providing
a rich environment that contains collaborative work, authentic materials and tasks,
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and shared knowledge.

2) Try to involve each student in every speaking activity; for this aim, practice different
ways of student participation.
3) Reduce teacher speaking time in class while increasing student speaking time. Step
back and observe students.
4) Indicate positive signs when commenting on a student's response.
5) Ask eliciting questions such as "What do you mean? How did you reach that
conclusion?" in order to prompt students to speak more.
6) Provide written feedback like "Your presentation was really great. It was a good job.
I really appreciated your efforts in preparing the materials and efficient use of your
voice…"
7) Do not correct students' pronunciation mistakes very often while they are speaking.
Correction should not distract student from his or her speech.
8) Involve speaking activities not only in class but also out of class; contact parents and
other people who can help.
9) Circulate around classroom to ensure that students are on the right track and see
whether they need your help while they work in groups or pairs.
10) Provide the vocabulary beforehand that students need in speaking activities.
11) Diagnose problems faced by students who have difficulty in expressing themselves
in the target language and provide more opportunities to practice the spoken
language.
In teaching speaking, Ur (1996: 121-122) also gives some different advices to
the English teacher:
1) Use group work
This increases the sheer amount of learner talk going on in a limited period of time
and also lowers the inhibition of learners who are unwilling to speaking in the full front
of the class
2) Base the activity on easy language
The level of language needed for a discussion should be lower than that used in
intensive language learning activities in the same class: it should be easily recalled and
produced by the participants, so that they can speak fluently.
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3) Make a careful choice of topic and task to stimulate interest

Teachers should consider the students’ need and provide the right topic and task
based on the students’ interest to motivate the students to talk more. The more they talk,
the more they will achieve.
4) Give some instruction or training in discussion skills
Specific and clear rules should be given to the students during the classroom
activities, so that they can perform the task smoothly later.
5) Keep students speaking in the target language
Teachers can appoint some students in the speaking class as monitors to remind the
other students to use the target language.
c. Activities for teaching Speaking

There are many activities to promote speaking. According to Kayi (2006, in
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Kayi-TeachingSpeaking.html), there are thirteen activities
to promote speaking, which are:
1) Discussion
After a content-based lesson, a discussion can be held for various reasons. The
students may aim to arrive at a conclusion, share ideas about an event, or find solutions
in their discussion groups. Before the discussion, it is essential that the purpose of the
discussion activity is set by the teacher. In this way, the discussion points are relevant to
this purpose, so that students do not spend their time chatting with each other about
irrelevant things.
2) Role Play
Students pretend they are in various social contexts and have a variety of social
roles. In role-play activities, the teacher gives information to the learners such as who
they are and what they think or feel. Thus, the teacher can tell the student that "You are
David, you go to the doctor and tell him what happened last night, and…" (cite from
Harmer, 1984)
3) Simulations
Simulations are very similar to role-plays but what makes simulations different
than role plays is that they are more elaborate. In simulations, students can bring items
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to the class to create a realistic environment. For instance, if a student is acting as a

computer seller, she brings computer and demonstrate it and so on.
4) Information Gap
In this activity, students are supposed to be working in pairs. One student will have
the information that other partner does not have and the partners will share their
information. Information gap activities serve many purposes such as solving a problem
or collecting information. Also, each partner plays an important role because the task
cannot be completed if the partners do not provide the information the others need.
5) Brain Storming
On a given topic, students can produce ideas in a limited time. Depending on the
context, either individual or group brainstorming is effective and learners generate ideas
quickly and freely. The good characteristic of brainstorming is that the students are not
criticized for their ideas so students will be open to sharing new ideas.
6) Storytelling
Students can briefly summarize a tale or story they heard from somebody
beforehand, or they may create their own stories to tell their classmates. Story telling
fosters creative thinking. It also helps students express ideas in the format of beginning,
development, and ending, including the characters and setting a story has to have.
7) Interviews
Students can conduct interviews on selected topics with various people. It is a
good idea that the teacher provides a rubric to students so that they know what type of
questions they can ask or what path to follow, but students should prepare their own
interview questions. After interviews, each student can present his or her study to the
class. Moreover, students can interview each other and "introduce" his or her partner to
the class.
8) Story Completion
For this activity, a teacher starts to tell a story, but after a few sentences he or she
stops narrating. Then, each student starts to narrate from the point where the previous
one stopped. Each student is supposed to add from four to ten sentences. Students can
add new characters, events, descriptions and so on.
9) Reporting
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Before coming to class, students are asked to read a newspaper or magazine and,
in class, they report to their friends what they find as the most interesting news.
Students can also talk about whether they have experienced anything worth telling their
friends in their daily lives before class.
10) Playing Cards
In this game, students should form groups of four. Each suit will represent a topic.
For instance: diamonds represent earning money, hearts represent love and
relationships, spades represent an unforgettable memory, and card represent best
teacher. Each student in a group will choose a card. Then, each student will write 4-5
questions about that topic to ask the other people in the group. For example: if the topic
"diamonds: earning money" is selected, here are some possible questions: “Is money
important in your life? Why?” or “What is the easiest way of earning money?” or
“What do you think about lottery?” etc. However, the teacher should state at the very
beginning of the activity that students are not allowed to prepare yes-no questions,
because by saying yes or no students get little practice in spoken language production.
Rather, students ask open-ended questions to each other so that they reply in complete
sentences.
11) Picture Narrating
This activity is based on several sequential pictures. Students are asked to tell the
story taking place in the sequential pictures by paying attention to the criteria provided
by the teacher as a rubric. Rubrics can include the vocabulary or structures they need to
use while narrating.
12) Picture Describing
For this activity students can form groups and each group is given a different
picture. Students discuss the picture with their groups, and then a spokesperson for each
group describes the picture to the whole class. This activity fosters the creativity and
imagination of the learners as well as their public speaking skills.
13) Find the Differences
For this activity students can work in pairs and each couple is given two different
pictures, for example, picture of boys playing football and another picture of girls
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playing tennis. Students in pairs discuss the similarities and/or differences in the
pictures.
d. The Characteristics of Successful Speaking Activity

Ur (1991:121) lists four characteristics of successful speaking activities as follows:
1) The learners talk a lot
As much as possible of the period of time allotted to the activity is occupied by the
learner talk.
2) Participation is even
In the speaking class, the classroom activity is not dominated by a minority of
talkative students, all learners have equal chances to talk or speak in English.
Contributions are evenly distributed.
3) Motivation is high
Learners are eager to speak: (a) because they are interested in the topic. They have
something new to say about it; and (b) because they want to contribute to achieve a
task objective.
4) Language is of acceptable level
Learners express themselves in utterances that are relevant, easily comprehensible to
each other, and of an acceptable level of language accuracy.
4. Testing Speaking
A test is a procedure for measuring ability, knowledge or performance (Nagarja,
1996: 207). The speaking test is used to test students’ speaking proficiency. When we
give a speaking test to the students, normally, we want to know the followings:
- How accurately and appropriately the learner use the language (grammar and
vocabulary)
- How well the learners develop the conversation and organize their ideas
- How fluently they speak
- How comprehensible their pronunciation is
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- How positively they contributed to the conversation

(http://www.bulats.org/Bulats/The-Speaking-test.html).
According to Kitao and Kenji (1996: 2) a speaking test can be a source of

beneficial backwash. If speaking is tested, it can encourage the teaching of speaking in
classes. There are many techniques which can be used to test the speaking ability.
Thornbury (2005: 125-126) mentioned the most commonly used test types as follows:
a. Interviews
In conducting the interviews, students are called out one by one for their interview.
Interview is relatively easy to set up, but the rather formal nature of interview is hardly
conducive to testing more informal, conversational speaking styles. It is also difficult to
eliminate the effects of the interviewers questioning style.
b. Live monologues
The candidates prepare and present a short talk on a pre-selected topic. This
eliminates the interviewer effect and provides evidence of the candidates’ ability to
handle an extended turn, which is not always possible in interviews. Other students can
take the role as audiences; a question-and-answer stage can be involved. This can provide
some evidence of the speaker’s ability to speak interactively and spontaneously.
c. Recorded monologues
Recorded monologues are less stressful than a more public performance and, for
informal testing; it is also more practicable in a way that live monologues are not.
Learners can take turns to record themselves talking about a favorite sport or pastime.
The assessment of the recorded tests can be done after the event, and results can be
‘triangulated’.
d. Role-plays
Students will be used to doing at least simple role plays in class, so the same
format can be used for testing. The other ‘role’ can be played either by the tester or
another student. The situation in the role-play should be better grounded in everyday
reality. However, in the role-play test, the influence of the interlocutor is hard to
control.
e. Collaborative tasks and discussions
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These are similar to role-play except that the learners are not required to assume
a role but simply to be themselves. In this performance, the learners’ interactive skills
can be observed in circumstances that close approximate real-life language use.
Moreover, Kitao and Kenji (1996: 4) also suggest that testing speaking can use
visual material. Pictures, maps, diagrams, and other types of visual material can be used
to test speaking without requiring the students to comprehend written or spoken material.
Through careful selection of the material, the tester can control the vocabulary and, to
some extent, the grammatical structures required. In the test of using visual materials,
usually, the students are given a series of pictures which tell a story, and are required to
put together a coherent narrative. A variation on this is to give the pictures in random
order of the narrative to a group of students.
On a speaking test, getting the students to say something appropriate is only half
the job. Scoring the test is equally challenging (Madsen, 1984: 166). However,
Thomburry (2005: 127) suggests two main ways: either giving it a single score on the
basis of an overall impression (called holistic scoring) or giving a separate score for
different aspects of the task (analytic scoring). The holistic-scoring has the advantage of
being quicker, and is probably adequate for informal testing of progress. It needs more
than one scorer, and any significant differences in scoring should be discussed and a joint
score negotiated.
Analytic-scoring takes longer, but compels testers to take a variety of factors into
account and, if these factors are well chosen, is probably both fairer and more reliable.
However, in the process of scoring, the scorer may be distracted by all the categories and
lose sight of the overall picture.
In describing the criteria levels of scoring, Hughes (2003: 110) said that the
descriptions may be holistic or analytic and it was said that it is possible to use one
method as a check on the other.
Madsen (1983: 167-168) state that the advantage of holistic grading is probably
obvious. It concentrates on communication while not overlooking the components of
speech. It is used to evaluate a various aspects simultaneously such as pronunciation,
grammar, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension. According to Madsen (1983: 170), this
rating scale can be adapted for the use of the teachers, and the teachers can prepare their
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own scale. Moreover, teachers with clearly identified evaluation criteria will want to rate
their students on a holistic scale. Based on the theories above, the scoring rubric applied
in this research is as follows:
Scoring Rubric
No. 1 Score Indicator
17-20 Speech as fluently as that of a native speaker
13-16 Speed of speech seems to be slightly affected by language
fluency problems
9-12 Speech and fluency are strongly affected by language
problems
5-8 often hesitant and forced silence by language limitation
1-4 Speech is so halting and fragmentally that makes
communication impossible
No. 2 Score Indicator
17-20 Almost no inadequacy or inaccuracy
13-16 Few times inadequate or inaccurate
Vocabulary 9-12 Sometimes inadequate or inaccurate
5-8 Inaccurate or in adequate that affect the understanding
1-4 Inadequate for communication
No. 3 score Indicator
17-20 No grammatical inaccuracy
13-16 Few grammatical inaccuracy
Grammar 9-12 Grammatical inaccuracy does not impede the understanding
5-8 Grammatical inaccuracy does not seriously impede
understanding
1-4 Grammatical inaccuracy makes understanding almost
impossible
17-20 Accurate pronunciation
13-16 Few inaccurate pronunciation
Pronunciation 9-12 Inaccuracy of pronunciation does not impede understanding
5-8 Inaccuracy of pronunciation does not seriously impede
understanding
1-4 Inaccuracy of pronunciation makes understanding almost
impossible
17-20 Understands everything in normal educated conversation
13-16 Understands quite well the normal educated speech/ dialogue,
but sometimes need repetition or rephrasing
Comprehension 9-12 Understands simplified speech/dialogue but need repetition
and rephrasing
5-8 Understands only slow, very simple speech, require repetition
and rephrasing
1-4 Understands too little for the simplest type conversation
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B. Content-Based Instruction
1. The Nature of Content-based Instruction
Content-Based Instruction (CBI) is a significant approach in second language
acquisition (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche, 1989 in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-based_instruction). According to Richard and Roger
(2001: 204), CBI refers to an approach to second language teaching in which teaching is
organized around the content or information that students will acquire, rather than around
a linguistic or other type of syllabus.
Furthermore, Krahnke (1987: 65) defines CBI as the teaching of content or
information in the language being learned with little or no direct or explicit effort to
teaching the language itself separately from the content being taught.
Moreover, Brinton, Snow, and Wesche (1989: 2) offered the definition of CBI as
“the integration of particular content with language-teaching aims”. The activities in CBI
class are centered around the content being taught and students are expected to learn the
content by using the target language.
Stewart (2008: 12) states that the proponents of content-based instruction argue
that language is most effectively learned in the context of relevant and meaningful
content.
According to Richard (2006: 28), content refers to the information or subject
matter that we learn or communicate through language rather than the language used to
convey it. In addition, Da Silva in Hale (2008: 3) identifies content as a crucial part of
language learning and the separation of language from content as both arbitrary and
artificial. Historically, the word content has changed its meaning in language teaching.
Content used to refer to the methods of grammar-translation, audio-lingual methodology
and vocabulary or sound patterns in dialog form. Recently, content is interpreted as the
use of subject matter as a vehicle for second or foreign language teaching/learning
(http://en.wikipedia.org).
CBI is developed under the framework of communicative language teaching
(CLT), it is grounded on the following two central principles (Richard and Roger, 2001:
207):
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a. People learn a second language more successfully when they use the language as a
means of acquiring information, rather than as an end in itself.
b. CBI better reflects learners’ needs for learning a second language.
Vyas and Patel (2009: 120) state that CBI is important to produce students who
comprehend English without translating into their native language, choosing meaningful
content is essential. Through communication-based instruction focused on content,
students are able to pick up not only the communicative skills that are necessary for
effective language, but also learning new subject matter.
Based on the definitions and descriptions above, it can be concluded that CBI is
an approach to second language teaching in which teaching is organized around the
content or information, and students learn the second language with little or no direct or
explicate effort as the content or information is interpreted as the use of meaningful
authentic materials (including text, pictures, newspapers, etc.,) as the vehicle to motivate
the students to get involved in the language teaching and learning process.
2. Theoretical Support
According to Richard (2006: 28) the contemporary views of language learning is
seen as resulting from processes such as following, and the best way to do so is by using
content as the driving force of classroom activities and to link all the different dimensions
of communicative competence, including grammatical competence, with content.
a. Interaction between the learner and users of the language.
b. Collaborative creation of meaning
c. Creating meaningful and purposeful interaction through language
d. Negotiation of meaning as the learner and his or her interlocutor arrive at
understanding
e. Learning through attending to the feedback learners get when they use the language
f. Paying attention to the language one hears (the input) and try to incorporate new
forms into one’s developing communicative competence
g. Trying out and experimenting with different ways of saying things.
Eskey (1997: 133) states that the rationale for employing CBI is that “people do
not learn language and then use it; (rather) people learn language by using them.” He
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argues that content is “not merely something to practice language with: rather, language
is something to explore content with”.
Furthermore, Richard (2006: 25) states that CBI is based on the following
assumptions about language learning:
a) People learn a language more successfully when they use the language as a means of
acquiring information, rather than as an end in itself.
b) CBI better reflects learners’ needs for learning a second language.
According to Krashe (in Huifang, 2006 in
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Shang-CBI.html), in content-based instruction, students can
acquire the content area of the subject matter with comprehensible input, and
simultaneously increase their language skills. To achieve the goal of language skills
improvement, Huifang states that the focus of the teaching is on the authentic and
meaningful input, not on the grammatical form.
Keeping students motivated and interested are two important factors underlying
content-based instruction. When the students are interested with the content/materials,
they will be motivated to learn the second language successfully. There are many theories
supporting this:
O’ Dowd in Hale (2008: 4) reported that students in content course exhibited greater
interest than usual in the courses and engaged in the classes with enthusiasm. Johnson
and Higgins in Hale’ work (2008: 4) also found that students performed at a higher level
when they believed the content they were learning was relevant to their present and/or
future needs.
CBI material is believed to motivate students to acquire not only a target language
but also content. Brinton (in Vyas and Patel, 2009: 130) mentions: “The use of
information content which is perceived as relevant by learner is assumed by many to
increase motivation in the language course and, thus, to promote effective learning.”
Moreover, according to Stoller (in Vyas and Patel, 2009: 130): “There is a
relationship between student motivation and student interest—common outcomes of
content-based class and student ability to process challenging materials, recall
information, and elaborate.”
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CBI has a strong correlation with student motivation which is a vital element in
English education. Motivation allows students to pursue learning English, not to be afraid
of making errors and to use it as a means of communication with a number of people.
Motivation makes students understand the actual purpose of saying English. In other
words motivated students realize that English is not just or a way to pass an entrance
examination.
Pamenter in Hale (2008: 3) also links affective aspects to content-based learning
such as enjoyment, confidence and increased motivation. In terms of content, she
exposed her students to a wide range of topics, including international business, foreign
travel, and the environment. She found that the focus on content rather than language
helped her students began to form opinions about society and express their opinions
confidently. Research has showed that content-based course increased student motivation
for studying English and raised students’ confidence when using English.
3. The Advantages of Content-based Instruction
CBI is believed to have many advantages. These advantages are listed as follows;
a. It can make learning a language more interesting and motivating. Students can use
the language to fulfill a real purpose, which can make students both more
independent and confident.
b. Students can also develop a much wider knowledge of the world through CBI which
can feed back into improving and supporting their general educational needs.
c. CBI is very popular among EAP (English for Academic Purposes) teachers as it
helps students to develop valuable study skills such as note taking, summarizing and
extracting key information from texts.
d. Taking information from different sources, re-evaluating and restructuring that
information can help students to develop very valuable thinking skills that can then
be transferred to other subjects.
e. The inclusion of a group work element within the framework given above can also
help students to develop their collaborative skills, which can have great social value
(Peachey, 2003. In http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles).
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Moreover, Chamot and O’Malley (1994: 26) said that there are at least four
reasons for incorporating content into the English as a Second Language (ESL) class as
follows:
a. Content provides students with an opportunity to develop important knowledge in
different subject areas.
b. Students are able to practice the language functions and skills needed to understand,
discuss, read about, and write about the concepts developed.
c. Students exhibit greater motivation when they are learning content than when they
are learning language only.
d. Content provides a context for teaching students learning strategies
(http://revista.inie.ucr.ac.cr/articulos/2-2005/archivos/oral.pdf).
4. Content/Material Selection
According to Krashen (1982) the principal feature of CBI is that content is the point
of departure or organizing principle of the course. To this end, content plays the central
role. In content selection, Vyas and Patel (2009: 131-132) cited many suggestions for
content selection in CBI as follows:
Met asserts, “Careful planning for language development can be useful in ensuring
that students gain language competence that will be useful in settings beyond the school
itself.” It is necessary that students can employ what they learn in real life. Snow
(2001) suggests:
“In order to develop communicative competence, learners must

have extended opportunities to use the second/ foreign language
productivity. Thus, in addition to receiving comprehensible input,
they must produce comprehensible output; in other words, explicit
attention must be paid to the productive language skills of speaking
and writing.”
According to Heo (2006) “the students must go through a real-world process

instead of using independent, creative, or unrealistic thoughts”. Brinton asserts: “First
and most important, the materials chosen should be a range of language functions and
structures available, and these should map neatly onto the language syllabus.”
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Valuable and realistic lessons foster students’ language development. For students
to effectively communicate with others, materials used in class need to train them to
become successful communicators.
Furthermore, materials need to motivate students to pursue the target language, as
Vyas and Patel cited from Brinton (2009: 131-132):
“Every attempt should be made to select materials which reflect

the needs and interests of the students and to choose content areas in
which the language teacher has some interest or expertise.”
According to Met:
“Materials also should be enhancing language learning by
providing motivating topics to communicate about, and enhancing
language learning by providing meaningful, purposeful language
practice opportunities drawn from a variety of topics”.
Varying the choice of topics and themes is essential in order to engage students in
learning the content through English; appealing topics and themes encourage them to
actively participate in class. Active participation in class, moreover, enhances students’
relationships with one another, creating a positive influence on classroom atmosphere.
There are several key points required in material-making, Short (1991) state:
“In order to make English language input as comprehensible as

possible, the teachers should present information through diverse
media: realia, graphs, demonstrations, pre-reading, and pre-wring
strategies. The focus of the instruction should be motivated by the
content to be learned which will help identify the language skills
required to learn that content and the reasoning abilities needed to
manipulate it”.
Hernandez mentions, “It is essential to familiarize English language learners with

clear content vocabulary related to the unit of study.” He also suggests:
“Students should be guided to see that these thinking processes

are common in everyday life situation; lessons can then be adapted to
demonstrate how critical thinking used in their personal lives can be
transferred to academic thought”.
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The instructors need to carefully choose the way they present the planned content
in their materials. It is particularly important to structure activities in an appropriate
order. In addition, visual aids are instrumental in supplementing students’ understanding.
Vocabulary-building is strongly believed to be one of the key elements in English
education. Thus, materials must include relevant vocabulary exercises at the right time.
Most importantly, materials need to be built with the goal of fostering critical thinking,
and forcing students to utilize a combination of prior knowledge and skills.
5. The Implementation of Content-based Instruction
Stryker and Leaver (in Herrero, 2005: 4-5) state that in order to successfully
implement a CBI curriculum, the following characteristics must be presented
(http://revista.inie.ucr.ac.cr/articulos/2-2005/archivos/oral.pdf ):
a. Subject Matter Core
In CBI, content is the point of departure or organizing principle of the course – a
feature that grows out of the common underlying assumption that successful language
learning occurs when students are presented with target language materials in a
meaningful, contextualized form with the primary focus on acquiring information.
b. The use of authentic language and texts
The learning activities in CBI should focus on understanding and conveying
meaningful messages and accomplishing realistic tasks using authentic language. The
content can be fun, academic, local, or school-based. It may include texts, videotapes,
audio recordings, mini-lectures, field trips, community resources, student knowledge,
web resources and visual aids (posters, maps, bulletin boards) selected mostly from those
produced for native speakers of the language (Stoller 2004, Stryker and Leaver (1997: 8).
c. Appropriate to the needs of specific students
In CBI, the content and learning activities correspond to the linguistic, cognitive,
and affective needs of the students and are appropriate to their professional needs and
personal interests. Since students have different learning styles, teachers should provide a
variety of task types, develop a wide range of learning strategies, and use different
grouping techniques to make the materials accessible to all the students in the classroom.
Students should also be given participation in choosing topics and activities to better
meet their needs and interests. “Student-generated themes and activities create an
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atmosphere in which the students take responsibility for their own learning and the
teacher becomes more of a ‘manager of student learning’” (Maly, 1993: 41 in Stryker and
Leaver, 1997: 11)
Moreover, Richard and Rodger (2001: 219) said:
“Since Content-Based Instruction refers to an approach rather than a

method, no specific techniques or activities are associated with it. At
the level of procedure, teaching materials and activities are selected
according to the extent to which they match the type of program it is.”
Richard and Rodger (2001: 28) suggest that CBI is the extension of Communicative
Language Teaching (CLT), theoretically, the techniques or activities used in CLT can
also be applied in the CBI as they share the same goals that are to develop learners’
communicative competence.
According to Richard and Rodger (2001: 13-19), there are many different types of
activity used in CLT:
a. Activities focusing on fluency
1) Reflect natural use of language
2) Focus on achieving communication
3) Require meaningful use of language
4) Require the use of communication strategies
5) Produce language that may not be predictable
6) Seek to link language use to context
b. Activities focusing on accuracy
1) Reflect classroom use of language
2) Focus on the formation of correct examples of language
3) Practice language out of context
4) Practice small samples of language
5) Do not require meaningful communication
6) Choice of language is controlled
c. Information-gap activities
This refers to the fact that in real communication people normally communicate in
order to get information they do not possess. This is known as an information-gap. More
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authentic communication is likely to occur in the classroom if students go beyond

practice of language forms for their own sake and use their linguistic and communicative
resources in order to obtain information.
d. Jig-saw activities
These are also based on the information-gap principle. Typically the class is
divided into groups and each group has part of the information needed to complete an
activity. The class must fit the pieces together to complete the whole. In so doing they
must use their language resources to communicate meaningfully and so take part in
meaningful communication practice.
e. Other activity types in CLT
Many other activity types have been used in CLT, among which are the following:
1) Task-completion activities: puzzles, games, map-reading and other kinds of
classroom tasks in which the focus was on using one’s language resources to
complete a task.
2) Information gathering activities: student conducted surveys, interviews and searches
in which students were required to use their linguistic resources to collect
information.
3) Opinion-sharing activities: activities where students compare values, opinions,
beliefs.
4) Information-transfer activities: these require learners to take information that is
presented in one form, and represent it in a different form.
5) Reasoning gap-activities: these involve deriving some new information from given
information through the process of inference, practical reasoning etc.
6) Role-plays: activities in which students are assigned roles and improvise a scene or
exchange based on given information or clues.
C. Rationale
The review of related theories functions as the base to make rationale. Rationale
represents the relationship between variables stated in the review of related theories.
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Among the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), speaking is often
regarded by people as the most important skill. People, who can listen, read and write, but
cannot speak will not be thought as mastering the English language. This case especially
occurred during the working filed.
However, the researcher observed and recognized that the speaking ability of
students in class 0902 in the Business English Department of CsV&TC, China was still
low and unsatisfying. The students’ difficulties in speaking are caused by: the lack of
related vocabularies, low ability in constructing sentences and utterances, poor and
unsatisfying understanding about transactional and interpersonal expressions in English,
and low motivation in participating in speaking activity caused by the shyness and
embarrassment in making mistakes.
The situation was getting worse by the teacher’s wrongly chosen teaching material
and unsuitable teaching method which made the students felt very bored and lost interest
in the speaking class. In the class, the teacher often conducted the speaking activity by
asking the students to read or translate the story or novel that the students didn’t like and
had already read in their dormitory. Moreover, the teacher didn’t explore students’
potential for speaking as she didn’t provide many chances to the students to speak. The
class was teacher-centered, it was the teacher who talked a lot and dominated the class.
As the problems mentioned above, approach or method need to be used to improve
the situation urgently. Content-based Instruction is considered and recommended as a
useful and practical approach to improve the students’ speaking skill based on the
following rationale:
To begin with, Content-based Instruction provides a natural context for using the
target language in the classroom; it provides the students to acquire the language while
using the context of any subject matter so that students learn the language by using it
within the specific context. In other words, the students will not only learn the particular
context of a subject matter by using the English, but also learn the particular language
terms and skills through the specific context. As we know that different contents in
different texts can be used for different purposes. Communicative content-based texts
will be used to train students’ communicative or speaking skills. In this study, the writer
will use communicative content-based teaching materials to improve the student’s
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speaking skill. Through the Content-based Instruction, the students will be provided with
many useful and practical vocabularies and sentence patterns related to their future
career.
Furthermore, Since CBI is an approach, rather than a method, different technique
or activities can be applied in the class to meet and suite the students’ needs; in the CBI
class, students will have a lot of chances to speak English and to interact with each other
in conducting different tasks or activities. By frequently practicing, the students will have
the ability to speak fluently and confidently.
Moreover, the Content-based Instruction will encourage the students to actively
engage in the teaching and learning process as the contents fall under their interests and
the topics of the content occurred mostly in the real-world are familiar to them. That will
make them talk much and frequently.
D. Hypothesis
Based on the analysis of the problem, the description of the related theories, and
the rationale above, the formulated hypothesis is that Content-based Instruction can
improve the students’ speaking ability of Business English Department of CsT&VC.
CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
A. The Setting of the Research

This research will be conducted at Changsha Vocational & Technical College, in
Hunan province, China. This college is a state-run and full-time higher vocational
college. There are three campuses with total together six faculties in this college, namely:
mechanical engineering, automotive engineering, art of fireworks, IT, humanities and
public management, while the major of Business English belongs to the humanities and
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public management faculty. The numbers of students in this college are nearly 7,000 with
different majors in different faculties.
This research is carried out in the campus in Changsha city from July 2010 to
January 2011. Here is the detail research schedule:
Table 3.1 of the Research Schedule
No. Activity TIME: Year 2010 -2011

July Aug. Sep. Oct. Nov. Dec Jan Feb.
. .
1 Pre-survey * *
2 Proposal * * *
3 Reviewing literature * * *
4 Developing * * *
instrument
5 Collecting and * * *
analyzing the data
6 Writing the report * * *
7 Collecting the reports * *
B. The Subject of the Research

This research will be applied to the second grade students in Class 0902 in
Business English Department of CsV&TC in the academic year of 2010-2011.There are
thirty-eight students in this class; thirty-six female students, and two male students. The
reason for choosing this class as the subject, it is because that the students’ speaking
ability in this class is still low and unsatisfying. Based on the statements from the
interview with both the teacher and students, the students generally had similar problems
on the speaking class. According to the teacher, these students had lack of vigor,
interest and motivation in the speaking class. They were always keeping silent in the
class, and felt reluctant to speak. Moreover, they also couldn’t answer the teacher’s
questions. Most of them were short of relevant vocabularies, and felt hesitate to
pronounce the words. They couldn’t fluently communicate with their classmates.
From the students’ point of view, they stated that they felt very bored about the
speaking class because they didn’t want to read the novel again since they had read it in
the dormitory already, and they wanted to learn something practical, something useful for
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their future career. Furthermore, they said that they couldn’t express their thoughts or
ideas with suitable expressions because of lack of vocabulary and because of the different
grammar structure. Moreover, they said that they were not brave enough to speak
English, they were afraid of making mistakes, so sometimes; they spoke Chinese, instead
of English in the speaking class.
C. The Method of the Research

In this study, the researcher will apply the action research to conduct this study.
According to Ebbutt (in Hopkins, 1985: 45 ), action research is about the systematic
study of attempts to improve educational practice by groups of participants by means of
their own practical actions and by means of their own reflection upon the effects of those
actions.
Watts (1985: 118) also states that action research is a process in which participants
examine their own educational practice systematically and carefully, using the techniques
of research. It is based on the following assumptions:
1) Teachers and principals work best on problems they have identified for themselves
2) Teachers and principals become more effective when encouraged to examine and
assess their own work and then consider ways of working differently.
3) Teachers and principals help each other by working collaboratively.
4) Working with colleagues helps teachers and principals in their professional
development.
In the book of A Teacher’s Guide to Classroom Research, Hopkins (1985: 44)
notes that action research combines as substantive act with a research procedure; it is an
action disciplined by enquiry, a personal attempt at understanding while engaged in
process of improvement and reform. He also cited several definitions of action research
from others in his book:
1) Rapoport (in Hopkins, 1985: 44) said that action research aims to contribute both to
the practical concerns of people in an immediate problematic situation and to the
goals of social science by joint collaboration within a mutually acceptable ethical
framework.
2) Kemmis (in Hopkins, 1985: 44) writes: action research is a form of self-reflective
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enquiry undertaken by participants in social (including educational) situations in

order to improve the rationality and justice of (a) their own social or educational
practices, (b) their understanding of these practices, and (c) the situations in which
the practices are carried out.
3) Elliott (1991: 69) notes that Action-research might be defined as ‘the study of a
social situation with a view to improve the quality of action within it’. it aims to feed
practical judgment of action situations, and the validity of the’ theories’ or
hypotheses it generates depends not so much on ‘ scientific’ tests of truth, as on their
usefulness in helping people to act more intelligently and skillfully. In
action-research ‘theories’ are not validated independently and then applied to
practice. They are validated through practice.
From all the definitions above, we know that action research is a worthwhile
pursuit for educators for a number of reasons. Foremost among these is simply the desire
to know more. Good teachers are, after all, themselves students, and often look for ways
to expand upon their existing knowledge.
D. The Procedure of the Research
According to Elliott (in Hopkins, 1993), the essentials of action research design are
considered as per the following characteristic cycle:
1. Initially an exploratory stance is adopted, where an understanding of a problem is
developed and plans are made for some forms of interventional strategy (The
Reconnaissance & General Plan).
2. Then the intervention is carried out (The Action in Action Research).
3. During and around the time of the intervention, pertinent observations are collected
in various forms (Monitoring the implementation by Observation).
4. The new interventional strategies are carried out, and the cyclic process repeats,
continuing until a sufficient understanding of (or implement able solution for) the
problem is achieved (Reflection and Revision).
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A representation of an AR protocol by Kemmis is provided in the following figure:
Figure 3.1: Action Research Protocol from Kemmis (cited in Hopkins, 1985: 48)
The above figure clearly displays the iterative nature of action research along with
the major steps of planning, action, observation, and reflection. In this study, the
researcher will use the same steps in order to get the data objectively.
1. Planning
In this stage, the researcher will plan: (a) the pretest in order to know the
students’ previous or original ability of their speaking; (b) the interview to both the
teacher and students to know the previous teaching and learning process. That is to know
what kinds of method, approach, techniques, and procedures that the teacher used during
the teaching process and the students’ opinion about the teacher’s teaching strategies; (c)
the specific lesson plan and teaching materials based on the problems identified; (d) the
posttest to compare with the pretest in order to know if there is any improvement in the
students’ speaking by learning under the Content-base Instruction; and(e) the
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questionnaire after the implementation of the Content-based Instruction in order to get

their opinion about the learning and teaching process.
2. Acting
In this step, the researcher will carry out the entire detail action programs as
planned above in the speaking class. The teaching activities or Content-based Instruction
will be conducted step by step based on the lesson plans.
3. Observing
During the implementation of Content-based Instruction, the students’ learning
process and their involvement or engagement, their responses, and their attitude of the
learning progress in the speaking class will be observed and recorded by both of the
researcher and the collaborator through direct observation.
4. Reflecting
After carrying out the teaching and learning activities under the Content-based
Instruction, the researcher in this stage evaluates the result to see the effectiveness of the
action program. By conducting the reflection, the researcher will find whether it is
necessary to conduct another cycle.
E. Techniques of Collecting the Data
Ferrance (2000: 11) states that the collection of data is an important step in
deciding what action needs to be taken. Multiple sources of data are used to better
understand the scope of happenings in the classroom or school. There are many
vehicles for collection of data listed by Eileen as follows:
interviews portfolios
diaries field notes
audio tapes photos
memos questionnaires
focus groups anecdotal records
checklists journals
individual files logs of meetings
videotapes case studies
surveys self-assessment
records – tests, report cards, attendance
samples of student work, projects, performances
In this research, the writer will collect the data from:

1. Interview
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Interview is an activity conducted by asking questions face to face. During this

research, the interview will be taken with both the teacher and students. By interviewing
them, the writer will know the students speaking ability and their interest or motivation in
the speaking class and the results of the teacher’s teaching method or technique.
2. Questionnaire
Questionnaire is an investigation by asking some questions in the written form. In
this research, the students will be asked to cross some statements in the questionnaire
after the implementation of the Content-based Instruction in order to get their opinion
about the learning and teaching process.
3. Observation
Observation is an activity of watching and recording action and behavior of the

research participants in the class. In this research, the researcher was helped by her
collaborator to observe the teacher’s teaching process and the students’ learning activities
and the learning progress in the speaking class. The data gained in the observation will be
in the form of narrative text from the field note.
4. Test
In China, the students’ ability is often score-oriented. Thus, in this research, the
pretest and posttests will be given to the students to know the condition of the students’
speaking ability before and after the implementation of the Content-based Instruction.
The objective of the tests is to know if there is any significant improvement on the
students’ speaking ability or not through Content-based Instruction.
F. Technique of Analyzing the Data

After conducting the classroom action research, the researcher then needs to
analyze the results. The results are based on two kinds of data.
One kind of the data is quantitative data or numerical data. They come from the
students’ speaking scores. The speaking scores generated from the pretest and posttest in
this research will be analyzed by comparing the means of each test to find out the general
improvement of all the students’ achievement in speaking. Furthermore, the scores as one
of the symbols of the improvement will be analyzed with the t-test of non-independent
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variable to find out the significance of the improvement from cycle to cycle. The formula
to find the mean and the formula of the t-test of non-independent variable are as follows:
The formula to find out the Mean:

∑
x® =
Where:
X = mean score
∑X = the total score
N= number of students
The formula for t-test

D
t=
(å D ) 2
åD -
n
n(n - 1)
Another type is the qualitative data, also called non-numerical data. This kind of
data in this research is got from the interview, the questionnaire, and the field note. They
will be analyzed by using Constant Comparative Method recommended by Hopkins
(1985: 148)
Here are four steps in this method cited from Glaser and Strauss (1976: 105) by
Hopkins (1985: 149)
1. Comparing incidents applicable to each category
In this stage, the researcher will code every incident collected from the
observation and questionnaire into some categories.
2. Integrating categories and their properties
Arrived at this stage, the researcher will compare the findings from the
previous step and integrate them based on their categories and properties.
3. Delimiting the theory
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The researcher will construct the theory based on the findings of the previous
steps.
4. Writing the theory
Based on the steps as mentioned above, the theories will be created.
CHAPTER IV
RESULT OF THE STUDY
A. Introduction
The aims of the research are (1) to find out whether and to what extent
Content-based Instruction improves the students’ speaking skill; and (2) to indentify the
teaching and learning situation when CBI is applied in the speaking class. In this chapter,
the writer explains what has happened and has been got during and after the
implementation of CBI in the class of 0902 of the business English department in
CsV&TC.
This chapter is divided into two sections. The first section is about the process of
the research which includes the condition before the research, the implementation of the
research and the final reflection, while the second section relates the findings and
discussion. The summary of the research is provided in the following table.
Table 4.1 Process of the Research
Pre-research: Gaining base- line data

Observing the teaching and learning process
Interviewing the students and the teacher
Conducting the pre-test
Research Implementation
Cycle 1 Task Activity (students worked in
(Meeting: M1, M2, individual, in pair or in groups)
M3)
M1: Introducing Introducing the office description: describing the office
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products products items based on the flash cards
Introducing company Presentation: introducing a

M2:Introducing company
company Receiving a guest who is
visiting a factory Role-Play: taking the role of the
M3:Receiving factory secretary in the given picture
visitors
Cycle 2 Task Activity (students worked
(Meeting: M1, M2, individually, in pair, or in groups)
M3)
M1: Telephoning Making & taking a phone Role-play: taking the role of a
call, taking & leaving staff in a company to make and
message receive a phone call and to take
M2: Booking Room in Booking a room in a and leave a message
a Hotel hotel Role- play: taking the role of a
M3:Ordering in a visitor who wants room
restaurant Ordering food in a Role-play: taking the role of a
restaurant customer who eats at a restaurant
In more detail, table 4.1 is described as the following.
The process section is divided into four parts, namely, the condition before the
research; the implementation of the research consisting of Cycle 1, Cycle 2; the final
reflection; and the research findings.
1. The Condition before the Research

The condition before the research is identified in pre-research stage. The
pre-research is held to gain based-line data of the research. The result of pre-research
activity can be seen in Table 4.2.
Table 4.2 Result of Pre-research
Issues Indicators
Students’ ability in Low achievement in speaking, the mean score was 59.5
speaking They could not answer the teacher’s questions.
They could not speak fluently; they always get stuck.
The students could not express their ideas using
appropriate vocabularies and correct grammatical form.
They lacked of relevant vocabularies related to the topics.
They often mispronounced the words.
Mother tongue use in the speaking class was quite
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common.
Classroom situation The atmosphere in the classroom was not alive.
There was low participation of the students.
Students got low involvement in the topics or tasks.
Students didn’t pay much attention to what the teacher was
saying.
Students didn’t have many chances to practice the
components of the speaking skill.
The teacher dominated the class.
The teacher didn’t use various or new activities or
techniques to get the attention of the students.
In more details, the condition before the research was described in the following
sections:
2. Student’s Ability in Speaking
In order to identify the students’ speaking ability, the pre-test had been made
and it was conducted in the form of interview. The topics chosen for the pre-test were
what they had been taught before the implementation of the research. The result of the
pre-test showed that the students had low speaking ability. The low speaking ability
could be seen from the low achievement of the speaking test. The mean of the speaking
scores in the pre-test was low; it was only 59.5.
The low speaking ability could also be identified from the following indicators.
Firstly, the students could not answer the teacher’s questions; when the teacher asked
them to answer questions; most of them just kept silent and said “sorry” to the teacher,
instead of answering the question. Secondly, the students could not fluently express their
ideas or thoughts by using appropriate vocabularies and grammatical forms. There were
so many such students who could only speak the first two sentences, and then totally got
stuck as they lacked of relevant vocabularies of the topics and could not properly use the
sentence patterns and put it in a correct grammatical order. Thirdly, the students often
mispronounced the words, and they also felt hesitate to utter those words as they could
not sure whether the pronunciations of those words were right or wrong. The feature of
students’ speech could be seen in Table 4.3.
Table 4.3 Feature of Students’ Speech
Number
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of Percentag Level Speaking features

Students e
The speech could be fully understood
Having sufficient vocabulary with correct
pronunciation
1 3% Above Using the right grammatical forms when
average speaking
Not using mother tongue in speaking
Speaking fluently, without hesitant and forced
silence
Feel confident and brave enough to speak, not
shy
The speech could be generally understood
Knowing some vocabularies with good
pronunciation, but sometimes, got stuck and
20 52% Averag felt hesitate to pronounce the words
e Making few grammar mistakes
Sometimes using mother tongue in speaking
A little bit shy
The speech could not be understand
Limited on the vocabulary and having poor
17 45% Under pronunciation
average Making many mistakes in the grammatical
form
Very often hesitated and forced silence by
language limitation
Sometimes using mother tongue
Lacking of confidence, felt shy, not brave to
speak
From the result of the pre-test, the researcher could categorize the students’
speaking ability into three levels: above average, average, and under average. Only one
student had the above average ability; twenty students had the average ability and
seventeen percent students had the under average ability. The only one student in above
average ability could produce fully understandable speech, with sufficient vocabulary and
correct pronunciation in the right grammatical form. She could speak fluently, without
hesitant and forced silence by the language. She was not shy; she felt confident and brave
enough to speak. She did not use mother tongue while speaking.
Meanwhile, there were twenty students who had the average speaking ability.
Their speech could be understood. They could produce good pronunciation; they knew
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some vocabularies for the topic, but with some mistakes in the grammatical form. They
felt a little bit shy, and sometimes got stuck and felt hesitate while speaking.
The rest of the students, about seventeen students were in the under average
ability. The speech of these students was a little bit difficult to be understood. They had
limited vocabulary and had poor pronunciation. They also made many mistakes in the
grammatical form. Moreover, they lacked of confidence; they felt shy, and not brave to
speak; sometimes, they used mother tongue.
3. Classroom Situation
Before conducting the research, the teaching and learning process was not
interesting and alive. The description of the teaching and learning process was as follows:
In teaching the speaking to the students of business English department, the teacher still
applied the conventional and monotonous techniques for teaching, and also chose some
different short stories or even some long novels as the teaching materials, which made the
students didn’t want to attend the class as they thought it was useless to attend the class.
In the class, usually, the teacher started the lesson by asking the students to read some
short stories or paragraphs in the long novels. After that, the teacher asked the students to
answer her questions; to present what was talking about in the story and novel; and
sometimes, to play a role-play activity.
The result of the observation showed that the classroom situation was not alive,
the speaking class, most of the time, was silent, because the students were neither willing
to participate nor speak. When the teacher asked them to answer questions after they had
finished reading the content, the students usually looked at their friends and were
unwilling to stand up to answer the teacher’s questions. The situation was getting worse
and worse by the teacher’s domination and the way she taught in the speaking class. The
teacher always liked to ask the students to read the content that the students were going to
learn and never changed the way or activities in the class. The students seldom got
chances to learn or practice the word expressions or vocabularies and its pronunciations,
also including the grammar. The situation above showed that the teacher was not
innovative in teaching speaking.
4. Students’ Learning Perception about Speaking

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Except conducting the pre-test, the researcher also conducted in-depth interview
with the students. The purpose of the interview was exploring the students’ perception
about speaking. The result of the interview could be seen in Table 4.4.
Table 4.4 Result of Interview
No. Questions Students

Response
Yes No
1 Do you think that the English is important nowadays? 91% 9%
2 Do you like learning English? 96% 4%
3 Are you able to speak English? 12% 88%
4 Is it difficult to learn English? 87% 13%
5 Do you like doing different activities in the speaking 100% 0%
class?
6 Do you like the topics of the speaking class? 5% 95%
The result of the interview about the importance of English showed that there were
two groups of students. The first groups, about ninety one percent of the students thought
that English was very important nowadays. One of the student sated that learning
English was very important, especially important for their future jobs. If they were
looking for a job, understanding English was considered as having a plus ability for
getting a job, which could also provide them a good position and got a higher salary in
the company. Another student said that in many big companies, they might have many
appointments or meetings with the foreigners; they could have a lot of opportunities to
establish and deal business with them. It couldn't be denied that English was very
important if they want to make a good living in the future.
On the contrary, the second group of students, about four percent of the total
number stated that they did not like learning English. One student said that she had been
studying English for many years, but up till now, she still could not speak English well,
and she thought it was very difficult to learn the English. While the other students
claimed that they didn’t like learning English because they felt bored and they didn’t like
the way the teacher taught them and they also didn’t want to read the story or novel again
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since they had finished the reading in their dormitory. They felt it was useless to attend
the speaking class.
Dealing with the questions about the ability of speaking, only twelve percent of
the students claimed that they were able to speak; they didn’t think speaking was
difficult. While the rest of the students, about eighty eight percent stated that they were
not able to speak English; they said that they could not communicate with their friends,
and they always got stuck when communicated with their friends. The speaking was
considered to be difficult for them.
The rest of the questions were about the topics and speaking activities conducted
in the classroom. When asked whether they liked the topics or not, ninety-five percent of
students said that they didn’t like the topics, and they thought it was not practical and
useful; they wanted to learn something practical and related to their future jobs. The other
five percent students liked the topics; they held the view that they would like to learn
everything as long as it deals with English. When asked whether they liked doing
different activities in the speaking class, all of the students replied with one accord voice
that they liked doing different activities in the speaking class. One of the students said
that she liked playing, she didn’t like spiritless class.
Apart from the interview, the researcher asked the students to identify their
speaking difficulties. She asked them to choose the most critical and crucial difficulty of
their speaking. The result of the identification could be seen in Table 4.5
Table 4.5 Speaking Difficulty
No Speaking Difficulty Percentage

1. Vocabulary 48%
2. Psychological barriers: feel shy, afraid of make mistakes, 32%
lack of self confidence
3. Pronunciation 28%
4. Fluency 21%
5. Comprehension 14%
6. Grammar 9%
The data were revealed in the following statement. There were forty-eight percent
students who found difficulty in vocabulary and thirty-two percent of students who had
difficulty dealing with the pronunciation. One of the students told the researcher that she
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always got stuck and stopped at the middle of her statement due to lack of the relevant
vocabularies, and didn’t know how to say some words in English. Moreover, she also felt
very hesitate to pronounce some seems familiar words. So, sometimes, she mixed both
languages to complete her statement. Other students also mentioned that they didn’t
practice the pronunciation in the class and they didn’t know how to pronounce the words
correctly. They said that the teacher of the speaking class never led them to read the
words or taught them how to pronounce the new words, not to mention to let them make
practice. Besides the difficulty in vocabulary and pronunciation, there were thirty two
percent students who had psychological barriers; they were shy; afraid of making
mistake, and lacked of self-confidence. A student stated that when the teacher asked her
to answer questions, she felt very nervous and afraid to say something wrong that made
other students laughed and looked at her. In addition, there were twenty-one percent
students who could not speak fluently; they complained that they could not fluently
communicate with their friends; they could only speak two or three sentences at the
beginning, after that, they would totally got stuck and couldn’t continue the conversation
with their friends. Another opinion about the cause of speaking difficulty came from the
student ML. She claimed that her speaking problems was dealing with the
comprehension; when she talked to her partner, she could not really understood what her
partner said, and her partner always asked her to repeat what she said during the
discussion. There were also a few students who had difficulty in the grammar. The
researcher had been told that when the students were speaking, they had made the
grammar mistakes unconsciously.
After finding out the facts about the teaching and learning process, the student’s
speaking level, and their problems in speaking, the researcher is convinced that the
problem of low ability in speaking can be solved by applying Content-based Instruction
(CBI) in the speaking class. CBI is an approach; it can apply different communicative
activities or techniques to develop students’ speaking fluency, vocabulary mastering,
promote interaction in the classroom and increase the students’ motivation based on the
carefully selected content or topics which meet both the school’s requirements and
students’ needs. Based on the pre-research, the researcher made a plan for implementing
CBI in the teaching and learning speaking skill.
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B. Research Implementation
Having identified student’s problem in speaking, CBI was chosen to be the
solution of the problem. The implementation of teaching speaking by using CBI through
Action Research consisted of two cycles.
The result of the first cycle became the consideration of the planning of the
second cycle. Each cycle consisted of four meetings. Three meetings were for
presenting the material and one meeting for conducting the speaking test. Every meeting
lasted for ninety minutes. The overall research implementation could be seen in Table
4.6.
Table 4.6 Overall Implementation of the Research
Problem Students had low speaking ability

Solution Teaching speaking through CBI
Students The second Grade
No of Cycle two
Cycle 1: M1: introducing products, M2: introducing company, M3: Receiving factory
visitor(s)
Explaining the objective and the planned schedule for cycle 1.
Planning Giving a task in each meeting, and each meeting consists of pre-task,
task, and task optimization, Using pictures, flash cards, and short
passage for the class
M1-M3: discussing and explaining the topics, giving different
Action activities or tasks based on the topics. Students performed and
recalled what they had learned at the previous stages
M4: post test
Ss: Improved in vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, fluency and
accuracy, but a few Ss still less achieved in fluency and
pronunciation.
Observation Ss Could answer the teacher’s questions and felt braver to speak and
actively performed with their classmates.
T: well prepared the worksheet, but lack of modeling and explanation
of the context. Didn’t give much time to the students to make practice
CS: alive, relax and enjoyable, but a little bit noisy, group works and
pair works were more effective
(+) Ss’ motivation and participation were raised. Ss mastery in words
and expressions were high; Ss could answer the teacher’s questions;
Reflection and could communicate with their friends with little grammar
mistake. They talked a lot in the class.
(-) The T lacked of modeling and practice of the words
pronunciation. Some Ss less achieved in fluency as they needed to
take a look of the worksheet to find the related words and expressions
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during their performance.

Cycle 2: M1: telephoning, M2: booking rooms in a hotel, M3: Ordering in a
restaurant
Planning Revised plan is to help the students to achieve good pronunciation
and fluency.
M1-M3: discussing and explaining the topics; giving modeling and
different activities to help the students to master the words and
Action expressions, to achieve good pronunciation; giving different activities
or tasks based on the topics; conducting performance review.
M4: post test
Ss: much improved in words pronunciation and could fluently
Observation conduct the interactive dialog with their partner; became more
self-confident
T: explained the context very clearly; more passionate
Cs: more alive, fun and relax atmosphere increased
(+) improvement in speaking ability, the students could fluently
communicate with their friends with good pronunciation; the
Reflection frequency of looking at the notebook reduced; effective pair works,
more enjoyable atmosphere, relaxed classroom situation founded
(-) there were still two or three students who needed to take a look or
read their notebooks when conducting their performance.
The implementation of the research in its cycles was described on the following
section.
1. Cycle 1
Table 4.7 The implementation of Cycle 1
Topics: M1. Introducing products, M2. Introducing company, M3. Receiving

plannin
factory visitor, M4. Post-test

- Giving a task in each meeting
- Each meeting consists of pre-task, task, and task optimization
g
- Using pictures, flash cards, and short passage

First meeting – Third meeting (discussion meeting)
- discussing about the words and sentence patterns
- practice dialogue
- doing different activities about the topics
Action
- optimizing the language use

Fourth meeting (post test)
- conducting a post-test about the topics discussed
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The Students
- The learning motivation was improved in the class
- Students actively took speaking turns; braver and actively engaged in the
speaking activities,
- The students improved in the words and grammatical forms.
- They could answer the teacher’s questions
- They could fluently perform the speaking task, but sometimes, some
students forgot the new words, they needed to take a look at the
Observation
worksheet to refresh their mind, and also mispronounced some words.

- A small part of students felt a little bit shy in individual activities
The Teacher
- Well prepared with the worksheet
- Didn’t give enough modeling and practice to the students about the
vocabularies and words pronunciation
- Didn't give sufficient explanation and discussion about the topic
- Lacked of monitoring of the rest students while the other students took
activities
- Spoke too fast
Classroom situation
- Alive, enthusiastic
- Enjoyable for various types of activities
- Pair and group works were more effective
- Noisy
Strengths
- Using CBI could improve students’ speaking competence such as,
vocabularies, grammar, comprehension
- CBI could increase students’ participation in the speaking class by the
practical and interesting content.
- CBI could accommodate various types of activities which are motivating
the students to participate in the speaking tasks
- CBI could adjust individual, pair, and group works according to the
content.
- Pair and group works in CBI could eliminate student’s psychological
barriers and increase students’ self-confidence.
Reflection
Weakness
- Some students still mispronounced some words.
- Some students still less achieved on fluency as they forgot some new
words their just learned; they still needed to stop and take a look at their
worksheet
- The teacher lacked of modeling about the words and expressions.
- The teacher lacked of discussion about the content
- The teacher gave less control to the rest students who were not in the
speaking activity.
The process of Cycle 1 is described in the following section.
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a. Planning
Planning was the first step in doing a classroom action research. Some important
things were planned in order to run the research well.
1) Time allotment
The time allotment in each meeting was 90 minutes. There were four meetings in
cycle one including the posttest. The detail schedule was as follows:
(1) Sunday, November 14, 2010 : The first meeting
(2) Wednesday, November 24, 2010 : The second meeting
(3) Wednesday, December 1, 2010 : The third meeting
(4) Wednesday, December 8, 2010 : The Fourth meeting
2) Teaching Materials
The teaching materials were selected and prepared based on the students’ needs
and interest and also meet the requirements of the college in advance. According to the
major teaching plan constructed by the Dean Office of Business English Department, the
teaching materials should focus on training the students’ potential communication ability,
the materials selected should be standard, practical, and flexible; standard means that the
teaching material cannot either be too difficult or too easy, it should match the students
level; practical means the content knowledge conveyed by the teacher in the class should
be used by the students both in the classroom and in the outside world or the real world;
while flexible means the material or content shouldn’t be monotonous or invariable, it
should be flexible and can be adjusted by the teacher to meet the students needs and
interest.
Moreover, before the treatment, the researcher conducted the interview with the
students to get their information about their needs, interest and the problem in speaking.
The students were also given chances to discuss, to talk about, and to choose what kind
of content they were interested in and wanted to learn. The result shows that the students
are willing to learn something useful, practical, and related to their future jobs. Hence,
based on the result above, the topics selected for each meeting in Cycle 1 are as
following, and at the beginning of each meeting, the teacher will ask the students if they
want to discuss the topic or not:
Meeting 1: Introducing products
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Meeting 2: Introducing Company

Meeting 3: Receiving factory visitor(s)
3) Teaching Medias
The available teaching Media, such as the computer and LCD in the classroom
were used. In addition, the researcher also prepared pictures and flash cards to teach the
students. The teaching media functions the role to help the students not only understand
the meaning of the text better, but also to let the students know how it would be used. A
more attractive content or text will appeal to the students and motivate them to speak, to
perform. An attractive looking content or context is more likely to grab the students’
attention rather than a page full of type.
4) Lesson plan
In the first cycle, the researcher planned four meetings; three meetings for
classroom discussion, and one meeting for conducting the post-test. Each discussion
meeting had a topic and consisted of three phases namely pre-task, task, and task
optimization, while each phase consisted of many different activities based on the topics.
As mentioned previously, the students often mispronounce the words, they lack of
relevant vocabularies, and they also make grammar mistakes. These are because the
students seldom get chances to practice each component of the speaking. In order to help
the students to master each component of the speaking skill, and also to prepare them to
be well performed in the task phase, the pre-task phase was used to build the
vocabularies, grammatical forms, and also to achieve the students’ pronunciation. In the
pre-task phase, the researcher would try to use many different kinds of activities to build
the students’ vocabularies and expressions related to the topic, and to discuss the
grammatical form with them in order to well prepare them for conducting the activities in
the task phase. In the task phase, the students were asked to conduct different activities,
and to practice what they have learned in the pre-task. During the task, the students were
hoped to speak a lot individually, in pair or in group. After the task phrase, it was
followed with the task optimization; in this phase, the researcher would optimize the task
by underlining or reviewing the sentence patterns and vocabularies or expressions dealing
with the language that the students just had learned, and asked the students to talk or
practice the topic from different necessary aspects logically if there still had time left.
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b. Implementing the Action

1) First Meeting
a) Opening the class
It was a warm Sunday afternoon (usually there were no meetings on Sunday, but
that day they had meeting in order to substitute the meeting on next Wednesday as the
students would hold Sport Meet on next Wednesday). The bell rang at 14: 10, and the
researcher entered the classroom with her collaborator, Miss Zeng, an English teacher of
this college. The researcher greeted the students “Good afternoon everybody!” and the
students replied “Good afternoon teacher.” eagerly. Then, researcher checked the
students’ attendance list. There were nine students who were absent that day. The total
numbers of the students in this class were thirty-eight students; thirty-six female students
and two male students.
b) Main activity
(1) Pre-task
The researcher started the class by asking the students some leading questions. She
asked the students what kinds of aspects did they care about when they buying some
items, such as stationary in the store or supermarket and how the people in the store
introduced the items to them. The students listed vocabularies on many aspects while the
researcher was writing them down on the blackboard. After the leading questions, the
researcher introduced the topic that they were going to learn in that meeting. The
researcher distributed the work sheets to the students and started the activity. She asked
the students to read the new words after her in activity one first and then she asked them
to look at the pictures on the worksheet or the screen to match the pictures with its right
words. Most of the students did a good job; they could match the pictures with its right
words and could easily identify which were office equipments and which were office
stationeries. However, there were also some students who couldn’t match the shredder,
sellotape stapler, stamp, and notepad with their right pictures as these words were new to
them, one of the students also asked how to use the clipboard. The researcher explained
to them respectively.
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After that, the researcher continued to Activity 2. At the beginning, she asked the
students to read the new words after her again, and then she asked the students to speak
out the new words according to the flash cards that she was showing to them. The
students blurted out the words very quickly; once the researcher showed them the flash
cards, they strived to be the first and feared to lag behind. However, there were some
students who mispronounced the words during the activity. The researcher corrected the
words by speaking it again, and the students read after her. After making sure the
students didn’t have any problem with the pronunciation, they moved to Activity 3.
In Activity 3, the students were asked to read the words after the researcher, and
then, fill a table by putting the vocabularies into their correct categories. Before filling
the table, the researcher discussed the vocabularies in the list with the students; she found
that some students were not familiar with the words about quality, and most of them were
not familiar with the vocabularies about the shape; she explained the meaning of the
vocabularies related to the quality. To help them recognize and get the meaning of the
words about different shapes; she drew many different shapes on the blackboard, and
wrote down the meaning. In order to make sure the students could master the words
about shape in short time, the researcher deleted the words and kept the shapes only on
the blackboard; she pointed the shapes on the blackboard and asked the students to speak
out their relative words. At the beginning, the students reacted very slow, but after few
times, they could easily identify the shapes; they felt excited and blurted out the words
very quickly when the researcher moved from one shape to another. Seeing the students
could easily identify each category and fill the table, the researcher went to Activity 4.
In this activity, firstly, the researcher explained that when they introduce products,
they needed to tell people the basic feature about the products such as their material,
colour, size or specification, place of production, price and quality, so in this activity,
they should pay attention to these aspects as these aspects were very basic and necessary
for introducing products. After the explanation, the students were asked to work in pairs
to discuss and create the basic information about the different products in the flash cards
according to the given example. After they finished creating the basic information about
the products, they were also asked to work in pairs to ask and answer questions with each
other. During the activity, the collaborator and researcher walked around the class to
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monitor the students’ activity. All the students were focused on the activity, only one
student who was playing her hand phone, when the researcher was getting closer to her;
she then put the hand phone away. In order to check the students’ understanding, the
researcher asked the questions as listed on the worksheet to a student. At the beginning,
the student didn’t want to answer the questions; she felt a little bit shy and looked at other
students. The researcher encouraged her by saying that “don’t be shy, it doesn’t matter if
you say something wrong. We all are still learning, let’s learn together; just try you best
ok?” She also gave an example of how to answer such kinds of questions. After that, the
girl started to answer the questions:
Teacher: Would you like to show me the folder? (There was a folder next
to her table, which belongs to the collaborator.)
Student: Ok, here it is.
Teacher: Wow, Superb! What is it made of?
Student: It is made of good papers and these papers are made of good
wood. The (outside) cover is made of plastic. En….It is very
smooth and hard, you can put your hand here, smooth right?
(Touch)
Teacher: What color is it?
Student: This one is white, but we still have other colors, such as green,
red and so on.
Teacher: Where is it produced?
Student: It is produced in Guangzhou.
Teacher: What size is it?
Student: It is 50x2x45 centimeters
Teacher: Do you have the folder in size A4 and A5.
Student: Oh, yes, yes, we have.
Teacher: What about the shape?
Student: It is rectangle.
Teacher: How much does it cost?
Student: It is Twenty yuan for one book, but if you need more, we can
give you discount.
“You see, you could do it and you did it well.” the researcher said to this
student.
The researcher also asked the rest students if they had any questions about the words
and sentence patterns that they learned above, but there was no problem, therefore, she
continued to the task phase.
(2) Task / Performance
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In the task phase, the students worked in pairs; after the students found their
partners, the researcher explained the way of conducting the task. There were two tasks
in this phase. The first task was a description task. In this task, the students were asked to
write down the description of a product and then took roles to practice the dialogue. The
second task was a role-play activity. All students were involved in this activity; one of
the students took the role of seller, and the rest students took the role of buyer.
They started with the first task. In this task, each member of the pairs needed to
write down the detail description of a product such as photocopier, and then compared
their own writings with their partner to optimize a better description of the product. After
this, the pairs were asked to take the role to read the dialogue on the worksheet including
the description that they just created. The students were also asked to underline the words
for describing about quality in the dialogue. During the task, the collaborator and the
researcher monitored their activity from one pair to another. This time, there were no
students talking other things or playing hand phones. The collaborator told the researcher
that was so surprising. Ten minutes later, the researcher asked if they had finished their
task or not, but they told her not yet, so the researcher gave them another five minutes
more to do their tasks. After the students had finished their writing, she checked the result
by asking them to present their writing.
The researcher told the students that she would like to ask some students to present
their works. She asked a pair next to the platform to present the dialogue and their pair
work writing. Once the students had finished her presentation, another pair was asked to
present their pair work. The researcher almost was going to call another pair; she asked if
there were any volunteers and if there were any students who wanted come to present in
the front of the class. Surprisingly, one student said that “teacher don’t call, we would
like to present ours.” The researcher was so surprised, and she told the rest students that
they should be like her, to be a volunteer and to be braver. She asked the rest students to
give applause to this student. As the time was limited, the researcher stopped the
students’ presentation at the fifth pairs. She told the other five pairs of the rest students
that they could practice the dialogue listed in the worksheet in the front of the class. The
students practiced the dialogue one pair by one pair. She noticed that there were some
common mistakes that the students had made; these mistakes were about pronunciation
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and the grammar. Some students mispronounced the words. She listed the mispronounced
words on the blackboard and asked the students to read it after her. She also corrected
some grammar mistakes such as the tense, is (was), etc., and prepositional phrase; made
in and made of and etc.
After conducting the first task, they came to the second task in ACTIVITY 6. The
second task was a role-play activity based on the real condition that usually occurred in
the working filed. In this activity, one student worked as the seller and the rest students
worked as the buyers. The seller needed to introduce her product to the buyers in many
different aspects as possible. If the seller could make a good introduction of the products,
the buyers would consider that they might buy the office products, otherwise, vice versa.
However, they needed to list the reasons why they wanted or didn’t want to buy that
product.
Personally, the researcher thought that male was braver than female, so in order
to make a good start, she asked a male student to start this activity. Fortunately, the
student came to the front of the class immediately once the researcher called him. The
student took a flash card from the researcher and started introduce the product, while the
other students listened carefully and made notes. The students tried hard to describe his
product. After he finished the presentation, he asked the buyers (the rest students) if they
wanted to buy his product or not, if they said no, they must explain why they didn’t want
buy it. This activity was fun, exciting, and meaningful. At the beginning of the
presentation activity, some students couldn’t speaking fluently; they stopped and had to
take a glance at the worksheet to find the related words to describe the products, they also
needed to find what was the next point to present. However, it was great to see that the
following presentations were getting better one by one as their learned and got experience
from the previous presentation. However, as the time was limited and the researcher
needed to continue the last phase, she had to stop the following presentation that would
be presented by the left students. The left students felt disappointed as they hadn’t
introduced their products.
(3) Task Optimization
This phase was conducted at 15: 40, the last ten minutes before the class was
over. In this phase, the researcher gave comments and suggestions to the students about
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all their performance. She gave a quick review for the words and sentences about
describing the quality that the students underlined in the dialogue as listed on the
worksheet. She also made a review of how to answer the common questions usually for
asking products and how to introduce the products logically or orderly.
c) Closing the class
As the bell was ringing, the researcher said thanks to the students for their
attention and good performance. Before she left, she said goodbye and asked the students
not to forget to study at home.
2) Second Meeting
The researcher started the class by greeting the students “Good afternoon
everybody!”, and the students responded “Good afternoon teacher” in an enthusiastic
way. After that she checked the students’ attendance list; there were four students absent
that day. As there were nine students absent in last meeting, and also because the interval
between the first meeting and this meeting was a little bit longer than usual, so, the
researcher thought it was necessary to make a review of what they had learned in last
meeting. She asked the student whether they still remembered what they had learned in
last meeting. The students replied “yes, introducing products” loudly. She also asked
them “how to introduce products?” the students kept silent. She changed the way of
asking them “what are the basic aspects we need to mention when we introduce the
products?” The students mentioned the material, the color, the specification…….. The
researcher said to the students: “great, you still remember, but remembering is not
enough, you also need to practice it, please practice with your friends after class ok?”
The students replied “yes, ok” and they made faces and laughed at each other. The
researcher told the students that last time they had learned about introducing products,
that day, they would discuss about introducing company. This opening took five minutes.
b) Main activity
(1) Pre-task
The researcher distributed the worksheet to the students and asked them to read the
short passage carefully to fill the table under the short passage in ACTIVITY 1. This
activity was to build the necessary vocabularies and sentences patterns needed for
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describing a company. Before the activity, the researcher discussed the short passage one
sentence by one sentence, and told the students that when introducing a company, some
necessary aspects needed to be addressed; the basic aspects were including the
background of the company, the location of the company, the products and the employees
etc.
After discussing the short passage, the researcher gave the students five minutes to
read the short passage again and asked them to pay attention to the basic aspects as she
mentioned early. After they finished reading the short passage, the researcher asked them
if they understood the short passage or not; were there any difficulties for this short
passage. Only two or three students sitting together said that the short passage was a little
difficult, and the rest students said that the short passage was not difficult and they
understood it, but there were some vocabularies in the short passage they didn’t know
and the researcher should write down the phonetic symbol. The researcher asked the
students which words they didn’t know, they told her that they didn’t know the meaning
of the words, such as, peripherals, dedicated, maintenance. She explained the meaning
and wrote down the phonetic symbols of these words to the students respectively. She
also asked the students to read these words after her. After that, she asked the students to
fill the table in ACTIVITY 1.
In Activity 1, students were asked to fill a table; students were required to find
the related vocabularies or phrases from the short passage and put it in its relevant
categories. Doing this activity, the researcher asked two students to come to the stage to
fill the table by writing them down on the blackboard. After they finished, she checked
their answers, they did it well, but one of the students wrote the name of the place as
mentioned in the short passage in the location category instead of writing down the
phrases, which described the location in the location category. The researcher explained
that they needed to write the phrases or sentences that described the different aspects of
the company. She also asked the rest students about their answers. Were they all correct?
They told her that their answers were almost the same as the students who wrote on the
black board. In order to help the students to master the words and phrases in the table, the
researcher moved to ACTIVITY 2. The students were asked to discuss with their partner
and answer questions. After five minutes, she asked a student to stand up to answer the
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questions about the short passage in ACTIVITY 2. The student could answer well, but
felt hesitate to pronounce the words of maintenance and peripherals. The researcher
asked her and the rest students to read these two words after her. The students answered
the questions as follows:
- It is a Computer Technology company.

- It is (was) established in 1998.
- It is located near one of the largest electronic markets in China.
- There are twenty professionals there.
- There are more than 300 excellent employees.
- Their product is mini laptop computers.
- It is special. It is made of good quality material.
-They are dedicated to the research, development and maintenance of
the netbooks and computer peripherals.
After the students finished, the researcher asked the rest students if they had any
problem so far; but there were no problems so far. So, they moved to the task phase.
In this stage, the students were asked to work in groups to make a presentation of
introducing companies. The researcher explained the way of conducting this activity to
the students. She divided the students into six groups; each group consisted of six
students. As there were four students absent that day, one group consisted of four
students. In conducting this activity, the members of each group had to discuss and create
a short passage of introducing a company based on the points listed on the worksheet
with each other and then the group presented it in the front of the class; each member of
the group had to present a point. Before the students went to perform the activity, the
researcher explained the words and sentence patterns listed on the worksheet that the
students might use in the following activity. She asked the students to read these words
and sentence patterns after her. She also asked them to make drills for these words and
sentence patterns. After the students had no problem with that, she told the students that
they could start to discuss and create an introduction of a company with their group
members.
During their discussion phase, the collaborator and the researcher walked around
the classroom to monitor the students’ activity. There was a student asking the
researcher: “teacher, what kind of company do we need to create?” The researcher told
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her that “any kind of company, for example, you can present a garment company, a toy
company. You can use your imagination to create the name of the company, the number
of employees and etc. You can take the short passage on the worksheet as an example.”
She asked the rest students if they understood what she was talking about and if they
knew the procedure of conducting this activity, they told her that they understood.
After few minutes, the researcher asked the first group to come to the platform to
introduce their “company.” In order to make the rest students not do any other things, she
told them that they had to listen carefully and make notes, because she might ask them to
present what the other groups presented about as stated in ACTIVITY 4. During the
presentation of the first group, there was a student who didn’t know how to say “学士学
位（bachelor degree）” in English, however, her group member next to her told her this
word. The performance of this group was generally good; most members of this group
spoke well, but due to many members and they didn’t organize the turn order well, they
lost who was the next person to present after the previous student. After they finished
their performance, the researcher gave them comments, and she told the rest groups to
pay attention to the organization of their group work; they should make a clear mind on
who was the next member of the previous member to continue the presentation. The rest
groups were asked to present one by one. They performed well; they didn’t have many
mistakes, only sometimes, some students mispronounced the words and got a little bit
stuck during the presentation. As there were only twelve minutes left, the researcher
stopped the Activity 4. She asked the students to practice it after class. They moved to the
task optimization phase.
(3) Task Optimization
In this phase, the researcher gave comments and suggestions to the students about
all their performance. She also made a review of the words or phrase and sentence
patterns that were usually used in introducing a company. Moreover, she stressed some
aspects that were necessary for introducing a company.
As the bell was ringing, the researcher asked the students if they had any problem
in this meeting they could ask her, but there were no problems. One of the students told
her that “no, teacher.” in a funny tone. The class was ended in laugh.
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3) Third Meeting
It was a nice and warm afternoon. The collaborator and the researcher entered the
classroom. They greeted the students and the researcher checked the students’ attendance
list. There were two students absent. After asking the student’s condition, the researcher
started the lesson.
b) Main activity
(1) Pre-task
Before the researcher introduced the topic that the students were going to learn that
day, she gave some warm up questions by asking: “Have you ever received visitors when
you were at home?” The students replied: “yes!” The researcher gave a further question:
“then, what did you do when you receiving that visitor?” “ (泡茶, they said in Chinese
(make tea)), asked him to sit down” they replied eagerly and loudly. The researcher said:
“yes, make tea and ask him to sit down, well, do you know how to receive visitors in a
company?” The students shaked their heads and kept silent. The researcher asked them
that if they would like to learn how to receive visitors in a workplace in that meeting.
They smiled and said ok.
The researcher distributed the worksheet to the students. They started with
ACTIVITY 1, the words and sentence patterns that the students might use in the
following activities. First, the researcher explained the words and sentence patterns to the
students. Next, she asked the students to read the words and sentence patterns after her.
After this, she gave the students few minutes to practice with their friend and asked them
to use it to make sentences. She walked around the class and monitored the students; at
first, the students read the words and expressions loudly, later, they stopped reading and
started to make sentences with their friends. They were very concentrated on the task.
Few minutes later, the researcher asked some students to read the sentences that they
made. She also asked all the students to read the words and expressions together. There
were no big mistakes, only the stress of the words. Hence, the researcher led the students
read the words and expressions again, and moved to the ACTIVITY 2.
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In this activity, firstly, the researcher explained and discussed the dialogues with
the students. After the students had got a concept of the dialogue, they were asked to
work in pairs to discuss and to take roles to practice the long dialogue and then answer
her questions. The collaborator and the researcher monitored the students’ activity. There
were no students chatting or doing other things. Ten minutes had past; the students were
still practicing the dialogue. They seemed like practicing dialogue very much. The
researcher stopped them and asked them to answer her questions based on the dialogue.
They could understand the researcher’s questions and could answer the questions easily.
The problem was that they had to look at their worksheet when they answered the
questions and they also gave the answers almost the same as in the dialogue. The
researcher told them that they should keep the key information on their notebook and it
should be better if they could answer the questions using their own words; but they told
her that the answers were a little bit long, they could not remember it.
(2) Task / performance
In the task phase, the researcher gave a picture to the students and asked them to
do the task in activity 3. In this activity, the students were asked to work in pairs to create
a dialogue between the vistor and the secretary based on the picture the researcher just
gave them. The sectretary was supposed to receive the visitor and to show him around
her factory. When they were creating the dialouge, they should cover some points as
stated in the worksheet in activity 3; they could take the activity 2 as an example. This
activity took fourty-five minutes. Ten minutes were used by the students to discuss and
create a dialouge with her or his partner, and the left time was used to perform the
dialouge they created. After the students finished creating the dialouges, the researcher
asked them to perform their dialouges in the front of the class one pair by one pair. They
were eagerly taking the turns and most of the students performed the role-play well.
However, there were some students who could not speak fluently as they didn’t know
how to say some words in English. there were also a small part of students who could not
leave their papers during the performance; they still needed to take a look at it, but not
frequently. Seeing that, the researcher still felt a little bit happy as the students were
improving and there were no students doing other things in the class and all of them
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concentrated on the task; the atmosphere in the whole classroom was easy and alive. One
of the pair performed their dialouge as follows:
The Vistor : Dong dong dong…………(a student stood outside the

classroom and knocked the door)
The Secretary : Come in, Please! (the vistor came in ) May I help you?
The Vistor : Oh, yes, My name is J.Handy. I would like to meet Mr. Henry.
The Secretary : Oh, nice to meet you Mr. Handy. I am Betty Plant, the secretary
of Mr. Henry. (Shake hands) Please sit down and have a cup of
coffee. I am going to call Mr. Henry that you are here. Oh, I am
sorry; Mr. Henry is still on the way. Would I have the pleasure
to show you around our factory?
The Visitor : Sure, lead on please.
The Secretary : First, please let me introduce our factory to you. Our factory
was established in 1996. It is located on Yue Lu district. The
transportation there is very convenient and the 风景(scenery)
there is very beautiful. You will see it later.
The Secretary : Welcome to our factory. Let me show you the display hall.
The Visitor : Wow. So many computers
The Secretary : Yes, we have many kinds of computer as you see. They are
made of good quality materials. Our products are in good
demand; they were sold to many countries, like Middle East,
Korea and so on.
The Visitor : May I ask where you get the raw material?
The Secretary : We get our raw material from Japanese. (Japan)
The Visitor : How is the production capacity?
The Secretary : Our annual output is 8,500,000 pieces. Our factory has good
and advance machines and we have five production lines. Our
staffs are hard-working and have rich experience.
The Visitor : oh, very good. Thank you.
The Secretary : You are welcome!
As the time was limited, the researcher stopped the students’ performance and asked
them to practice after class.
(3) Task-Optimizing
In the last ten minutes, the researcher gave comments and suggestions to the
students about all their performance. Besides, she also made a review of the words and
sentence patterns, including some key words in the dialogue for introducing the factory.
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As the bell was ringing, the researcher asked the students’ progress and their
feeling about the content. Most students said that it was practical and useful, they
mastered many vocabularies. However, there were a few students who felt that the
content in that meeting was a little bit difficult. The researcher told them to review and
study at home and asked them to attend the class and not to be late for next meeting as
there will be a test. She ended the class at 16:00.
4) Fourth Meeting
At 14:10, the bell was ringing; the researcher entered the classroom and greeted the
students. After checking the attendance, she told the students that that day they would
conduct a post test.
b) Conducting the test
The researcher explained the way of conducting the test. The test consisted of
three instruments. The first instrument was about introducing a product according to the
picture. There were four pictures with four products; students could choose one of the
products to introduce. The second instrument was about introducing a company; the
students could introduce any kind of company, but had to cover some necessary points,
while the third instrument was that the students took the role of a secretary of a company
to receive a guest who wanted to visit the factory. The students were asked to take one
instrument only and the instrument was given randomly by the researcher, and the
students were asked to take the test randomly. In this way, all the students could be
ready to take their turns.
The students were called one by one to come to the front of the class to present
their topic. The collaborator and the researcher gave the score to each student. The test
ran well. There was no problem with their performance.
Having finished the test, the researcher gave general review about the students’
performance; most of the students did the speaking test well. In addition, she also
encouraged the students to be relaxed in taking test next time and be more self-confident
in speaking.
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c. Observation
The observation was aimed at observing the effects of the action conducted in the
class. It was conducted during the teaching and learning process by the collaborator and
the researcher. The focuses of the observation were the students, the teacher, and the
teaching and learning process when the approach of Content-based Instruction was
applied in the class. The result of the observation was described as follows:
In the first meeting, the teacher well prepared the worksheet with various
activities in the lesson. When the teacher distributed the worksheet to the students, the
students felt curious as their former teacher often asked them to read a story. The students
seemed much liked the topic and felt interested in the content. When the teacher asked
the students to do different vocabulary activities in the pre-task phase, the students felt
happy, and eagerly followed her instruction. During the activity, most of the students
were actively engaged in the pair and groups works, and a few students felt shy in
individual works; a student was asked by the teacher to answer questions, the students
felt shy, after encouraged by the teacher, she answered the teacher’s question, and
answered well. Nevertheless, as there were many students in the class, the teacher
couldn’t monitor every student; there was a student found playing hand phone during the
class.
In line with the students’ speaking ability, there were many new words in that
lesson; even though the teacher led the students read the words dealing with the topic
once or twice at the beginning, some students still mispronounced the words and felt
hesitate to pronounce the words during the activity. Furthermore, there were a small part
of students who made some simple grammar mistakes. In addition, during the
presentation activity, some students couldn’t speak fluently; they had to stop and take a
look at the worksheet to find the relevant vocabularies and also need to check what the
next point to be presented was. Generally speaking, the students’ performances were
good, they spoke better than before; this could be seen especially on the performance of
the later part of the students, there were no many mistakes found on the grammar, their
pronunciation was better than before. They also could speak more fluently as they got the
experience from the previous students and also be told not to rely on the worksheet.
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In the second meeting, the atmosphere of the class was alive, and also a little bit
chaos. In this lesson, the teacher asked the students to conduct a large group activity; the
students felt excited and much enjoyed in the activity. In the group work, the students
helped each other by reminding their group members’ speaking turns and also told their
members the relevant vocabularies when they needed.
Unlike the first meeting, in the second meeting, the teacher prepared the
vocabularies with phonetic symbol, it was hoped that the students could make a better
pronunciation. However, before the activity the teacher didn’t give detail explanation
about the procedure of conducting the task or activity as there were some students asking
something about how to do the task, and some students of a group were confused who
was the next member to present in the activity.
As for the students’ performance in the activity, most of the students performed
well; they didn’t make many mistakes, only a few students, sometimes, mispronounced
the words and got a little bit stick by saying “en…” and took a look at their papers.
In the third meeting, the collaborator and the researcher found that the students
were more active and more concentrated on their study. There were no students chatting
other things or playing hand phones. In addition, the students were found like practicing
dialogue and role-play activities; they early took the turn to practice the role play, and
they practiced the dialogue with their partner loudly.
For their speaking abilities, their speaking ability was getting better; most of the
students could speak well. They could accurately and fluently practice the dialogue.
However, there were also a small part of students who mispronounced the words and the
word stress. Moreover, there still were some students who had taken a look at their
papers during the performance as they thought the content in this meeting was a little bit
difficult to them.
All in all, based on the observation, it could be concluded that the students had
high participation in the speaking class; most of the students were willing to take their
turns when the teacher asked them to speak or perform during the speaking activity;
however, there were few students who lacked confidence and felt a little bit shy when
they were asked to speak individually, but this was reduced in the pair and group work.
In the pair and group work, the students felt fun and exciting; they spoke in a more relax
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way. This was especially indicated when they were asked to work in pairs to play a role
play activity. They seemed like playing role-play activity.
Moreover, the students’ speaking ability was also improved during the first cycle.
When the students were asked to talk something about the topics, they could talk a lot
and most of the students could speak well and could make full use of the words,
expressions, and sentence patterns discussed at the meeting. However, there was also a
small part of students who forgot the words and sentence patters during their
performance, and had to take a look at their paper. This didn’t happen very frequently
and it didn’t really affect much about their language. There were also a few students who
felt a little bit hesitant to pronounce some words and mispronounced the words. Besides,
there were also some students who made the simple grammatical mistakes for asking and
answering questions. However, in general, the students’ speech was understandable; it
could be classified into the acceptable level.
From the observation, we know that the teacher, the researcher, had prepared the
teaching material well; the teacher provided very detail worksheet with many different
tasks or activities to motivate and guide the students to learn the language. The teacher
could encourage the students’ participation by asking the students to perform
individually, in pairs, and in groups according to various different types of activities as
stated in the worksheet. In addition, the topics and the content selected both meet the
school’s requirements, and the students’ needs and interests; although few students said
that the content was a little bit difficult, in general these students were still satisfied with
it and would accept it.
However, it could be noted that there were some points which were not good
with the teacher; firstly, the teacher didn’t give enough explanation and modeling to the
students for the word expressions and word pronunciations; secondly, the teacher didn’t
give much time to the students for practicing the new words and sentence patterns.
Thirdly, as there were many students in the class, the collaborator noted that the teacher
lacked of monitoring for the students who were sitting while the other students were
asked to perform at the front of class. Moreover, the teacher also spoke very fast in
giving explanation about the lessons; some students had difficulty to catch with her.
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The teaching and learning process was successful. The atmosphere in the
classroom was alive. The students were eagerly following and conducting the speaking
tasks and activities assigned by the teacher. Pair and group works were better than
individual works as the students didn’t feel shy and not afraid of making mistakes as they
felt they were not performing alone, they would be helped and corrected by their group
members.
d. Interview after the implementation of Cycle 1

After the implementation of cycle 1, the researcher conducted an interview with the
students to get their viewpoint about teaching by CBI. When she asked the students if
CBI was improving their speaking skill or not, almost all of the students said that it was
effective and their speaking skill was improved; they had something to say; they could
talk a lot; because CBI helped them to learn many useful vocabularies and sentence
patterns. Moreover, when they were asked to talk about the content, although there were
a few students said that the content was a little bit difficult, most of them said that the
content was not difficult, it was useful and practical; they would like to learn it as it was
good for their future jobs. The researcher also asked the students if they felt braver to
speak English in the next meeting. They told her that they felt braver to speak English
than before; because there were many pair and group activities in CBI, they were not
speaking English alone; they spoke English with their friends in the activity in the class.
The activities were fun and exciting that made them want to say. Besides, most of the
activities were speaking activities; when they always spoke in the activities, they felt
their speaking ability was improving, and they didn’t feel shy to speak English.
When the researcher asked the students what were the strengths and the
weaknesses of CBI. The students said that the strengths were that firstly, the content was
very good; it was useful and practical for their future jobs; they would like to learn it.
Secondly, there were many different speaking activities applied in CBI, so that they could
have fun while learning the language. Furthermore, they had something to say about the
topic and also had many chances to practice their oral English; unlike before, in CBI,
they learned logical thinking, they had learned how to talk about the topic. When the
researcher asked the students what were the negative aspects they found in the four
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meetings, some of the students replied that so far they found the teacher moved a little bit
fast from one activity to another and the teacher didn’t give sufficient explanation about
the text. They also said that in the speaking activity, especially the group activities, when
they work with their partner or group members, sometimes, their partner got stuck and
slowed down; that made them felt embarrassed.
e. Reflection
This phase was aimed to analyze and evaluate the final result of the action
conducted in the first cycle. Based on the interview and the observation in the first cycle,
the collaborator and the researcher reflected that there were some positive and negative
aspects of the implementation of CBI in cycle 1.
1) The positive aspects were as follows:
a) The students’ speaking ability was improved. They made great progress on each
aspect of the speaking skill, the passing grade of each aspect was 13, and the passing
grade for the whole aspects was 65, most of the students’ mean score of the grammar,
vocabulary, and comprehension were above the passing grade. Being taught useful
vocabularies and word expressions dealing with the topics, the students could speak a
lot with proper words and better pronunciation. Most of them could accurately and
fluently communicate with their friends based the given topics, and the mother tongue
use was reduced. Moreover, as the students learned many sentence patterns, the
students could understand the teacher’s questions and answer the teacher’s questions
with proper grammatical forms.
b) The students’ participation in the speaking activities was increased. They were more
active than before. They felt eager to join the activities as they liked the content, and
thought it was practical and useful to their future jobs. The students spoke a lot
during the teaching and learning process; most of the students early took the turns
and tried very hard to make their activity or performance better.
c) Pair and Group works were beneficial for eliminating psychological barriers in
speaking. Students felt more confident and didn’t feel shy in pair and group works.
2) However, there were also some negative aspects which were observed and identified
as follows:
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a) The improvement for the students’ speaking skill was not so high, even though, there
was improvement in the students’ grade for each indicator; it was still far from what
was expected. Some students were still less achieved in the fluency and felt weak in
the words pronunciation. Some of the student’s mean score on fluency and
pronunciation were below the passing grade. Moreover, the passing grade to the
whole aspects was 65, and it was hoped that sixty-five percents students could pass
the passing grade. The students score can be seen in Appendix 8.
b) Based on the observation and the interview with the students, the teacher was told
that she was less in monitoring of these students who were not performing while
other students were performing. In addition, the teacher was told that she didn’t give
sufficient modeling and drilling practice to the students, and she lacked discussion
and explanation about the content, such as the short passage and the dialogue in the
worksheet.
5) Suggestions
Based on the reflection stated above, it could be seen that CBI brought many
positive aspects. However, there were also many weaknesses found during the teaching
and learning process and they should be solved to get a better result. In view of this, the
researcher considered that it was a necessary to revise the action plan for the next cycle to
1) improve students’ pronunciation, 2) improve students’ fluency.
2. Cycle 2
Table 4.8 The Implementation of Cycle 2
Topics: M1.Telephoning, M2. Booking Rooms in a Hotel, M3. Ordering in a

planning
Restaurant, M4. Post-test

Revised plan is to solve the students’ problem in pronunciation and the
mastery of words to achieve the fluency.
Each meeting consists of pre-task and performance
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First meeting – Third meeting (discussion meeting)

- Giving discussion about the words and sentence patterns
Action
- Giving modeling about the words and sentence patterns.

- Students made drills and practiced the pronunciation of words and
sentence patterns in different activities.
- Students were asked to conduct individual, pair, and group performance.
Fourth meeting (post test)
- Having speaking test about the topics discussed
The Students
- Showed improvement in the pronunciation.
- Well mastered the words and sentence patterns with the related topics.
- Most of the students didn’t take a look or read their notebook during
their performance.
- Could fluently and accurately conduct the activities with their friends.
- Students’ self-confidence was increased; they were no longer afraid of
observation
making mistakes
The teacher
- Prepared the teaching material
- Gave modeling and much time to the students to make practice
- Explained the context more clearly
- Gave interesting activity in teaching English
- More passionate
The Classroom situation

- More alive
- Fun and enjoyable atmosphere
Strength
- CBI could improve students’ speaking ability. The teacher could choose
the interesting and practical content to meet the students’ needs.
Reflection
- The activities in speaking class could be adjusted to improve the students’

different speaking aspects; by giving much modeling and different
activities to the students, the students could produce good pronunciation.
- The fluency and accuracy in the speaking could be achieved by giving
more portions to the words and grammatical forms.
- Different activities and students working in groups increased the student
participation in the speaking class.
Weakness
- There were still two or three students who depended on the worksheet
when conducting the activities.
- It was not easy to choose the topics to meet all of the students’ interest.
The process of Cycle 2 is described in the following section.
a. Revised Planning
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1) Time allotment
The time allotment in each meeting was 90 minutes. There were still four
meetings in cycle two including the posttest. The detail schedule is as follows:
(1) Wednesday, December 15, 2010 : The first meeting
(2) Wednesday, December 22, 2010 : The second meeting
(3) Wednesday, December 29, 2010 : The third meeting
(4) Wednesday, January 5, 2011 : The Fourth meeting
2) Teaching Materials
The topics selected for Cycle 2 are based on both the requirements of the school
and the needs and interest of the students, after discussing with the collaborative teacher,
in the second cycle, the researcher adjusted the content and tasks to eliminate the
students’ weaknesses found in Cycle 1. There will be various activities based on the
content to improve the students’ speaking ability, and it is also hoped that the students
would feel more interested and wouldn’t have difficulty about it. The topics for each
meeting are as follows:
Meeting 1: Telephoning
Meeting 2: Booking rooms in hotel
Meeting 3: Ordering in the restaurant
3) Teaching Medias
The available teaching media, such as computer, LCD in the classroom were used.
4) Lesson plan
Based on the result of the reflection of Cycle one, the collaborator and the
researcher discussed and revised the plan for Cycle two as it was stated above that in the
first cycle, there were some students who were less achieved in pronunciation and
fluency. These students mispronounced the words and sometimes felt hesitate to
pronounce the new words and expressions, and there were also some students who
couldn’t speak fluently and had to take a look at their worksheet during the speaking
activity. As analyzed previously, the teacher didn’t give enough modeling and didn’t give
much time or many activities to the students to practice.
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In order to achieve a better result, hence, the plan for cycle one was revised and
showed as follows: there were still four meetings, three meetings were used for
classroom discussion, and one meeting was used for conducting the post-test. In order to
effectively use the time, the discussion meeting was divided into two phases only, namely
pre-task and performance. In the pre-task activity, the teacher will give enough modeling
to the students and give them more time to make drills or to make practice for the words
pronunciation. Moreover, various classroom activities will be applied to help the students
to achieve their pronunciation and fluency; meanwhile, before the performance activity,
the teacher will give sufficient discussion about the content so that the students could
have a logical thinking and could show their maximum ability in their speaking
performance. While in the task phase, the students were asked to work in pair and groups
to practice and perform what they have learned in the pre-task phase. The teacher will
also give sufficient review and comments for their performance.
b. Implementing the Action

1) First Meeting
It was a heavy snowing afternoon. The weather was very cold, but the students
felt excited as it was the first time of snowing in this year. As the bell was ringing, the
researcher greeted the students checked the students’ attendance list, there were three
students absent and three students came few minutes later after she started her teaching.
b) Main activity
(1) Pre-task
Before introducing the topic to the students, the researcher asked some leading
questions about the topic that they were going to learn in that meeting. She asked the
students if they ever made and received a telephone call in English and what the first
words to say when they were make and receive a phone call. Some students replied her
that wei, hello, who are you? I’m….; this is……………etc. The researcher explained that
when making or receiving a phone call in English, they could not use wei as wei was a
Chinese, and they could not use who are you for asking who is calling, instead, they
should ask who is calling or who is speaking. The researcher told the students that they
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would learn such expressions, after that she introduced to the students that that day they
were going to learn telephoning.
The researcher distributed the worksheet to the students and asked them to read
the words and expressions after her. After several times, she told the students that she
would like them to play a competitive game; that was, the researcher saying Chinese of
the words and expressions while the students translated it into English orally without
looking at the worksheet. She divided the students into three large groups, and told them
that the group which could firstly blurt out the words and expression with many students
in their group was the winner group, and the losing group would be punished to turn off
the LCD and computer after she finished the meeting. Before the activity, the researcher
gave a few minutes to the students to make drills and memorize the words and
expressions. After that, she said some expressions about making and receiving phone
calls, leaving and taking messages, and some other vocabularies about telephoning as
listed on the worksheet in Chinese. The students translated it into English orally and they
could correctly blurt out the words and expressions quickly; they seemed remembered
and mastered the words and expressions. In order to make sure everyone of them fully
understand and remember the words and expressions, she asked some students from
different groups to translate her Chinese words and expression individually, all of them
could speak well and could easily master and remember the meaning of the words and
expressions, but some of them spoke very fast and didn’t completely pronounced the
words. The researcher told the students that they should speak slowly and pronounce the
words clearly and also should fully pronounce every alphabet of the word. Seeing the
students didn’t have problem in ACTIVITY 1, she moved to ACTIVITY 2.
In ACTIVITY 2, the students were asked to practice a short telephoning
dialogue with their partners and then answer the researcher’s questions. Five minutes
later, the researcher asked a student to answer her questions based on the dialogue. Here
following was the dialogue conducted by the researcher and the student:
Teacher: Who is calling?

Student: Mr. Kale.
Teacher: Can Mr. Kale talk to Ms. Allysa?
Student: No.
Teacher: Why cannot Mr. Kale talk to Ms. Allysa?
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Student: Because she is not in.

Teacher: What do you think about the secretary? Is she professional?
Student: yes.
Teacher: Are you sure?
The student kept silent, another student beside her replied: “no, because the
secretary asked Mr. Kale is that all.” The researcher asked the rest students what were
their answers. They said no loudly. The researcher said to the students that they were
right. She explained the short dialogue and told the students that as a secretary it was
better didn’t ask that and it was not polite to ask that kind of questions. After that, she
also asked the students if they had any problem of this short dialogue. They told her that
they didn’t have any problem with this dialogue, so the researcher moved to ACTIVITY
3 and ACTIVITY 4.
In ACTIVITY 3, the researcher discussed and explained these two dialogues as
listed on the worksheet with the students. After that the students were asked to practice
the dialogues and to find out the sentence patterns that were used for making and
receiving a phone call as they learned in activity one. During their activity, the researcher
and the collaborator walked around the class to monitor the students’ activity; there were
no students chatting or playing hand phones. They practiced the dialogues with their
partner very loudly. There was no difficulty for them to find out and underline the word
expressions.
In ACTIVITY 4, the students were asked to fill some blank spaces in a short
dialogue of taking message. After few minutes, the researcher asked the students if they
finished or not. They told her that they had finished. In order to check the students’
understanding, the researcher asked a student to read the dialogue with her answer.
However, the student chose the wrong answer for blank 3. After the student finished
reading the dialogue, the researcher asked the rest student whether the student’s answers
were correct or wrong. The students told her that the answer of blank 3 was wrong, it
should be d. tell him everything is all right. The researcher said yes, and explained the
short dialogue of how to take a message to the students. After making sure the students
understood the short dialogue, she continued to the performance phase.
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In the performance phase, the students were asked to take a role-play

information-gap activity. Before the activity, the researcher explained the way of
conducting the performance and also distributed two different cards with detail schedule
information to the students. The students were asked to work in pairs to create and
practice dialogues based on the schedule card that the researcher gave to them; one
student was supposed to phone and make an appointment with Mr. Bake, but Mr. Baker
is not in the office and his secretary answers the phone. Each student of a pair had a diary
card of their role and they could not take a look at their partner’s diary card. During the
activity, the researcher walked around the classroom to monitor the students’ activity.
The students were practicing the dialogue with their partner very loudly and passionately.
After ten minutes, she asked the students if they finished or not. They told her not yet;
hence, she gave them another five minutes. When the students stopped practicing, she
asked if there were any volunteers who want come to the stage to make a performance of
their dialogues. A female and a male student came to the stage to start their performance.
She asked the rest students to give them applause as they were the first pair and they were
very brave. Meanwhile, she told the rest students that they should take them as an
example and they should learn the spirit from them. In the following, there were other
five pairs performing the role-play activity. In this meeting, the students were forbidden
to bring worksheet in the activity, but they were allowed to take the diary card with the
key information for the activity. During the activity, there were two students in different
pairs who felt a little bit nervous at the beginning; they spoke with low voice; but after
encouraged them to take a breath in a few seconds, they could perform the role-play
activity. In this activity, most of the students conducted a good performance; they could
correctly pronounce the words and expression as discussed previously. They also could
fluently and smoothly perform the role-play activity, but however, they spoke slower
than before as they spoke while looking at the diary card. As the time was limited, the
researcher stopped the rest students told them if they had any problem of this meeting,
but there were no problems with them.
b) Closing the class
Seeing the students didn’t have much problem with this lesson, the researcher
was going to close the class. Before closing the class, she asked the students how they
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felt about this lesson; they told her that it was good and they liked it; they were
systematically taught how to make and receive a phone call and how to take and leave
message. The researcher said it was great and closed the class by saying goodbye to the
students.
2) The Second Meeting

c) Opening the class
It was a warm and sunny afternoon. The researcher went to the classroom very
early that day. When the bell rung, she greeted the students and checked the students’
attendance list. There were only two students absent that day as they told the researcher
before the class that they needed to bring back their post parcel. That day’s topic was
booking rooms in the hotel.
d) Main activity
(1) Pre-task
Before going to present the topic, the researcher gave some leading questions to the
students by asking them if they ever lived in a hotel or if they ever booked a room in the
hotel, and how they booked that room in the hotel, however, there were no students ever
booked rooms in a hotel; then, the researcher asked them if they want to learn how to
book a room in the hotel or not, they told her yes. The researcher started the topic by
delivering the worksheet to the students and asking them to read the words and sentence
patterns after her. After several rounds, the researcher asked some students to read the
words and sentence patterns one by one in order to check their pronunciation. Happily,
all of them could read the words and expressions with correct pronunciations. In order to
help the students fully remember and master the words and sentence patterns, she gave
them few minutes to practice and memorize the words and sentence patterns, and then
asked them to conduct a competitive activity as stated in ACTIVITY 2.
In the activity two, students were asked to translate the Chinese words and
sentence patterns spoken by the researcher into English based on ACTIVITY 1 without
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looking at the worksheet. During the activity, when the researcher mentioned these
Chinese words and sentence patterns, all of the students blurted out the right words and
sentence patterns into English loudly; they felt excited and were striving to be the first
one to say the related words and sentence patterns. Seeing the students didn’t have any
problems about the words and sentence patterns, she moved to the ACTIVITY 3 and
ACTIVITY 4.
In activity three, first, the researcher discussed the short dialogue as listed on the
worksheet, and explained to the students about how to book a room in the hotel directly;
she explained:
Usually we can book a room in the hotel both online or book the room in the hotel
directly. For how to book a room in the hotel directly; the first thing is to locate the main
lobby and front desk. Usually the front desk is near the front entrance of the hotel or there
will be signs directing you to it.
The second is to follow the directions if you have a reservation or not.
- If you don't have a reservation, you can ask if they have any rooms available. If they
are full or booked, you'll need to find another hotel.
- If you do, you'll usually need some identification to verify your name.
Some hotels require you to pay for the room before you get your key, and most hotels
will require cash deposit if you do not have a debit or credit card. Cash or credit/debit
card is acceptable in most places; some will have a check option, depending on the hotel.
After you get the hotel key from the reservation desk, and ask for directions on how
to get to your room. If you are given an electronic key and you are not sure how to use it,
ask for directions. Before you leave your room, the front desk may tell you the time for
breakfast for next morning, and also the time for checking out.
After the discussion and explanation of how to book a room in the hotel directly,
the researcher asked the students to practice the dialogue with their partner, and then fill
in a table that mentions some necessary points for booking a room as listed in
ACTIVITY 3. The students could fill the table easily. After that they continued the
ACTIVITY 4. In this activity, the students were asked to fill in some blanks in a short
dialogue with will, would, could. In the previous meeting, some students always said will
instead of would as there actually should be would. The researcher asked the students
what was the meaning or usage of the word “would”, the students told her that it was the
past tense of the word “will”. The researcher said “yes”, and asked “any usage else?”
The students kept silent. She explained to them that the word “would” not only mean the
past tense of will, but also showed the politeness. People who worked in the service field
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always like to say would instead of will. After the explanation, She asked the students if
they understood or not. They told her yes. So, she asked them to complete the blanks.
The student could correctly complete the blanks in the short dialogue of ACTIVITY 4.
Seeing the students didn’t have any problem of the words and sentence patterns,
she went the task phase.
(2) Task
There were two activities in the task phase, and these two activities were role-play
activities. In ACTIVITY 5, the students were asked to work in pairs; they were asked to
create a dialogue and then conduct the dialogue based on the given information card with
their partner in front of the class. In this activity, one student acted as a guest who was
going to book a room in the hotel, and her or his partner would act as the receiver who
was working in the front desk. In ACTIVITY 6, the students were still asked to take a
role-play activity, but this time, they needed to change their roles with each other based
on their roles in activity 5; that was, the student who acted as the receiver should change
the role to be the guest. During the activity, the students seemed liked and got used to the
way of teaching, they didn’t feel shy or nervous; they came to the platform immediately
once the researcher called their names. Moreover, their speaking ability was getting
better than the previous meetings. In this performance, except two students slipped
tongues because they spoke too fast, all of them could say the words with correct
pronunciations and could properly use the sentence patterns that were learned in the
pre-task, Furthermore, compared with the previous meeting, the frequency for taking a
look at the information card in this meeting was reduced. Most of them didn’t need to
take a look at the information card as they have remembered the key information in mind,
and some of them just created their own information. Here below was a dialogue created
and conducted by a pair of students:
Student A: Good evening! May I help you, Madam?

Student B: I’d like a room please.
Student A: Certainly.
Student B: How much is one?
Student A: We have a variety of rooms from standard rooms to
deluxe rooms, which one would you like to have?
Student B: I’d like a standard room, please.
Student A: It’s $ 120 per day.
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Student B: Does it include breakfast?

Student A: Yes, it does. The restaurant is located on the third floor.
Student A: May I have your name, please?
Student B: Sarah.
Student A: Could you please spell it?
Student B: Yes. S-A-R-A-H.
Student A: How many people are there in your party?
Student B: Just me.
Student A: How many nights would you like to stay?
Student B: I will stay here two days.
Student A: Two nights $ 240. How would you like to pay?
Student B: Cash.
Student A: Ok, but we need to receive $ 300 as deposit, and it will be refunded when
you check out. You may check out the 12: 00 at noon.
Student B: Ok, no problem!
Student A: Thank you! Could you please sign your name here? Ok, this
is your key, and your room number is 805, in the eighth
floor. Would you like a wake-up call?
Student B: Yes, I’d like a morning call for 6:30
Student A: Enjoy your staying in Shangri-la Hotel.
These two activities total together lasted for more than forty minutes.
e) Closing the class
After conducting the task phase, there were only few minutes left. The
researcher gave comments to the students’ performance and took a quick review of that
lesson. As the bell rang, she ended the class and said goodbye to the students.
3) The third meeting

It was a cloudy afternoon, and the weather was a little bit cold that day. The
researcher entered the classroom, and the collaborator came in after her. She greeted the
students and asked their conditions. Before she was going to introduce the topic, she
asked the students some warm up questions. She asked what their favourite soups, dishes
and the beverages were. They answered “tomato and egg soup, (紫菜)laver and egg
soup, kelp soup, Gongbao diced chicken, boiled fish, sweet and sour fish,（麻辣牛肉）
sautéed beef with cayenne pepper etc. I like milk; I like orange juice, chrysanthemum
tea.” The students spoke very loudly, and said some words in Chinese as they didn’t
know how to say it in English. The researcher corrected it by saying it again. She also
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explained to them how to translate the name of the Chinese dishes. She said: “actually,
there is a rule for translating the dishes; when you translate some dishes; you can
translate the way of how the dishes were cooked or cut in the past tense and then add the
material of the dishes. For example, the Gongbao diced chicken as some students
mentioned, Gongbao is a name of a place in the ancient times, diced is the way of how
the chicken cut, and the chicken of course is the material.” She asked the students if they
understood or not. They told her yes. She also asked them if they liked western food or
had they ever eaten in a Western food restaurant. Some students replied her that they
have eaten in a western food restaurant and they like the western food, while some other
students told her that they haven’t eaten in a restaurant and they didn’t eat Western food.
She asked them if they want to know what the western dishes were and how to take an
order in a restaurant. The students felt happy and replied yes enthusiastically. After that,
she told the students that that day they were going to talk about ordering in the
restaurant.
b) Main activity
(1) Pre-task
The researcher distributed the worksheet to the students, and asked the students to
complete the chart with words from the list in ACTIVITY 1. Before the activity, she
explained and discussed the words with the students, and asked them read the words after
her few times. After they fully understood the words, she gave them five minutes to
discuss and complete the chart with their partner. After five minutes, she asked some
student to read their answers. They could correctly read the words with good
pronunciation. Seeing that, she moved to ACTIVITY 2. There were the sentence patterns
for ordering dishes. She discussed the sentence patterns and asked the students to read the
sentence patterns after her. After several times, she asked the students to look the
dialogue in ACTIVITY 3. She asked them to practice the dialogue with their partner. She
also asked the students to pay attention to the sentence patters for taking and making
orders in the restaurant and the way how to take and make orders in the restaurant as later
they needed to fill the blanks in ACTIVITY 4 and performed a role-play activity in
ACTIVITY 5 without looking at the worksheet. The students followed her instruction
and practiced the dialogue with their partner loudly and seriously; when the researcher
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walked around the classroom, she heard many students practicing the dialogue with their
partners using the correct tongue just like the native speaker. After few minutes, she
stopped the students, and asked them to fill the blanks in the dialogue in ACTIVITY 4.
As she had explained and discussed previously, they could easily fill the blanks with
correct word forms in this dialogue. Before the researcher moved to the task phase, she
asked the students if they had any problems in the previous activities, but they didn’t
have, so she moved to the task phase.
(2) Task / performance
In ACTIVITY 5, students were asked to conduct a role-play activity of taking and
making orders in a coffeehouse. In this activity, students worked with their partner to
create and conduct the dialogue in front of the class based on the given information. That
was, one student worked as a customer ordering dishes in the restaurant based on the
given information or he or she could create his or her own dishes, while another student
worked as the waiter or waitress to take his or her orders. The researcher also told the
students that they could use the dialogue in activity three as an example, and they could
use the menu in activity 1 or they could create their own. Before the students conducted
the activity, the researcher discussed and led the students to read the additional
vocabularies that the students might use in the activity 5 as listed on the worksheet. After
that she asked the students to conduct the role-play activity; she gave eight minutes to the
students to prepare and practice the dialogue with their partner. After they finished, she
asked one pair come to the front of the class to perform the role-play, and in order to
make every students fully concentrate in the class, she told the rest students that they
should listen carefully as she would like to ask them to give comments and suggestions
for their classmate’ performance. She also told them that it would be better if they didn’t
need to rely on the notebook as in the real world we could not bring a notebook and write
the dialogue in it. The students could perform the activity without looking at their
notebooks, and they performed well. The dialogue was as follows:
Student A: Welcome to our restaurant. Have you made a reservation, madam?

Student B: No, we haven’t made a reservation.
Student A: How many people are there in your party?
Student B: only two. Could we have the table near the window?
Student A: Sure! Please!
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Student A: What would you like to eat? May I take your order?
Student B: Yes. I’d like a tomato and cucumber salad and garlic bread please.
Student A: All right. And what kind of dressing would you like? We have
vinaigrette of Italian, and French.
Student B: Italian, please.
Student A: OK! Well, what would you like to have for the main course?
Student B: Yes. I’ll have spaghetti and meatball.
Student A: And would you like anything to drink?
Student B: Yes, I’d like a glass of iced tea with lemon, please.
Student A: Anything else?
Student B: That will be all. Thanks.
Student A: Ok, please wait a moment.
Student B: May I have the check, please?

Student A: Yes, here it is. $280, after discount. What would you like to pay?
Cash or credit card?
Student B: Cash, please.
After this pair conducted their performance, the rest students gave their
comments and suggestion. They said that the performance of this pair was generally
good, they could understand this pair’s dialogue, there were no many grammar mistakes
found in their dialogue and they could speak fluently. When the researcher asked what
the negative aspects of their speaking were. They replied that these two students
sometimes liked to say “en…” during the performance. The researcher told the rest
students that they were right, and they should avoid saying “en...er…” something like
that, they should learn the positive aspects from these two students’ performance. She
also told these two students that their performance was good and they should avoid say
“en.” during the performance. The rest students performed one pair by one pair and they
performed better and better. They also could change the menu by themselves. After the
students’ comments and suggestions, the researcher also gave her comments and
suggestion for each pair and the rest students, so that they could perform much better.
This activity lasted almost forty minutes. As the time was limited, she had to stop the
activity. The rest students who didn’t perform the activity seemed a little bit
disappointed. she told them that they still had chance to conduct a role play activity as in
last meeting there would be a role-play speaking test.
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The researcher ended the class by saying goodbye and Happy New Year to the
students. Before closing the class, she asked the students to review what they had learned
in all the three meetings at home and also told them not to be late as there would be a
speaking test in next meeting.
4) Fourth meeting
That day’s program was having a speaking test. The researcher entered the
classroom with her collaborator. After greeting the students and asking their condition,
she started the activity.
b) Conducting the test
It was a role-play test. She explained the way of conducting the test to the
students. The test consisted of three instruments. The first instrument was about
telephoning; Students were asked to take and make a phone call, and to take and leave a
message with their partner based on the given information. The second instrument was
about booking rooms in the hotel; two students took roles as a customer and a receptionist
respectively to perform the activity of booking a room in a hotel, while the third
instrument was that one students took the role of a customer to make an order in the
restaurant and another student worked as the waiter or waitress take the order. The
students were asked to take one instrument only and the instrument and the roles were
given randomly by the researcher, and the students were asked to take the test randomly.
In this way, all the students could be ready to take their turns.
The students were called pair by pair to come to the front of the class to present
their topics. The researcher and the collaborator gave the score to each student. The test
ran well. There was no problem with their performance.
Having finished the test, the researcher gave general review about the whole
activities that they had done during the research. She hoped that they could maintain their
participation in the speaking class.
c. Observation
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The observation was conducted during the cycle by the researcher and her
collaborator. The focuses of attention were the teacher, the students’ performance, and
the classroom situation in the teaching and learning process. The detail result is reported
as following:
In the first meeting, the teacher gave leading questions to arise the students’
interest about the topic. Because the students were weak in the pronunciation in the first
cycle; in this cycle, the teacher led the students to read the words and sentence patterns,
and asked the students to play some competitive games to practice the vocabularies and
sentence patterns. In the task phase, the teacher gave much time to the students to
perform the role-play activities based on a given information card.
During the activity, the students felt eager to conduct their performance in front of
the class. There was a pair of volunteer students who requested to conduct the role-play
activity in front of class without being asked to do so. The other students came to the
platform immediately, once the teacher called their names.
For their performance, most of the students conducted a good performance; they
could correctly pronounce the words and expressions as discussed and practiced
previously. They also could fluently and smoothly perform the role-play activity;
however, some of the students spoke slower than before as they spoke while looking at
the diary card.
In the second meeting, the teacher still asked the students to make drills about the
words and sentence patterns as she found it was workable for the students to master the
sentence patterns and the words and their pronunciations. The teacher also gave very
detail explanation about the topics, while the students were looking at the teacher and
listening very carefully.
In the task phase, students were asked to conduct the role-play activity. The
students seem liked and got used to the way of teaching, they didn’t felt shy or nervous
during their performance. Moreover, their speaking ability was getting better than the
previous meetings. This time, except two students who slipped tongues because they
spoke too fast, all of them could properly use the words and sentence patterns with
correct pronunciations. Furthermore, compared with the previous meeting, the frequency
for taking a look at the information card in this meeting was reduced. Most of the
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students didn’t need to take a look at the information card as they have remembered the
key information in mind, and some of them just created their own information.
In the third meeting, the teacher reminded the students that it would be better if
they didn’t need to take a look of their paper while conducting their performance. Most
of the students followed the teacher’s suggestion and didn’t bring their notebooks, and
they conducted their performance well. Moreover, the students were asked to give their
own comments and suggestions to their friends’ performance. By doing this, the students
could get experience from their friends, and could improve themselves. Their
performance was getting better and better from pair to pair, and the mispronunciation of
the words was reduced. Meanwhile, in the second cycle the teacher had improved the
preparation of the content or topics selection. The students found the content was not
difficult, and they liked it; they also showed great interest in the topics. In the second
cycle, the teacher gave detail discussion about the topics and gave much time to the
students to practice what they had learned. The teacher also used some activities to get all
the students involved in the task performance.
The whole classroom situation was alive. The students showed high participation
in the speaking activities and they actively took their speaking turns. There were many
students wanted to share their performance with their classmates as they could get
improvement of their performance.
Besides the active and good performance in the class, the students achievements
also indicated in the high scores of their performance test; in the fourth meeting, the
students were asked pair by pair to conduct a role-play based on the given topic in front
the researcher and the collaborator, while the researcher and the collaborator marked their
scores. During the speaking test, the students showed great improvement in their
speaking ability. They could produce the language with little mistakes in vocabularies,
sentence patterns, and pronunciations. They showed their highest ability in the task
performance. They could smoothly and fluently conduct the activities with their friends
based on the given information. They didn’t feel shy or afraid of making mistake, and
most of them didn’t need to take a look at the notebook while conducting the activities.
Moreover, the mother tongue use was also found to be reduced in the class. The students
made a great progress on their speaking ability, as shows in the following table, the
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students’ score was improved from cycle to cycle: the average score of fluency at the
pre-test is 11.8, the post-test 1 is 12.1, and at the post test 2 is 13.4,; vocabulary pre-test is
11.6, post-test 1 is 12.5, and post-test 2 is 13.3; grammar pre-test is 12.2, post-test 1 is
13.1, and post-test 2 is 13.4; pronunciation pre-test is 12.3, post-test 1 is 12.3, and
post-test 2 is 13.4; and comprehension pre-test is 11.8, post-test 1 is 13.1, and the
post-test 2 is 13.6. The average score of speaking ability was improved. The average of
the pre-test is 59.6, post-test 1 is 63.2, and the post-test 2 is 67.
Table 4.9 The Comparison of the Students’ Speaking Score in the Pre-test,
Post-test 1 in the Cycle 1, and Post-test 2 in Cycle 2.
Test Fluen. Vocabu. Gram. Pron. Comprehen. Total

Pre-test 11.8 11.6 12.2 12.3 11.8 59.6
Post-test 1 12.1 12.5 13.1 12.3 13.1 63.2
Post-test 2 13.4 13.3 13.4 13.4 13.6 67
Besides the speaking ability in each speaking aspect, the following table also
provided the data about students who passed the passing grade. The result of the students
speaking grade was also significant improved.
Table 4.10 The Comparison of the Percentage of Students Who Passed the
Passing Grade in Each Cycle
LEVEL PRE-TEST CYCLE 1 CYCLE 2

Student percentage Student percenta Student percenta
No. No. ge No. ge
Under 17 45% 10 26% 0 0%
Averag
e
Averag 20 52% 23 61% 26 68%
e
Above 1 3% 5 13% 12 32%
Averag
e
Passing 11 28% 16 42% 26 68%
Grade
65
Note: Under Average : Students’ speaking score in the scale of 50-59

Average : Students’ speaking score in the scale of 60-69
Above Average : Students’ speaking score in the scale of 70-79
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From the table above, it can be seen that there were improvement in the students’
grade for speaking class. The passing grade was 65, and it was hoped that 25 students or
65% students could pass from the passing grade. Actually, it was 68% students who
passed the passing grade in the second cycle and no students were below the average
score. The goal of the research was achieved.
d. Reflecting
This was the final stage in cycle two which was also the final cycle of the study.
This stage was aimed to evaluate the final result of the action conducted in the second
cycle accompanied with the analyses of its strengths and weaknesses. Based on the
observation result and the students’ score in the second cycle, the collaborator and the
researcher reflected some important aspects during the implementation of CBI in cycle 2.
The aspects are as follows:
1) The strength:
a) CBI can improve students’ speaking ability.
CBI is an approach rather than a method, it is very flexible. First of all, CBI can
apply different activities and also can adjust it to meet the students’ needs and interests.
In the class, the teacher can adopt different activities to improve students’ different
speaking aspects. By providing interesting and practical activities, the students could
master the vocabularies and grammatical forms related to the topics easily. As you can
see in the second cycle, the teacher applied some different tasks to help the students to
achieve the students’ fluency; during the performance, the support and guidance from the
teacher and their partners were always available. In the group works, the members of the
same group also reminded their friends what’s was the next points and how to say it.
b) CBI changes the classroom situation into more alive.
The classroom situation was improved and became more alive than before. The
students’ participation in the speaking activities was increased. They were active and
afraid of leg behind in conducting the task. Besides, because the topics were very close to
their daily life and their future jobs, they felt great motivation to join the activities. In
addition, before the action research, the teacher dominated the class and the speaking
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class was a reading type of activity, but now it was replaced by the speaking activities
and the students dominated the speaking class. Moreover, the teacher was getting more
experienced and more innovative in teaching speaking; she tried to explore every effort to
make the class more interesting.
2) The weakness
Generally, during the teaching and learning process of cycle 2, the collaborator
and the researcher did not find some significant weaknesses or obstacles. Most students
could speak well, and their speaking ability was effectively improved; only two or three
students were still found to bring their notebooks and sometimes need to take a look at
their notebooks during the speaking activities.
C. The Findings and Discussions

1. The Findings
The above description of the research has provided the overall view of the research
findings of improving students’ speaking ability by using Content-based Instruction.
After analyzing the data of this study, the researcher found several significant findings to
answer the problems of the research, which are (1) Can and to what extent Content-based
Instruction improve student’s speaking ability; and (2) How is the classroom situation
when Content-based instruction is applied in speaking class. Except focusing on
answering the problems of the research as stated in Chapter 1, this section also provides
other findings during the implementation of action research in this study. The findings
are summarized on Table 4.12. The discussion of the research findings is presented in the
following section.
Table 4.11 Summary of the Research Findings
Research Findings Before the Action Research After the Action

Research
1. Improvement in
Students’ speaking
ability Mean score of cycle 1:
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a. Achievement Mean score of Pre-test: 59.6 63.2

Mean score of cycle 2:
b. Ability to express Ss could not express ideas; 67
ideas lack of vocabularies, many
grammar mistakes, Ss could express ideas
mispronounced some words. using appropriate
used mother tough in vocabularies and correct
speaking grammatical forms with
c. The ability to Ss could not answer the correct pronunciation
answer questions teacher’s questions.
Ss could answer
d. Mother tongue use Ss often used mother tongue teacher’s questions
in the class
The use of mother
e. The improvement of a)3% above average; b) 52% tongue was reduced
Ss’ speaking average; c) 45% under
competence average a) 32% above average;
b) 68% average; c) 0%
2. Improvement in under average
classroom situation
a. Participation in
speaking class Low and passive; Ss
unwilling to take turns to High, actively took the
speak, didn’t pay attention to turns to speak, gave
b. Domination in class the lesson attention to the lesson
Ss were passive, teacher Ss were active, Ss

c. Speaking practice dominated the activities. dominated the activities.
Small chances Bigger chances with pair

d. Form of activities and group work
e. Atmosphere Reading form Spoken form
f. The teacher Not alive, dull and Live, happy and joyful
boring
Innovative, created
Not innovative, didn’t worksheet and picture,
recognize students’ problem flash cards; recognized
and students’ needs, not the students’ problem
explore students’ potentials and need, explored
3. Other findings: students’ potential in
about the content or speaking
topics selection
Ss didn’t like the content Ss thought the content or
or topics topics meet their needs,
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they were satisfied with

it.
a) Improvement of students’ speaking ability

The findings of the study showed that the use of CBI in speaking class could
improve students’ speaking ability. The improvement of the students’ speaking ability
could be recognized from the improvement of speaking achievement, such as (1) the
mean score of the final cycle; (2) the ability to express ideas by using appropriate
vocabularies and correct grammatical forms; (3) the ability to answer the teacher’s
questions; (4) the ability to communicate with their classmates, and (5) mother tongue
use was reduced.
Before the study, the researcher found that the students had low speaking ability.
The improvement of speaking ability could be seen from the improvement of students’
achievement from cycle to cycle. The improvement of the students speaking achievement
is illustrated on Graph 4.1 the graph showed that the speaking achievement was increased
dramatically from cycle to cycle. The mean score in pre-test is 59.6, the mean score in
Cycle 1 is 63.2, and the mean score of Cycle 2 is 67.
The improvement of scores from cycle to cycle is significant. The result of t-test
of non-independent variable of Cycle 1 is 16.01, and Cycle 2 is 14.08. All the data
showed that the improvement of speaking achievement from cycle to cycle was
significant. Based on the result of t-test for non-independent between pre-test and
post-test 1, t1 (16.01) is higher than tt (38, 0.05) (2.048), or t1 ñ tt. Thus, it can be concluded
that there is a significant difference between the results of pre-test and post-test of cycle
1. Furthermore, the researcher analyzed the scores of pre-test and post-test 2. The
calculation results showed that t2 is 14.08. It means that there is a significant
improvement because t2 (14.08) is higher than tt (38, 0.05) (2.048), or t2 ñ tt..
Graph 4.1 The Scores of Student’s Speaking Competence
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68
66
64
62 Pre-test
60 Post-test of Cycle 1
58 Post-test of Cycle 2
56
54
Students' score
Besides referring to the speaking achievement, the improvement of students’

speaking competence can be recognized from the ability of expressing their ideas. Before
the action research, the students couldn’t express their ideas as they lacked of relevant
words and expressions about the topics, and very often they mispronounced the words;
but after the implementation of CBI, the students mastered many useful vocabularies and
sentence patterns, and they practiced a lot about the words pronunciation. They could
express their ideas and talk to their friends by using appropriate vocabularies and
grammatical form with correct pronunciation.
Another finding of the research showed that before the research, the teacher
asked the students questions, but the students often gave improper answers to the
teacher’s questions. They often felt hesitate and doubtful to answer the teacher’s
questions, more often, they asked the teacher to say it again and sometimes, they just kept
silent. This was caused either by the students who didn’t understand the questions or they
did not know how to answer the questions; however, after the implementation of CBI, the
students could easily and fluently answer the teacher’s questions.
Moreover, the reduction of mother tongue use was found during the
implementation of CBI. Before the research, the use of mother tongue in the class was
very quite common; this could be seen especially when they were asked to discuss about
the content with their partner. In addition, when the teacher asked some students to stand
up to answer questions, they speak Chinese instead of English. During the
implementation of CBI, the use of mother tongue was gradually reduced and even
disappeared in the last cycle.
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Another point of the improvement lays in the students’ speaking competence. The
level of the speaking competence can be seen from cycle to cycle. Here below is the level
of students’ improvement of the speaking competence.
Graph 4.2 Improvement of the Students’ Speaking Competence
80%
60%
Under average
40%
Average
20%
Abover average
0%
Pre-test Post-test of Post-test of
Cycle 1 Cycle 2
The level of the speaking competence in Graph 4.2 showed the student’s speaking
competence conducted in the test. From the graph, it can be noted that the students’
speaking competence was improved from cycle to cycle. The number of students with the
level of under average and average decreased from cycle to cycle, and it was followed by
the increasing number of students who were in the above average level.
b) Improvement of Classroom Situation

During the research, the collaborator was asked to help the researcher to observe
the teaching and learning process, and also to write down the field-notes based on the
observation with the researcher.
Based on the daily observation and findings, the researcher and the collaborator
found that the CBI improved the students’ participation. During the research, the students
attended the class regularly, and most of them came to the class on time, even though, the
weather was cold. Concerning their participation in the activities, most of the students
participated actively; this could be seen especially in the meetings of cycle 2. Students
showed high participation in the speaking class. They were eager and happy to conduct
the activities with high spirit. They were very confident and not afraid of making
mistakes or be humiliated by others as the class was far away of humiliating the students
and tolerating the students with various level of ability. The teacher encouraged and
appreciated all the students’ effort in speaking, although their speech was not perfect in
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the form. Unlike before, in the class, the teacher applied various interesting speaking
activities, and these activities were mostly conducted in pairs and in groups. Besides,
most of the activities were student-centered, that made the speaking class full of
enjoyment, the pair and group work was conducted with students’ laugh. It showed the
students were eager to learn speaking in a relax situation. The teaching and learning
process showed that there was a change of classroom situation before and after CBI was
implemented in speaking class. The teaching and learning process using CBI was more
alive, and the atmosphere in the class was fun and enjoyable.
The students’ participation in the speaking class was improved from cycle to
cycle as showed in Graph 4.3. Students’ participation in each cycle was categorized into
three groups, namely passive, sufficient, and active. The categorization was based on the
willingness to answer the teacher’s questions, to take the speaking turns, to interact with
their partner, to conduct the performance, and their attitude towards classroom activity.
Graph 4.3 shows that the number of active students was increased from cycle to cycle,
while the number of sufficient and passive students was decreased.
Graph 4.3 Improvement of Students’ participation
80%
60%
Active
40% Sufficient
20% Passive
0%
Cycle 1 Cycle 2
Other finding in this research was dealing with the researcher or the teacher.
She improved in many aspects. Firstly, she improved in the content or topic selection; the
topics selected by the teacher both meet the school’s requirements and the students’
needs. Secondly, the teacher improved in designing and developing the teaching
materials, such as in preparing the worksheets which were suitable for the teaching
purpose. Thirdly, the teacher is getting more familiar with the students. She identified the
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student’s potentials and problems in speaking. Therefore, she could find the suitable way
of teaching speaking to the students.
c) Other Findings
At the end of cycle two, the researcher gave questionnaire to the students to see
their reaction or response towards the meetings conducted by using CBI. The result of
questionnaire of cycle 2 indicated that the implementation of CBI in the speaking class
was fun and practical. The students stated that they enjoyed the activities and felt
motivated to practice the topics with their friends in the class. The detail result of
questionnaire could be seen in the table below:
Table 4.12 Students’ Responses towards the Implementation of CBI
Statements Students’
N responses
o. Yes No
1 Your speaking skill is improved. 97 3%
%
2 You agree with learning speaking through 100 0%
CBI. %
3 You like the content/topics in the meetings. 92 8%
%
4 You feel braver to speak than before. 95 5%
%
5 You want continue applying CBI in the future. 100 0%
%
As the table above shows that ninety-even students thought that their speaking
skill was improved. Before the implementation of CBI, they could not speak fluently, but
now they could speak fluently, and didn’t make many grammar mistakes. Some students
also said that they had improved their speaking skill, especially in pronunciation; because
in the class, the teacher led them read the words and also corrected their pronunciation.
There were also some students who said that they had improved their speaking as they had
many chances in the class, and they practiced a lot in the class. They agreed with learning
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speaking through CBI. The reasons were because with CBI, they could do many kinds of
activities, and they felt fun and relaxed in the class. They could learn while playing as
there were many kinds of activities in the class, and they felt motivated to learn. Only one
student or three percent students said that she didn’t improve her speaking skill because
she didn’t change her learning habit.
Concerning with the content or topics, ninety-two percent students said that they
liked the topics as the topics selected were more pertinence and they were useful and
practical. Only three students or eight percent students mentioned that the content was a
little bit boring.
Dealing with the statement of whether they feel braver to speak than before or not.
Ninety-five percent students agreed that they felt braver to speak than before. They said
that before the implementation of CBI, they didn’t have many chances to speak, but with
CBI they had many chances to practice as each meeting had many activities, which means
they had many chances to speak in front of the class. As they spoke and practiced many
times, they didn’t feel shy; instead, they felt braver to speak. Moreover, they felt braver,
because they could speak and conduct the performance with their friends together, and the
teacher was very patient, and always encouraged them to speak. However, there were also
five percent or two students who stated that they were not brave to speak as they thought
their speaking still need to be improved.
After the implementation of CBI, all the students said that they would like to
continue applying CBI in the future as they could learn something practical and useful;
they could enjoy the activities while learning. By applying CBI in the class, learning
became easy and fun to them; therefore, they want continue to apply CBI in the future.
2. Discussion
The research which is applying action research to optimize Content-based
Instruction in improving students’ speaking ability brought satisfying results both in
terms of the improvement of the students’ speaking ability and the classroom situation.
The findings then can be theorized into two major points as follows: (1) CBI can improve
students’ speaking ability; and (2) CBI can improve the classroom situation.
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a) Content-Based Instruction can improve students’ speaking ability

Based on the observation in both Cycle 1 and Cycle 2, it was found that each
indicator of speaking was improved. There were improvements on: (a) students’
pronunciation, most of the students could say something in a good stress and intonation,
they could pronounce the words well; (b) Students’ vocabulary, students learned many
useful and practical vocabularies related to each topic in the class; most of the students
could apply the words correctly in conducting different activities or games; (c) students’
grammar. Most of the students could arrange and use the proper words order, could
change the verb forms into their different tense according to different situation. It was
beneficial for students to learn and practice the grammar with the each other in the
communicative discourse. As cited by Hale from Ellis’ work (2008: 27) that grammar
should be integrated with communication if enhancing communicative competence is the
goal of the second language teaching. Moreover, Murcia (2002) claims that the function
of any form or structure should be understood at the discourse level within the context;
(d) students’ comprehension, most of the students could answer the teacher’s and their
friends’ questions, and could work with their classmates in the communicative activities,
and (e) Fluency, as the students had been taught many topic related words and
expressions, and also had practiced the pronunciation in different activities in the pre-task
phase. Most of students could fluently conduct or complete their tasks assigned by the
teacher in the task phase. They always got some experience from the previous students
who performed at the beginning.
By proving the useful and practical content, and applying the interesting activities
or games to the students, the students’ speaking ability was significantly improved as
each of the speaking indicator showed in the previous part. As the content or topics fell
under the students’ interest, the students had great motivation to learn the language.
Providing the practical and useful content and interesting activities means providing
opportunities for effective interaction. Robinson and Ellis (2008, http://www.cal.org)
state that effective interaction gives students multiple opportunities for the goal-directed
negotiation of meaning. This is required for effective support of integrated content and
language learning for two reasons. First, as they interact and create meaning, students
map new content knowledge onto prior content knowledge. They do this through spoken
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discourse. Second, students notice the language used, they retrieve needed language from
memory, and they generate new configurations of language through spoken discourse
with each other and with their teacher.
Moreover, CBI can apply different interesting activities to help the students to
learn and practice their speaking skill. According to Grandall and Shaw (1992 and 1997,
http://en.wikipedia.org),
The arrangements in the activities allow students to share

responsibility and work together to complete tasks. Small group
work, team learning, jigsaw reading, and peer editing are among the
many techniques CBI calls on, to provide students with ample
opportunities to interact, share ideas, test hypotheses, and construct
knowledge together in a low-risk forum.
b) CBI can improve the classroom situation.

It was found that the students’ learning motivation was increased and the whole
classroom situation was changed after the implementation of CBI; the speaking class was
not silent anymore. It was full of activities and games, and the students enjoyed the
activities and games very much. The class became students-centered; it was the students
who did most of the talks. In Hale’s work (2008: 28), Parmenter sees CBI as contributing
to affective aspects, such as enjoyment, increased motivation and decreased anxiety about
making mistakes, in addition to introducing intellectual, social and cultural aspects.
Vyas and Patel (2009: 131) said that
Varying the choice of topics and themes is essential in order to

engage students in learning the content through English; appealing
topics and themes encourage them actively participate in class.
Active participation in class enhances students’ relationships with
one another, creating a positive influence on classroom atmosphere.
Grabe and Stoller (1997, http://en.wikipedia.org) also said that
Keeping students motivated and interested are two important factors

underlying Content-based Instruction. Motivation and interest are
crucial in supporting student success with challenging, informative
activities that support success and which help the student learn
complex skills.
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Besides, Krapp, Hidi, and Renninger (1992: 18, http://en.wikipedia.org) state that
situational interest triggered by environmental factors, may evoke or contribute to the
development of long-lasting individual interests. Because CBI is student centered, one of
its goals is to keep students interested and motivated by generating stimulating content
instruction and materials. Littlewood (1981, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki) states that
Because CBI falls under the more general rubric of communicative

language teaching (CLT), the CBI classroom is learner rather than
teacher centered. In such classrooms, students learn through doing
and are actively engaged in the learning process. They do not
depend on the teacher to direct all learning or to be the source of all
information. Central to CBI is the belief that learning occurs not
only through exposure to the teacher's input, but also through peer
input and interactions. Accordingly, students assume active, social
roles in the classroom that involve interactive learning, negotiation,
information gathering and the co-construction of meaning (Lee and
VanPatten, 1995).
Based on the above discussion, it can be noticed that CBI is an effective approach
to improve students speaking skill.
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, AND SUGGESTIONS
This chapter is devoted to conclude the results of the study. The results of the
study could answer the formulated problems as stated previously. This research was done
in two cycles, and the results were obtained from the pre-research observation and
interview, the pre-test, the post-test of Cycle 1 and Cycle 2, the post-research
questionnaire and the interview to the students after the implementation of the CBI. This
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chapter consisted of three parts: conclusion, implications, and suggestions. The detailed
presentation of this chapter was as follows:
A. Conclusions
This research was conducted to solve the problems faced by the students of
class 0902 of the Business English Department of CsV&TC in improving their speaking
skill. After analyzing the data gained from the pre-test, the researcher found that the
students speaking ability was low and unsatisfying. The mean score of the pre-test was
59.6, and seventeen or forty-five percent students were under the average level.
Moreover, the motivation of students in the class was low. Based on the observation and
the interview with both the teacher and the students, the researcher found that the
students didn’t like the content or topics discussed in the class. They would like to learn
something useful and practical for their future jobs. Meanwhile, the teacher still used the
traditional teaching approach or techniques to teach the students, which made the
students lost their interest in the speaking class. In addition, the students showed low
motivation in participating in the speaking task. They didn’t participate actively. During
the speaking class, most of the students were keeping silent and only some braver
students just used the mother tongue to answer the teacher’s questions.
However, the implementation of the CBI was suggested by the researcher to solve
the problems mentioned above. After the treatment was given, there were many positive
results. The detailed description can be seen in the following parts:
Firstly, the implementation of CBI was successful in improving the students’
speaking skill. By selecting the useful and practical contents, the students had great
motivation to learn the speaking as the topics fallen under their interest and also met their
needs. In addition, by applying different speaking activities, the students felt fun and
happy. They actively involved in the speaking activities and practiced their language with
their classmates in the class. Their speaking skill improved; they could use their just
learned vocabularies and selected the appropriate words and expressions to discuss the
topics with their friends in good pronunciation; they also could answer the teacher’s
questions and comprehend the topics of the conversation and fluently communicate with
their classmates in correct grammatical forms. Those indicators of speaking can be
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achieved by the CBI, and it could be seen from the analysis of the post-test of Cycle 1
and Cycle 2. The result of the students’ mean score was increased from 59 to 67, and
there were no students found to be under average level in Cycle 2.
Moreover, the changes also appeared in other aspects. Besides improving the
students’ speaking skill, the classroom situation had been also changed. As the qualitative
data in the field-notes collected from the teaching and learning process showed that there
was improvement in students’ reaction towards the speaking class. Before, the students
felt dull and bored in the class, and the whole class was teacher-centered; it was the
teacher, who did most of her talk, but now, the situation was changed; the classroom
situation became more alive. The students’ motivation to speak English was higher than
before. As there were many pair and group activities or games in the class, the students
felt eager to join the activities. During the group activities, the weak students tried to
contribute their ideas to the group as they could, and the students who had good speaking
ability tried to help the weak students to complete their group performance. The
classroom atmosphere was conducive, and it became student-centered; the students were
the performers while the teacher was the facilitator. The teacher monitored and helped
the students when they needed. In the class, the students felt relax and joyful during the
teaching and learning process.
CBI had more strengths than weaknesses. CBI increased students’ participation in
the speaking class by the practical and interesting content. CBI is very flexible, it could
accommodate various types of activities which were motivating the students to
participate in the speaking task, and it could adjust the students work in individual, in pair
and in groups according to the content. Pair and group works were found to eliminate
students’ psychological barriers and increase students’ self-confidence. Moreover, in the
class, students were not only learning from their teacher but also from their friends. In the
group work, each member of the group worked very hard to complete their group work
and didn’t want to lag behind. They helped their group members and competed with other
group members.
B. Implications
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In the teaching and learning process, especially in teaching speaking, it is

necessary to implement an appropriate approach. The approach used by the English
teacher is based on the purpose of the related course, the feature of the students, the
characteristics of the class, and the reason of the language learning. The findings and
results of the study imply that CBI is one of the effective approaches which can be
applied in teaching speaking. The detailed implications of the CBI implemented are as
follows:
1) CBI can motivate students to speak English and improve their self-confidence in
answering the teacher’s questions or expressing their ideas in different speaking
activities. As the content selected falls under the scope of the students’ interest, they
have great motivation to learn and to practice the language with their friends.
2) CBI can create conducive atmosphere in the classroom. As there are many different
activities or techniques which can be applied in CBI, in the class, the students could
work in pairs and in groups. The whole classroom is full of joy, and the students feel
relaxed in the classroom.
3) CBI provides many speaking opportunities to the students to practice their English.
In order to finish their group works, every student in each group has to make
contribution to complete their group task.
4) CBI improves the students’ participation in the class. There were many pair or group
tasks which need the students to join to complete. As in a role-play activity, each
student has a role; without the participation, the activity cannot be achieved.
5) CBI makes the class as a student-centered class. Students can learn by themselves or
can learn from each other, the role of the teacher in the class is a monitor and
facilitator. The teacher helps students when the students face difficulties in
conducting their activities.
6) CBI can help the students to build a good relationship among each other. In the
speaking activities, students need to work in pairs or in groups to complete the tasks
or activities. By finishing the task, the students need to interact with each other and
to help each other to complete the task.
C. Suggestions
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This research indicates that the implementation of CBI in teaching speaking

showed many positive effects in the students’ progress. Based on the result of the study,
there are some suggestions put forward to the English teachers, the students, and other
researchers.
1. The teacher
The teacher should try to select the content or different topics based on the
school’s requirements and also should meet the students’ needs. Practical and interesting
content can motivate students to actively engage in the speaking activities. Besides, the
teacher should pay attention to that the content or topics given to the students should not
be very difficult; otherwise, the students may lose interest and get frustrated in the
speaking activity. Instead, the content should be a little bit above the average level, so
that the students feel it is challenging and would love to do it.
Furthermore, the teacher should remember that it is not good to conduct
momentous or individual activities in the speaking class; instead, it is good if the teacher
can apply different activities or pair and group task to help the students to improve their
speaking skill. Teacher should not measure the students’ competence from their ability in
finishing the task or performance; instead, the teacher should focus on the students’ skill
in using the language to communicate with their friends or other people.
Moreover, the teacher should help and facilitate to learn the language. When the
students need help in the language, the teacher should give immediately facilitation and
help. The teacher using pair works lets the student help each other in a good way to
facilitate the students’ language learning.
2. The students
The students of English Department of CsVTC should change their attitude
towards learning speaking skill. They should be more confident and braver to speak
English rather than be afraid of making mistakes or be humiliated by their friends. They
should know that mistakes are parts of learning process. Without making mistakes we
cannot find our progress. Students should practice English everyday in the daily life. As
practice makes perfect, by practicing every day, their speaking skill will be improved day
by day.
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Moreover, they should not focus too much on the grammatical accuracy which
could prevent them from practicing English and make them afraid of making mistakes;
instead, they should focus more on their vocabulary mastery and fluency. They should
realize that mastering sufficient vocabularies is important in supporting their speaking
skill. Without sufficient vocabulary mastery, they could not speak fluently.
3. To other researchers
CBI is one of interesting and joyful approach that can be applied in the classroom to
improve the students’ speaking skill. Although the researcher has tried to do the best in
implementing the CBI approach to improve the students’ speaking skill, the result of this
study is not very perfect; therefore, the researcher hopes that the other researchers could
help to eliminate the weaknesses which were found in this study.
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VIRTUAL REFERENCE
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IMPROVING STUDENTS’ ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

IMPROVING STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL THROUGH

(A Classroom Action Research in the Second Grade Students of Business English

Dr. Ngadiso, M.Pd Drs. Gunarso Susilohadi, M.Ed

Dr. Ngadiso, M.Pd

LEGITIMATION FROM THE BOARD OF EXAMINERS

IMPROVING STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL THROUGH

(A Classroom Action Research in the Second Grade Students of Business English

Board of Examiners Signature

The Director of Graduate Program of The Head of English Education

Prof. Drs. Suranto, M.Sc., Ph. D Dr. Ngadiso, M. Pd

If this pronouncement proves not true, I will accept any consequences or

Surakarta, 21st February 2011

“Do as you would be done by others.”

This thesis is dedicated to:

ü My Friends who helped me a lot.

Li Hui, 21st February, 2010

Surakarta, February 21st, 2011

Li Hui. S 890809216: Improving Students’ Speaking Skill through Content-based

Key words: Content-based Instruction, Speaking Skill

5. The Implementation of Content-Based Instruction……..... 29

CBI = Content-Based Instruction

Table 3.1 The Research Schedule ……………………………………………….. ... 34

LIST OF FIGURES AND GRAPHS

Figure 3.1: Action Research Protocol ……………………………………………… 37

A. Background of the Research

Content-Based Instruction (CBI) as an appropriate and effective approach that is

Based on the analysis above, it is believed that the content-based instruction is an

B. Formulation of the Problems

D. The Benefits of the Study

This research can function as additional references or sources to carry out or

It is about the knowledge of knowing when clarity of message is essential

2. Speaking in Second Language

According to Florez (1999, in http://www.cal.org/caela/scb/IV) a good speaker of a

Nunan (in Kayi, 2006, in http://iteslj.org/Techniques) states that teaching speaking

b. Guidance for Teachers in Teaching Speaking

and shared knowledge.

3) Make a careful choice of topic and task to stimulate interest

c. Activities for teaching Speaking

to the class to create a realistic environment. For instance, if a student is acting as a

d. The Characteristics of Successful Speaking Activity

- How positively they contributed to the conversation

According to Kitao and Kenji (1996: 2) a speaking test can be a source of

“In order to develop communicative competence, learners must

According to Heo (2006) “the students must go through a real-world process

“Every attempt should be made to select materials which reflect

“In order to make English language input as comprehensible as

Hernandez mentions, “It is essential to familiarize English language learners with

“Students should be guided to see that these thinking processes

“Since Content-Based Instruction refers to an approach rather than a

authentic communication is likely to occur in the classroom if students go beyond

A. The Setting of the Research

Table 3.1 of the Research Schedule

No. Activity TIME: Year 2010 -2011

B. The Subject of the Research

C. The Method of the Research

enquiry undertaken by participants in social (including educational) situations in

A representation of an AR protocol by Kemmis is provided in the following figure:

questionnaire after the implementation of the Content-based Instruction in order to get

In this research, the writer will collect the data from:

Interview is an activity conducted by asking questions face to face. During this