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SPEECH CONTEST TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ FLUENCY IN SPEAKING
Rizky Lutviana (Corresponding Author)
Fakultas Bahasa dan Sastra Universitas Kanjuruhan Malang
Jl. S. Supriyadi 48 malang, Indonesia
Phone: (+62) 85649696945 E-mail: lutviana.rizky@unikama.ac.id
Abstract. This study is aimed at implementing speech contest to improve students’ fluency in
speaking. The subject of this research was 15 students of intermediate level of speaking class.
The preliminary study indicated that fluency was students’ problem in speaking since they
tended to produce incomplete sentences with many pauses in performing speaking task. The
instruments used to collect the data were test, questionnaire and interview. This technique was
a real world speaking task in which it required students to deliver speech on a stage in front of
audiences individually. The analytical scoring rubric with four criteria, including fluency,
accuracy, content, and method of delivery, was used by three raters to determine students’
score. This technique was successfully done in 1 cycle since it met the criteria of success, that
was 80% students (12 students), got score 80 or above and 84% students (13 students) showed
positive response toward speech contest. Speech contest helped students to show their
potential and directed students to work hard eliminating their negative feelings that might
hinder their confidence to speak fluently.
Keywords: fluency, speech contest, speaking skill
INTRODUCTION
Speaking is essential skill that students
need to master in order to communicate
internationally. The purpose of teaching
speaking in higher level of education is
basically to improve students’ fluency and
accuracy in speaking. Fluency is the ability
to speak smoothly, without any hesitation,
using natural language. Accuracy is the
ability to speak with clear and accurate use
of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and
intonation.
Both fluency and accuracy are equally
important, however, Brown (2007:267)
states that “... fluency may in communicative
language course be an initial goal in
language teaching, accuracy is achieved to
some extend by allowing students to focus
on the element of phonology, grammar, and
discourse in their spoken output”. This
statement gives view that in the beginning
level of teaching speaking, the focus should
be directed to build students fluency. In this
present study, the speaking course that is
investigated by researcher is called survival
speaking course. The main goal of this
course is to build students’ fluency in
speaking.
Brown (2000) defined fluency as the
ability to speak in natural and flowing
language. Later, Thornbury (2005) noticed
that to speak with natural and flowing
language the speaker must consider pause as
4 principles, those are: (1) pauses may be
long but not frequent, (2) pauses are usually
filled, (3) pauses occur at meaningful
transition points and (4) there are long runs
of syllables and words between pauses.
However, based on the result of
preliminary study, the goal was hard to
reach since most students were reluctant and
shy to speak. It can be seen from the result
of speaking test that was taken in the
144
beginning of the course. The test required
students to tell their most interesting
experience in 5 minutes. The minimum
score to pass the course is 70 and only 20%
(3 students) got score above 70. The chief
difficulties found by students in speaking
were hard to express their idea in spoken
language, and were not confident in
speaking English. Because of that, students
tended to produce incomplete sentences with
many pauses.
Several studies have been done to
improve students speaking skill with various
learning strategies, such as think-pair-share
(Usman, 2015), retelling (Rachmawaty &
Hermagustiana, 2010) and 4/3/2 (Yingjie,
2013). Think-pair-share is a cooperative
learning strategy in which students work in
pair to discuss questions given by the
teacher. This is done in three steps, students
think independently about the question,
students shares ideas with their partner about
the questions and students share the result of
their discussion in front of class. Students
feel more comfortable presenting their ideas
in front of class with the support of a
partner.
Usman (2015) implementing think-
pair-share to the twenty students at the first
year of the Islamic Education Department of
STAIN Ternate in 2010/2011 academic year
majoring in Islamic Studies who attended
English course. This strategy met the criteria
of success when it is implemented in cycle 2
where students average score is 81.68 (with
the minimum standard score 70). Cycle 1
was failed because most students share their
ideas by writing on a paper and not doing
discussion. In implementing this technique
Usman (2015) suggested the teacher to
carefully manage students’ activity.
Next, focusing on individual
performance, Rachmawaty &
Hermagustiana, 2010) investigated the use
of retelling technique to the six English
students in a remedial class. The data were
the record and the transcript of students’
performance. Based on the result of data
analysis they draw conclusion that retelling
technique is effective to improve students
speaking skill. In applying this technique
there are two aspects to be considered,
Comprehensibility and vocabulary. The
problem students encountered is content
since they lack of idea to say something.
Retelling technique helped students to
understand text deeper. In pre-test student
understand story less than 80%, yet in post-
test they could finish the story. Whereas the
familiarity of vocabulary is considered as
important aspect to increase students’
fluency, Rachmawaty & Hermagustiana
(2010) noticed that in retelling a story began
with rewriting the text by deleting some
unknown words, then memorizing it. When
they had trouble recalling the words in their
draft, they tried to continue the story in some
ways: by skipping the forgotten words, or
trying to speak in a halting manner. In short,
when applying this technique, it is important
to choose text that is easier to understand by
students.
Different from Rachmawaty &
Hermagustiana (2010), Yingjie (2013) faced
different problem in teaching speaking.
Although most students have a good
grammar background, rich vocabulary, and
some basic language knowledge, their
speaking skill did not improve. The problem
was there were too many students in class
that were 50 students in class. Students had
limited time to do individual speaking
practice.
To overcome this problem, Yingjie
(2013) implemented 4/3/2 activity in every
week for three months. This technique was
repeated in every week by different topics
and contents. Yingjie (2013) noted that there
are three principles in conducting this
technique, the content and language items
145
must be understandable, there is time for
students to do repetitive tasks, and students
must speak with different people in a limited
number of times. Based on the finding it can
be concluded that this technique can
increase speaking speed and reduce the
pause during conversation and thus, can
improve students’ fluency.
These three studies give insight that a
good technique to improve students’ fluency
in speaking is the one that gives students
chance to gain knowledge; to help them with
the content in speech practice, and gives
students room to practice. However, the
previous studies lack of chance for students
to perform task individually. The purpose of
this present study is to improve students’
fluency by implementing speech contest.
Speech contest is one of types of
public speaking in which students deliver
speech in front of audience. According to
Templeton & Fitzgerald, public speaking is
having a speaker to stand before the
audience to deliver a speech in a structured
manner, with the purpose of either persuade,
inform or entertain the audience. In this
case, speech contest challenge students to
increase their confident, speaking in front of
many people.
Speech contest is considered as good
task for students since it promote
autonomous speaking task. Thornbury
(2005) stated that “at there are six criteria
for autonomous speaking task, those are
productivity, purposefulness, interactivity,
challenge, safety, and authenticity.
Productivity is speaking tasks need to be
maximally language productive for
autonomous language use”. In speech
contest students are expected to deliver
speech in full English. They are not allowed
to use L1 (Bahasa Indonesia) in speech
production. Moreover, purposefulness
means that the task has clear outcome
(ibid.). The purpose of speech contest is to
make students speak more confident so that
students’ fluency will be increase. Next,
interactivity “should be performed in
situations where there is at least the
possibility of interaction” (ibid.), the
interaction is between students and the
audience. Challenge, “the task should force
learners to draw on their available
communicative resources to achieve
outcome” (ibid.). In this case, students work
hard to compose speech text and practice
before delivering speech. Further, safety,
“learner should feel confident in performing
task and they can do so without too much
risk. The classroom should provide the right
conditions for experimentation, including a
supportive classroom dynamic and a non-
judgmental attitude to error” (ibid.). To
make students confident in delivering
speech, the lecturer guides students to write
text for speech and trains students one by
one in delivering speech. The last aspect,
authenticity is “speaking tasks should have
some relation to real-life language use”
(ibid.). The choice of theme for speech
contest is related to the students’ life that is
“Strategy to Learn English”. Besides, speech
contest develops students’ public speaking
skill. This skill is useful for students’ future
career.
METHODOLOGY
This study employed classroom action
research which consists of four stages
namely planning, action, observation and
reflection (Latief, 2010: 86-88). The subject
was 15 students of intermediate level of
speaking class. The planning was to assign
students to join speech contest that was
conducted in University. Students competed
with other students from different classes
and departments to deliver speech under the
theme “love” in 15 minutes. Before joining
146
this competition student was given time to
practice in two meetings with the guidance
from the lecturer. In meeting 1 student
practiced to compose a good speech text
while in meeting 2 students practiced to
deliver speech in front of class. They learned
some methods of delivery in speech
including practice the gestures, recite poem
or song lyric, or use eye contact.
The speech contest was done at
university’s hall so that students could speak
on a stage. There were three adjudicators
that evaluated students’ speech. Two
adjudicators were the lecturers and one was
lecturer from other university. The students’
speech was evaluated based on four criteria,
fluency, accuracy, content and method of
delivery. The data of students’ score from
the three raters were collected to know
students’ score. In addition, a questionnaire
was used to discover students’ response or
opinion toward the application of speech
contest. This technique is successful if 80%
students get score 80 or above and also 80%
students show positive attitude toward this
technique.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
Planning
In speech contest, 15 students who became
the subject of this research competed with
25 students from other classes and
department to win the contest. In this case,
most of the competitors were generally the
best students that have good speaking
ability. Conversely, not all 15 students were
having a good speaking ability background,
13 students (80% students) were considered
low, seeing from the result of their speaking
performance in the preliminary study. Based
on this condition, students might feel
discourage. To help students overcoming
this condition, in the planning the lecturer
gave material and practice about speech,
while in other classes the lecturer did not
give any practice, students did preparation
themselves.
The preparation included teaching
students how to compose a good script of
speech under the theme “Love”. Students
did not find difficulty in developing the
content, yet they found it difficult to
construct sentence grammatically correct. In
this case the lecturer gave feedback on
students’ text so that the content as well as
grammar of the text would be improved.
After this, the lecturer trained students
to apply a good strategy to deliver speech.
The strategy included how to speak fluently
by teaching students to remember they key
point in their speech. Besides that, the
lecturer taught students to use speech aids
including gesture, yes/no question to
communicate with audience, and song or
slogan to close the speech. During this
practice, most students worked hard to speak
fluently in front of their classmates (as the
audience).
Action
After done with the preparation step, in the
next meeting students performed to deliver
speech on a stage. Each student was given
time 10-15 minutes to deliver speech.
Students’ speech was evaluated by three
adjudicators, one of which was the lecturer.
The adjudicators used analytical scoring
rubric that consisted of four criteria, namely
fluency, accuracy, content and method of
delivery. There were 4 scales for each
component: 1, 2, 3, and 4. Score 1 was the
lowest while score 4 was the highest. Table
1 showed students score. The average score
was 84. The highest score was 95 while the
lowest score was 79. There were three
students who got score above 90, yet none of
them became the winner. This was because
147
many students perform well and the score
for the winner was 98.
Table 2 showed students score for
each component. Among frequency,
accuracy, content, and method of delivery;
students’ score on frequency was the
highest, the three adjudicators gave highest
score (4) for most students, it can be seen
from the average score for each components
on the Table 2. The average score for
frequency was 3.7, accuracy was 3, content
was 3.5, and method of delivery was 3.2. On
the interview, one of the adjudicators
explained that most students perform well,
they speak fluently but not all speak with
correct pronunciation and grammar.
No
Name
Score
Rater 1
Rater 2
Rater 3
Average
1
LB
81
81
75
79
2
PA
75
81
75
76
3
MKD
81
87
87
85
4
NA
81
81
81
81
5
RP
93
87
93
91
6
MK
100
93
93
95
7
SS
81
81
81
81
8
BO
87
81
81
83
9
YO
81
75
81
79
10
NT
81
81
81
81
11
LS
87
87
87
87
12
MYY
93
87
93
91
13
DA
93
93
93
93
14
S
81
81
87
83
15
MRF
81
87
81
83
Mean
84
Table 1. Students Score on Speech Contest
No
Name
Score
Rater 1
Rater 2
Rater 3
f *
a*
c*
d*
mean
f*
a*
c*
d*
mean
f*
a*
c*
d*
mean
1
LB
4
3
3
3
81
4
3
3
3
81
3
3
3
3
75
2
PA
3
3
3
3
75
4
3
3
3
81
3
3
3
3
75
3
MKD
4
3
3
3
81
4
3
4
3
87
4
3
3
4
87
4
NA
4
3
3
3
81
4
3
3
3
81
4
3
3
3
81
5
RP
4
3
4
4
93
4
3
4
3
87
4
3
4
4
93
6
MK
4
4
4
4
100
4
3
4
4
93
4
3
4
4
93
7
SS
4
3
3
3
81
4
3
3
3
81
4
3
3
3
81
8
BO
3
3
4
4
87
3
3
4
3
81
3
3
4
3
81
9
YO
3
3
4
3
81
3
3
3
3
75
3
3
4
3
81
10
NT
3
3
4
3
81
3
3
4
3
81
3
3
4
3
81
148
11
LS
4
3
4
3
87
4
3
4
3
87
4
3
4
3
87
12
MYY
4
3
4
4
93
4
4
3
3
87
4
3
4
4
93
13
DA
4
3
4
4
93
4
3
4
4
93
4
3
4
4
93
14
S
4
3
3
3
81
4
3
3
3
81
4
3
4
3
87
15
MRF
4
3
3
3
81
4
3
4
3
87
4
3
3
3
81
Mean
3.7
3
3.5
3.3
85
3.8
3
3.5
3.1
84.2
3.6
3
3.6
3.3
84.6
Note that f=fluency, a=accuracy, c=content, and d=method of delivery
Table 2. Students Score on Speech Contest Based on 4 Criteria
Observation
Data derived from speech contest
performance showed students ability in
delivering speech. Another set of data were
needed to discover students’ attitude toward
the implementation of the technique. Table 3
showed students responses on the
questionnaire.
No
Statements
Responses
Strongly
agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly
disagree
1
I feel confident joining
speech contest
13.3%
73.4%
13.3%
0%
0%
2
I perform well in the
speech contest
6.6%
80%
0%
13.4%
0%
3
I am satisfied with my
performance
6.6%
73.4%
0%
20%
0%
4
I speak fluently during
speech
20%
6.6%
0%
13.4%
0%
5
It is easy for me to
express my idea in front
of audience
6.6%
73.4%
0%
20%
0%
summary
6
My speaking ability
improved after joining
speech contest
20%
66.6%
13.4%
0%
0%
Table 3. The Result of Questionnaire “Students’ Response toward Speech Contest”
In statement 1, most students (86.7%,
13 students) agreed that they felt confident
in joining speech contest. Motivation played
important role to make them confident. The
lecturer motivated them to join the contest
by giving them reward. The reward was a
special gift for the winner. Besides, on the
interview, some students revealed that they
also got motivation from their close friend.
The Researcher : How do you prepare to
join speech contest?
Student (R P) : My friends give me
inspiration to follow the
speech contest and I prepare
myself by doing a lot of
practice to perform well
today.
Recorded on March 22, 2016
149
In statement number 2 and number 3,
most students agreed that they performed
well (86.6%, 13 students) and were satisfied
with their performance (80%, 12 students).
During performance, some students revealed
that the feeling of nervous was inevitable
since this was the first time they performed
speech contest on a stage with many
audiences. Fortunately, most students can
handle this feeling by keeping being relax
and just enjoyed talking in front of
audiences. Also, when students began to feel
nervous, they remembered their reason to
join speech contest.
The Researcher : how do you feel when you
deliver speech?
Student (YO) : I feel so nervous in the
beginning, but I try to be
confident because I want
people to remember my
speech, I want all people
remember that parents are
everything.
Recorded on March 22, 2016
Besides that, another student explained that
he was satisfied with his performance
because he felt confident and he learned
something important from this event.
The Researcher : what do you think about
your performance? Are you
confident enough to become
the winner?
Student (LB) : winning something is not
my focus. My focus is to
catch valuable time to get a
new experience. For me, it is
more important than being
the winner.
Recorded on March 22, 2016
The Researcher : what do you feel when you
join speech contest?
Student (DA) : I feel happy, proud, and
little nervous joining speech
contest. What I like most was
the audience enjoyed and
followed my speech.
Recorded on March 22, 2016
In statement number 4, most students
revealed that they speak fluently during
speech (86.6% = 13 students). Most of them
prepared well. They applied good strategy to
speak fluently, that was by understanding
what they were going to say, by making
summary and not memorizing all words on
the script. Thus, most of them also stated
that it was easy for them to express their
idea in front of the audiences (80%, 12
students).
The Researcher : How do you prepare to join
speech contest?
Student (S) : I did a lot of preparations.
I prepared the text myself
and then consult it to the
lecturer. I tried to
understand my speech, I
just made outline of the
speech and the more I
prepare was my
confidence. I practiced
speaking in front of mirror
in my room.
Recorded on March 22, 2016
In statement number 6, most students
explained that their speaking ability
improved after joining this contest (86.6%,
13 students). The lesson they got after
joining this contest was the ability to speak
confidently and the strategy to speak in front
of many people, therefore they speak more
fluent than before.
150
The Researcher : What lesson have you got
after performing on the
speech contest?
(Student) BO : I got really interesting and
unforgettable experience. At
first I was weary, but I tried
to perform well and the
audiences love my speech. I
was really happy and proud
of myself. Now I am
confident in speaking.
Recorded on March 22, 2016
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
Seeing from the result of students’
score, questionnaire, and interview, it could
be concluded that speech contest could
improve students’ fluency in speaking. 80%
students, 12 students, got score 80 or above,
although none of them became the winner.
Additionally, 84% students, 13 students,
showed positive response toward speech
contest; therefore, this technique met criteria
of success in 1 cycle.
At the beginning students hesitated
and not motivated to speak in front of class,
after joining speech contest they had
valuable lesson and experience, that was
speaking in front of people was not daunting
experience. Students worked hard and
prepared well to deliver speech, thus, most
of them spoke well and they got positive
responses from the audiences. This activity
boosted their confidence.
Speech contest helped students to
show their potential and directed students to
work hard to make it real. In this case,
students eliminated their negative feelings
that might hinder their confidence to speak
fluently. They focus on performing well and
entertain the audiences. They focus on
seeking this valuable experience rather than
winning.
This technique work best when it is
supported with reward and good guidance
from the lecturer. In this case, the reward
could be medium that motivated students to
experience real world speaking practice. The
reward should be the thing that most
students like best. Besides, since most
students speaking ability were low, the
lecturer should help them to prepare to
perform better by giving lesson on how to
compose good speech, how to deliver
speech, and also give feedback during
practice in a class.
The good impact of speech contest
gives insight to the lecturers who teach
speaking course that is they should motivate
students to join speech contest and motivate
them to gain experience from this. The
lecturer should help students to prepare by
giving them training and reward based on
students interest and competences.
This study revealed the use of speech
contest to improve students’ fluency in
speaking, yet it did not address the
correlation between students’ confidence
and fluency in speaking. Therefore, for the
future researcher it is good to analyze the
effectiveness of speech contest from this
angle.
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Latief, A. 2010. Tanya Jawab Metode Penelitian Pembelajaran Bahasa. Malang: UM Press
151
Rachmawaty, N. & Hermagustiana, I. 2010. Does Retelling Technique Improve Speaking
Fluency?. TEFLIN Journal, Volume 21, Number 1, February 2010 2.
Yingjie, Y. 2013. The Development of Speaking Fluency: The 4/3/2 Technique for the EFL
Learners in China. International Journal of Research Studies in Language Learning 2014
October, Volume 3 Number 4, 55-70
Thornbury, S. 2005. How to Teach Speaking. Harlow, England: Longman
Templeton, Melody & Fitzgerald, Suzanne Sparks. Schaum’s Quick Guide to Great
Presentations. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999. Google Books. Web. 22 September 2011.
Usman, A.H. 2015. Using the Think-Pair-Share Strategy to Improve Students’ Speaking Ability
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