Improving The Students’ Speaking Skill Through The Key Words Technique

Thus, The keyword supplied to the keyword group, on the other hand, was pest, which has no obvious connection to eyelash. (It is also worth noting that verbal links were more commonly used by control subjects, rather than mental images ).It has been suggested that key words that are semantically as well as acoustically related to the word to be learned might prove more durable. For experimental reasons, the information to be learned is usually presented at a fixed rate, item by item., where people are simply presented with all the information to be learned and given a set time to study it, allows better learning, most particularly for the repetition strategy.

The performance of rote repetition may have been made poorer by constraining it in this way in some experimental studies. Most particularly, the superiority of the keyword mnemonic tends to be found only when the students have been treated individually, not when they have been instructed as a group. At least, this is true for adults and adolescents, but not, interestingly, for children. Children can benefit from group instruction in the technique. Why this is, is not clear. However, the writer would speculate that it may have something to do with older students having already developed their own strategies and ideas. More individually-oriented instruction might be needed to counteract this depository of knowledge.

It might also be that children are given more direction in the using of the technique. That is, they are given the keywords; the images may be described to them, and even drawn. Clearly this is much simpler than being required to think up your own keywords, create your own links. It does seem clear that durable keyword images require quite a lot of practice to create. It has been suggested that initially people tend to simply focus on creating distinctive images. It may only be with extensive practice that you become able to reliably create images that effectively integrate the relational qualities of the bits of information to learn because of obvious acoustic or graphic similarities with familiar words. The implication of this for real world learning, is that there is no reason to think that such words require a keyword mnemonic.

A number of studies have compared the keyword strategy against the context method of learning vocabulary (much loved by teachers; students experience the word to be learned in several different meaningful contexts). Theory suggests that the context method should encourage multiple connections to the target word, and is thus expected to be a highly effective strategy. However, the studies have found that the keyword method produces better learning than the context method.

It has been suggested that students might benefit more from the context method if they had to work out the meaning of the word themselves, from the context. However, a study which explored this possibility, found that participants using the context method performed significantly worse than those using the keyword mnemonic. This was true even when subjects were given a test that would be thought to give an advantage to the context method - namely, subjects being required to produce meaningful sentences with the target words.

The same researchers later pursued the possibility that the context method might, nevertheless, prove superior in long-term recall — benefiting from the multiple connections / retrieval paths to the target word. In an experiment where both keyword and context groups learned the words until they had mastered them, recall was no better for the context group than it was for the keyword group, when tested one week later (on the other hand, it was no worse either).

Two more recent studies have confirmed the superiority of the keyword mnemonic over the context method .Another study looked at the question of whether a combined keyword – repetition strategy (in which subjects were told to use repetition as well as imagery when linking the keyword to the English translation of the word to be learned) was better than the keyword strategy on its own. They failed to find any benefit to using repetition on top of the imagery.

This is why the most basic memory strategy — the simplest, and the first learned — is rote repetition. Repetition is how we hold items in working memory, that is, “in mind”. When we are told a phone number and have to remember it long enough to either dial it or write it down, most of us repeat it frantically. Spaced repetition — repetition at intervals of time — is how we cement most of our memory codes in our long-term memory store.

If you make no deliberate attempt to learn a phone number, yet use it often, you will inevitably come to know it ( how many repetitions that will take is a matter of individual variability). But most of us come to realize that repetition is not, on its own, the most effective strategy, and when we deliberately wish to learn something, we generally incorporate other, more elaborative, strategies. Why do we do that ?. If memory codes are strengthened by repetition, why isn’t it enough to simply repeat ?.Well, it is. Repetition is enough. But it’s boring. That’s point one.

Point two is that making memory codes more easily found (which is after all the point of the exercise) is not solely achieved by making the memory codes stronger. Also important is making lots of connections. Memory codes are held in a network. We find a particular one by following a trail of linked codes. Clearly, the more trails lead to the code you’re looking for, the more likely you are to find it.

3.Conducting Key Word in the Class.

How to teach speaking through key word technique to improve students’ speaking ability ?

There are 6 essential parts in teaching speaking by key word :

6.Focusing attention, it consist of :

a.Giving question, for example, the teacher take a passage with title is“direction “ , the question are: , for an example :

-. Have you ever been in Bali ?

-.What will you do if you get lost?

b.Giving statement related in the area or a place in Bali

c.Giving them ‘Key word ‘ ; map, arrow, street, place, etc.

2.Starting the speaking or conversation by the teacher andgiving the

studentsthe situation

3. Ask students to speak in couple. For the teacher check the pronunciation, repeat the Conversationby other students

4. Giving the basic pattern ;

Greeting

Asking condition or asking the way

Pre closing

Closing

5.Giving broader situation , for example : Post Office, Hospital, etc.

Or giving a singlesituation in pattern to each student ( to anticipate
if the time isn’t enough )

6.Ask the students to practice in front of the class in pattern.

E. A CLASSROOM ACTION RESEARCH

1. Definition of a Classroom Action Research

Action research is classroom-based research conducted by teachers in order to reflect upon and evolve their teaching. It is a systematic, documented inquiry into one aspect of teaching and learning in a specific classroom. Our basic assumption is that you have within you the power to meet all the challenges of the teaching profession. Furthermore, you can meet these challenges without wearing yourself down to a nub. The only theories involved are the ideas that you already make sense of your experience.

So use to, Classroom Action Research is a research of an action happens in a classroom (educational situation) specifically about the problems during the teaching activities. It is related to the teacher as the subject of teaching process. The teacher can do this research by him/herself. But it also can be a collaborative one. The researcher's consideration is the teaching process' reflection then finding some problems so that can be solved by applying other strategies.

Classroom action research begins with a question or questions about classroom experiences, issues, or challenges. It is a reflective process which helps teachers to explore and examine aspects of teaching and learning and to take action to change and improve. Classroom Action Research (CAR) is systematic inquiry with the goal of informing practice in a particular situation. CAR is a way for instructors to discover what works best in their own classroom situation, thus allowing informed decisions about teaching .

CAR occupies a midpoint on a continuum ranging from teacher reflection at one end to traditional educational research at the other. It is more data-based and systematic than reflection, but less formal and controlled than traditional educational research. Instructors use data readily available from their classes in order to answer practical questions about teaching and learning in their classrooms.

2.Purpose and Significance

Generally, the purposes of Classroom Action Research are:

(1)Improving the quality, process, and result of the teaching and learning process in a school.

(2) Helping the teacher and another educational staff to solve the educational