The effect of role play and dialogue techniques on the eighth grade students' speaking fluency

Many learners still assume that learning English is very difficult, particularly to master the speaking skill. In general, students are having a problem to speak fluently. The difficulty was also confronted by the students whom the writer observed. The students did not know and looked confused on how to respond in English when they were asked something in the English. They also did not have self-confidence to speak in the English. These factors may have affected their speaking fluency ability. This was proven by their ability while doing the dialogue practice. To encourage them to speak fluently, the writer applied two interesting and active speaking techniques, Role Play and Dialogue. Those techniques were believed to make the teaching and learning process alive and to avoid boredom in the classroom. Moreover, role play and dialogue can be used to improve the students' speaking fluency. Although both techniques are theoretically believed to be able to foster the students' speaking fluency, empirically the writer has been interested in finding out which technique can better help the students improve their speaking fluency. Therefore, this study was aimed at finding out whether there was a significant difference between the speaking fluency achievement of the students taught using role play and those taught using dialogue. This is a quasi-experimental study which applied matching-only pretest-posttest control group design. Two classes of the eighth grade students in one of the private junior high schools in Surabaya were randomly selected as the sample of the study. One of the classes was the experimental group and the other one was the control group. The experimental group received the role play technique as the treatment, while the control group received the dialogue technique. Before the treatment was given, both groups received pre-test to see whether the two groups had equal ability and after the xii treatment they received post-test. The mean scores of the posttest of both groups were compared using T-test to see the significant difference on students' speaking fluency. The result of the statistical calculation showed that the statistical value oft-test in the posttest result is 8.568, while the critical value of t - table with significant level of 0.05 (two-tail) and the degree of freedom 58 is 2.002. It means that the statistical value oft-test is higher than the critical value oft-table (8.568>2.002). Since the t-calculation is higher than the t-table, the alternative hypothesis is accepted and null hypothesis is rejected. Thus, there is a significant difference between the students' speaking fluency taught using the Role Play techniques and those taught using the Dialogue technique. It means that the Role Play technique gives better influence on the improvements of the students' speaking fluency than the Dialogue technique. Finally, based on the findings, some suggestions for further studies were given among others (1) the number of students enrolled as the subject of the study be increased, (2) encouraging the students to speak for more than five minutes for each performance and be well-prepared while performing, (3) and further researchers are suggested to apply role play and dialogue technique in higher level/ age groups