THE APPLICATION OF TASK-BASED ACTIVITY ( TBA )TO IMPROVE

STUDENTS MOTIVATION AND SPEAKING SKILL AT

BAITURRAHMAH MIDWIFE ACADEMY OF PADANG
Erwin Pohan, Prof. Zainil.,P.hD., Rusdi Thaib, P.hD.
English Lecturer at The Teacher Training and Education Faculty of
Maritim Raja Ali Haji University
Jalan Politeknik Senggarang Tanjungpinang, Kepulauan Riau 29100
Telp. 0771-7001550, fax. 0771-7038999 Website: http://fkip.umrah.ac.id E-mail:
fkip@umrah.ac.id E-mail: epohan08@yahoo.com, Mobile phone: 081372104449
Abstract
Based on the researchers experience and observation during
learning and teaching process, most of the students were not active. For
example, when they were asked questions or to answer or give comment /
suggestion, most of them kept silent or just smiled. only few students who
could do those even though with simple utterances. These indicated that
most of them had low motivation to speak English and their speaking skill
was also poor. There were few students who were good and very good ,
but no one was excellent.
Because of the problem above, the researcher tried to solve this
with doing research, that was, Classroom Action Research (CAR) through
applying Task-Based Activity (TBA). The purpose of this research was to
find out the extent of applying Task-Base Activity (TBA) could improve
students motivation and speaking skill.
This research was conducted at the second semester students of
Baiturrahmah Midwife Academy of Padang. The participants were 40
students. The research procedure used by three cycles (cycle 1, 2, 3). The
time was 100 minutes per meeting and once a week. The data were
collected by observation, questionnaires, and interview.
When the research and data analysis finished, the result showed
that there were a significant improvement of the students motivation and
speaking skill (from cycle to cycle). In other words, their participation and
interaction were increased after doing the action even though with simple
utterances. But, there were sub-categories of during-task and post-task
phases that could not be used here because of the limited time and
students level of knowledge. It meant that there was a chance to continue
this CAR and deeper research through experimental research.
Key Words: Task-Based Activity (TBA), speaking, motivation, Classroom Action
Research (CAR)

A. Introduction
Motivation has an important role
in learning English language
particularly. Learner who has high
motivation to learn English such as
reading, writing, listening, and
speaking, etc, will almost always be
successful in the learning itself.
Teacher who has high motivation to
teach English well, of course, will
almost always be successful in the
teaching itself. Research has found
that when people are motivated by
their own wants and needs they are
almost always successful (Brown,
2002). It means that having
motivation internally or externally is
very important in learning and
teaching English.
Therefore, the students should
have high motivation to learn
English in order to master that
language ideally. For example, to
improve their speaking skill, they
should motivate themselves to
practice English orally whenever and
wherever they are. In addition, the
teacher / lecturer also should be a
model of English speaker to their
learners. In other words, students
motivation to learn and to improve
speaking skill are supported each
other. It is impossible to have a
motivation to do something without
motive and / or to improve speaking
skill without a strong motivation to
do it.
However, based on the writers
experiences in teaching English at
Baiturrahmah Midwife Academy of
Padang, Most of the students were
passive, low initiative to have good
participation and interaction with
friends and teacher while learning
and teaching processes happened.

Moreover, He had been using

multi skill strategies in teaching
English. For example, the materials
were given to the students, then they
could leant at home and making
discussion in the classroom. In
discussion session, he asked them to
find signs, problems, and solutions of
a certain of problem of women in
the group. After that, they asked to
ask each other dealing with those
items in pairs in their groups
(speaking class). And, at the same
time, they also taught about
structure, reading, listening, and
vocabulary. But based on
his
observation during the learning and
teaching processes, he found some
problems such as the students low
motivation: passiveness, blaming
someone or something else for their
poor performance, and having few
interactions with friends and teacher;
and for the students speaking skill:
most of students could not respond
voluntarily to the teachers question,
most of the students could not
produce
some
good
simple
utterances, and most of the students
were not able to look for another
similar words or phrases when they
forgot something while speaking.
For the students problems, most
of them had low interaction during
discussion session. They were shy
when they were asked to speak such
asking and answering question,
giving comment, and suggestion to
their
friends
performance
of
conversation. When they were asked
why they did like that, their answers
were they had low vocabulary
mastery. They also seldom had
discussion the material in the
classroom with other non-English
lecturers; most of the lessons were
1

explained by them through OHP

media. So, when they arranged to be
a creative students in learning, most
of them were not familiar with the
activities. Probably, they had been
familiar with spoon feeding style
with the non-English lecturers.
The second problem was the
teachers strategies in teaching
English. As, he said before, he used
multi skills: giving the material to
the students; asking them to read at
home and discussed in the classroom
later on; the, asking them to make
some simple question to ask each
other in the groups; identifying the
structure of the sentences, a certain
vocabulary, and difficult words from
the text studied. They learnt those at
the same time from one topic of the
same material. He just explained
when they asked for clarification. In
fact, only few students could do this.
In other words, this technique could
not help the students much on
participation or interaction. It meant
that it was not effective yet to
improve the students motivation and
speaking skill.
Therefore, to solve the problems,
the researcher tries to apply TaskBased Activity (TBA) with three
phase strategies: pre-task phase,
during-task phase, and post-task
phase. In this case, there are some
options in applying this (see more on
Ellis, 2000 in chapter II). In addition,
there are some advantages of
applying TBA such they are used
step by step based on the students
level of knowledge, they can
improve
students
motivation,
speaking skill, and vocabulary
acquition. The TBA is flexible and
can produce the language use in
nature. Beglar and Alan (2002:102)

say that one of the greatest strengths

of task-based teaching is the fact that
much, or all, language use occur in a
natural, communicative context.
Also, Richards and Willy
(2002:20) say that proponents of
task-based language teaching point
out that SLA research shows that
successful
language
learning
involves learners in negotiation of
meaning. In the process of
negotiating with a speaker of the
target language, the learner receives
the kind of input needed to facilitate
learning. It proposed that classroom
tasks which involves negotiation of
meaning should from the basis of the
language teaching curriculum, and
the tasks can be used to facilitate
practice of both of language forms
and communicative function. In
other words, theoretically, task-based
teaching is one of the best techniques
to improve learners and teachers
language proficiency. Because it is
communicative/an offshoot of CLT,
goal-oriented activity, systematic,
variety and flexible (see more on
chapter II).
Therefore, the writer would like
to
overcome or minimize his
English teaching problems : low
motivation and speaking skill at the
second
semester
students
of
Baiturrahmah Midwife Academy of
Padang through applying task-based
activity (TBA).
In order to have a focus on this
study, the writer formulates the
problem of the research. It is as
follow:
To what extent can Task-Based
Activity (TBA)
improve
students
motivation
and
speaking skill at the second
semester
students
of
2

Baiturrahmah Midwife Academy

of Padang?
The purposes of the study are to
improve the students motivation and
speaking skill through applying taskbased activity. And, the innovation
that will be produced from this
classroom action research (CAR) is
the application of task-based activity
(TBA) on several kinds of tasks to
improve students motivation and
speaking skill at the second semester
students of Baiturrahmah Midwife
Academy of Padang.
B. Review of the Related Theories
The Concept of Task
Before discussing the TBA in
more details, it is better to see the
concept of task first because it is as
the base of the TBA. Nunan (2006)
defines a task is a piece of classroom
work that involves learners in
comprehending,
manipulating,
producing or interpreting in the
target language while their attention
is focused on mobilizing their
grammatical knowledge in order to
express meaning, and in which the
intention is to convey meaning rather
than to manipulate form. Similarly,
the task has a sense of completeness,
is able to stand alone in a
communicative
act:
beginning,
middle, and end.
Oxford (2006) defines task as :
(1) an imposed tax, duty, or piece or
work, (2) an everyday piece of work,
(3) a job responsibility, (4) a general
activity or exercise for L2 learners,
(5)
an
outcome-oriented
L2
instructional
segment,
(6)
a
behavioral framework for research,
(7) a behavioral framework for
classroom learning.
The Concept of Task-Based
Activity (TBA)

Dealing with the topic of the

research study, there are some
important theories that can improve
students motivation and speaking
skill through task-based activity
(TBA) such as the concept, the
specific of this theory, and the
application and strategies in teaching
and learning process.
According to Stone in Yeh
(2003), the concept of task-based
activity (TBA) is the use of target
language
contextually
through
situational activities. And the role is
to provide learners to use the target
language contextually through that
activities. For example, the students
are asked to perform various tasks
that require the use of all fourlanguage skills: listening, reading,
writing and speaking with emphasis
on
performing
communicative
activities.
Furthermore, based on the
concept, criteria and characteristics
of the task as the base of the TBA
above, there are some indications of
the TBAs application and strategies
in learning and teaching process such
as comprehending, manipulating,
producing or interpreting the target
language (see Nunan, 2006),
processing
the
language
pragmatically
(Ellis,
2006),
behavioral framework for classroom
learning (Oxford, 2006), etc. It
means that the application of the
activities are done step-by-step
through three phases: pre-task,
during-task, and post-task (the
strategies).
Yeh (2003) divides the TBA into
three phases: pre-online chat, duringchat, and post-online chat activity.
But, in implementing the activity,
she has four steps: Pre-Online Chat
3

(10-15 minutes), During-Chat: Voice

Conference with Students (1 hour),
Offline Post-Chat Activity (1 hour),
and Offline Post-Chat Activity (1
hour).
The Concept of Motivation
Brown (2002) defines motivation
as having a real purpose in
learning English, or really wanting to
learn English for a reason. Similarly,
Norris-Holt
(2001)
defines
motivation
as
the
learners
orientation with regard to the goal of
learning a second language.
Weinstain (2006) differentiates
students into two groups of
motivation:
a. The students who have high
motivation are as follows:
1) Understand how succeeding
in college fits with their own
personal, academic, social,
and occupational goals.
2) Focus on goals to help them
stay committed to putting
forth the effort and doing
what is necessary to benefit
from college.
3) likely to work hard at
participating in their classes
and at learning the material
presented.
4) likely to keep working in the
face of difficulties when
trying to understand a
concept or complete a long,
complex assignment.
5) Tend to see success as a
function of their effort.
6) Understand that there are
factors they cant control, and
focus on the factors that are
controllable.
b. The students who have low
motivation are as follows:

1) usually not clear about how

college fits with their own
personal, academic, social, and
occupational goals.
2) easily distracted when listening
to their teacher or completing
assignments on which they are
working.
3) difficult to get started on their
homework or other class projects.
4) difficult to participate in class
and to stay focused on learning
the information being taught.
5) likely to blame someone or
something else for their poor
performance, such as the teacher
or the difficulty of the test, rather
than accepting responsibility for
not studying enough or for not
studying the right material.
6) often less successful because
they
may
not
accepted
responsibility
for
their
performance. They are generally
not interested in completing
assignments, and are likely to put
forth less effort on challenging
tasks.
1. The Concept of Speaking
Brown (2001) defines speaking
as an interaction process of
constructing meaning that involves
producing and receiving and
processing information. Richards
(2002:201) describes seven types of
speaking: (1) casual conversation: to
make social contact with people to
establish rapport, to engage in the
harmless chitchat that occupies much
of the time we spend with friends;
(2) giving instruction or getting
things done; (4) describing things;
(5) complaining about peoples
behavior; (6) making polite requests;
(7) entertaining people with jokes
and anecdotes.
4

Brown (2004) describes the

Test of Spoken English (TSE) Rating
Scale:
Table 1: TSE Rating Scale (adapted
from Brown, 2004:166)
Scale
Description
Communication almost
60
always effective: task
perform
very
competently;
speech
almost never marked
by
non-native
characteristics
Communication
50
generally
effective:
task
performed
competently; successful
use of compensatory
strategies;
speech
sometimes marked by
non-native
characteristics.
Communication
somewhat
effective:
40
task
performed
somewhat competently,
some successful use of
compensatory
strategies;
speech
regularly marked by
non-native
characteristics.
Communication
generally not effective:
30
task
generally
performed
poorly,
ineffective
use
of
compensatory
strategies; speech very
frequently marked by
non-native
characteristics.
No
effective
communication:
No
20
evidence of ability to
perform
task,
no

effective
use
of
compensatory
strategies;
speech
almost always marked
by
non-native
characteristics.
Then, to present these in the
assessment of speaking, they can be
addressed to elicit oral production in
various discourse categories. They
can be seen from the following
content specification for the TSE:
1. describe something
physical
2. narrate from presented
material
3. summarize information of
the speakers own choice
4. give directions based on
visual materials
5. give instructions
6. give opinion
7. support opinion
8. compare/contrast
9. hypothesize
10. define (Brown, 2004:163)
And, these indicators can be
classify into four categories to
indicate the improvement of the
students speaking skill: (1) grade 60
is for E (excellent), (2) grade 50 is
for VG (very god), (3) grade 40 is
for G (good), (4) grade 30 and 20 is
for B (bad). For example, when the
first meeting, the result of the
students speaking skill is bad, the
next meeting she has good at
speaking. It means that there is an
improvement of her speaking skill. It
can be done through observation, and
interview.
Review of the Related Findings
The relationship or effect of
applying the task-based activity
(TBA)
to
improve
students
5

motivation and speaking skill

especially in learning and teaching
English language can be seen from
the related findings.
Yeh (2003) in her article telling
true stories: blending multimedia in a
task-based activity (TBA) indicated
that the main activity was the use of
computer laboratory and internet
access. She created the learning
situation into meaningful activities
such as asking the students at Taiwan
University to have a chat with native
speaker of English through internet.
She divided the activities into three
phases: pre-online chat, during chat,
and post-online chat activity. Her
time allocation in these activities
were 3 hours and 15 minutes more
or less. As a result, the students oral
communication by giving them
flenty of opportunities to use the
English language in an authentic
manner were enhanced. And by
combining a blended approach to
learning EFL, offers not only the
crossing of boundaries and cultural
dimensions but it also creates a
different milieu that cannot be
recreated in a regular classroom.
Based on the related findings
above, the researcher sees that the
application of task-based activity
(TBA)
to
improve
students
motivation and speaking skill is not
investigated yet.
Conceptual Framework
In this research, there are two
main problems that are being faced
by the students: most of the students
are shay to speak because of lack of
vocabulary and have low motivation
to participate such asking and
answering questions. So, to solve the
problems, the writer tries to use a
tool to overcome or minimize the

students problems through applying

task-based activity (TBA). They can
be seen from the diagram below.
C. Research Methodology
Kinds of Research
Dealing with the research
problems, where they are derived
from students who have low
motivation to take part in
communication orally and their
problem in using English in spoken,
of course, learning and teaching
processes will not run well. So, the
suitable kind of research to this, is
classroom action research (CAR).
Gay (2000 says that action research
is a process in which individual or
several teachers collect evidence and
make decision about their own
knowledge, performance, beliefs,
and effects in order to understand
and improve them. In
other
words, action research is not only to
test a treatment, but also has the truth
believing of the effectiveness of the
treatment.
Setting of Research
This research is done at the
Baiturrahmah Midwife Academy of
Padang, West Sumatera. The
participants are the second semester
students on the academic year 2006 2007. There are three classes with 40
students / class (all women): class A,
B, and C. The Classroom Action
Research (CAR) is conducted in the
class C. Because the students in this
class have the lowest motivation to
speak in English. For example, only
two or three dominant students want
to speak in English. Meanwhile, the
others have more than four students
want to take part in communication
orally. The learning and teaching
process is once a week with 100
minutes / meeting.
6

Research Procedure
This CAR follows three cycles as
seen in the following diagram:
Plannin
g
Reflecti
ng

Cycle I

Acting

Observi
ng
Plannin
g
Reflecti
ng

Cycle II

Acting

Observi
ng
Plannin
g
Reflecti
ng

Cycle
III
Observi
ng

Acting

Instrumentation
In the classroom action research
(CAR), the instruments will be used
are the researcher himself, interview,
observation, and questionnaires.
The researcher is the key
instrument in interpretation of data
have been collected and involves in
all of the learning and teaching
processes in the classroom. Then,
the Interview is the next tool to
get information about the students
motivation and speaking skill before
and or after doing action. Next, the
Observation is also the tool to get
information about the students
motivation and speaking skill before
and or during doing the action. And,
the questionnaires are the tool to get
information about the students
motivation in speaking skill before
and or after doing action.
Technique of Data Collection
In This
CAR, the data will be
collected
through,
observation,
questionnaire (anonymously), and
interview.
The observation is used to collect
the data about the improvement of
the students
motivation and
speaking skill. He observes the
process of learning and teaching
through applying tasks from the
beginning until the end Here, he
observes the students motivation
and speaking skill before doing an
action. In this case, he has got the
previous data of the students: the
student who has high, and low
motivation; excellent, very good,
good, and bad at speaking English.
Then, he goes on the observation
during doing action and the end of
action to see the both of motivation
and speaking skill improvement.

Then, the categories of this

observation is used on the
questionnaires
to
see
the
improvement of the students
motivation to speak English. The
students
answer
on
that
questionnaires are observed again to
see the improvement. And, the result
of observation and questionnaires
(the students performances and
answers) are asked to them to see the
improvement.
And, the researcher interviews
the students to see the improvement
of the their speaking skill. Interview,
here, is meant to test the students
speaking skill. As a result, the
improvement can be seen from
before CAR, and after doing action
in every cycle (from cycle 1 to cycle
2 and cycle 3).
Technique of Data Analysis
The data will be analyzed
through
Reading,
describing,
classifying, and interpreting (Gay,
2000:239).
Reading: becoming familiar with
the data and identifying main themes
in it. It means that the researcher
reads all the data gathered from
observation, questionnaires and
interview and then identifies the data
into two main themes: motivations
categories-high, and low; and
speaking skills categories-excellent,
very god, good, and bad in before /
during / after doing action.
Describing: examining the data
in depth to provide detailed
descriptions
of
the
setting,
participants, and activities. It means
that the researcher describes the
setting, participants, and activities of
the third instruments to know the
improvement of the students
motivation and speaking skill.

Classifying : categorizing and

coding pieces of data and physically
grouping them into themes. Here, the
researcher classifies the students who
have improved the motivation and
speaking skill based on their
categories
through
the
three
instruments.. He categorizes and
codes the data into H (high), L (low)
for students motivation and E
(excellent), VG (very good), G
(good), and B (bad) for students
speaking skill.
Interpreting: interpreting and
synthesizing the organized data into
general
conclusions
or
understandings. It means that the
researcher interprets and synthesizes
the data from the third instruments.
So, the result of the research can be
understood from the interpretation.
For example, we can see the process
effect of TBA to improve students
motivation and speaking skill
through the interpretation of the third
instruments categories such as the
students who have or have not
improved their motivation and
speaking skill can be seen from the
process of applying TBA and
through the third instruments.
D. Findings and Discussion
Findings
Based on the research question,
this action research was conducted to
find out whether the students
motivation and speaking skill of the
second semester students
of
Baiturrahmah Midwife Academy of
Padang improve or not through
applying task-based activity (TBA).
This research was divided into three
cycles. Each cycle consists of
planning, acting, observing, and
reflecting. This findings start from
before CAR, cycle 1, cycle 2, and
8

cycle 3. Here, the research findings

from the cycles will be discussed.
Before the research done, the
researcher gave the preliminary
questionnaires to the students and
analyzed them. It was about the
students first opinions of using
dialogue completion as the part of
Task-Based Activity (TBA) in
learning and teaching speaking. The
results showed that (1) almost all of
the students indicated that the
English teacher seldom gave them a
dialogue text to be practiced as a
model in the classroom, (2) almost
all of the students indicated that the
English teacher never gave them the
dialogue completion to be discussed
and completed before being practice
it, (3) in post-task, almost all of the
students indicated that the English
teacher seldom ask them to repeat a
dialogue task that had performed in
pre-task.
For the preliminary questionnaire
of the students motivation, the
researcher found some information:
(1) almost all of the students seldom
understand how succeeding fit with
their own personal and academic
goals, (2) almost all of the of the
students indicated that they seldom
had a commitment to learn English
through learning time as well as
possible, (3) Almost all of the
students tended to pocus on grade
rather than process of effort to
understand and practice English, (4)
almost all of the students seldom
asked, answered questions, gave
suggestion, additions, comments, and
critics while learning English, (5)
almost all of the students were not
responsible to the result of their poor
performance, (6) almost all of the

students were not motivated to face

difficult learning work materials.
Then, the researcher found some
valuable inputs from the students
preliminary interview of speaking:
(1) all of the students could not speak
English excellently (utterances of
sentences), (2) almost all of the
students could not ask and answer
complex questions orally, (3) almost
all of the students could produce few
English midwifes terminologies
orally such as menstrual, swelling,
and pregnant issues, (4) almost all of
the students had few interaction with
friends and teacher in spoken
language.
In first cycle, the improvement of
the students motivation and
speaking skill were not increased yet.
It seemed that there were some of
them who did not care to the work
activity in group and kept silence
while having time to give comment,
suggestions, questions and answers.
In the second cycle, there was a
significance change particularly on
paying attention to their groups
activity, teacher explanations. It can
be seen from the quantity of their
speaking in groups were increased.
But, there were still few students
tried to ask and answer and give
comment
to
their
friends
performance on the dialogue. In
other words, not all students in each
group (representative one) took a
participation in the discussion
session.
In the third cycle, there was a
significance change on students
behavior in speaking. It can be seen
from the number of students to take
part in communication orally were
well-increased enough. Most of them
(representative group member) took
9

part in the discussion session through

asking and answering, giving
comment and suggestions to their
friends task performance. It meant
that most of them were active to
speak in English.
Discussions
The effect of TBA for the
students motivation and speaking
improvement can be seen on the
previous findings. Where the
weaknesses
of
the
students
motivation and speaking skill before
CAR could be minimized in the first
cycle.
Then,
the
weaknesses
happened in the cycle 1 could be
solved in the cycle 2. Finally, almost
all of the weaknesses that were in the
100
80
60
Motiv ation

40

Speaking skill

20
0
Before Cycle
CAR

Cycle

Cycle

cycle 2 could be solved significantly

in the third cycle ( see more on
findings above).
Based on the findings above, the
researcher
finds
that
the
effectiveness of TBA to improve the
students motivation and speaking
skill can be elaborated from the
figure below.
Figure 1: The Improvement
percentages of the students
motivation and speaking kill.
Before applying CAR through
TBA, the students motivation were
low such as their understanding to
the colleges succeeding fits to their
own
personal
goals,
having
commitment to take benefit from
college, working and participating in
learning
the
material
being

presented, working in the face of

difficulties learning materials, seeing
success as the function of their effort,
and focusing on the factors that are
controllable. The percentage was
about 50.0 %. Meanwhile, after CAR
or cycle 1, the improvement
happened to the all items above. The
percentage was about 60.0 %, then
on the cycle 2, it was about 80.0 %,
and on the cycle 3, it was 86.0 %.
The criteria to see the students
motivation
referred
to
the
Weinstains (2006) categories of
high motivation (see the concept of
motivation, on chapter II).
Also, almost all of the students
speaking skill were poor/bad before
conducting the CAR such as
illustrating the English midwifes
terminologies, describing menstrual
experiences, describing the solution
of menstrual problems, and stating
the knowledge of pregnant and
swelling, saying the number of
midwife workers in their village, and
indicating their goals after studying.
It was about 50,0 %. However, after
cycle 1, there were a n improvement,
that was, 59,95 %. Then, after cycle
2, it was about 66,32 %. And, at the
end of cycle 3, it was about 75,37 %.
The criteria to measure the
improvement referred to the TSE
rating scale components (see the
concept of speaking, on chapter II).
As a result, all of the students
were good at saying status, location
of study, the goals after studying, the
number of midwife in their village,
the number of their menstrual period,
describing solution while facing
menstrual problems, and stating their
knowledge of pregnant and swelling
through applying TBA: dialogue
completion. But, there were few
10

students who were not good at

illustrating the English midwifes
terminologies,
their
menstrual
experiences, and stating their
knowledge of pregnant and swelling.
The improvement of the students
motivation and speaking skill were
based on the assumption that:
1. TBA through discussion to
complete
the
dialogue
completion gave a lot of time to
think and perform the language
in spoken or written form.
2. TBA provided the learner to use
the English through situational
activities such as discussing and
talking about the English terms
of midwife. Because they were
midwife students. In other words,
the materials related to their field
or and support the other lessons
in which most of the materials
are English.
3. TBA
through
dialogue
completion were precise to their
level of knowledge, that is,
simple dialogue.
4. TBA
through
discussion,
question and answer to complete
the
dialogue
completion
encouraged the students to
interact orally with friends and
teacher.
5. TBA through peer feedback form
while practicing the dialogue
completion prepared the students
to
be
more
serious
in
communication orally or in
written form.
In addition, by applying the TBA
from cycle 1 till cycle 3, it could not
help the students to be an excellent in
speaking
through
dialogue
completion. But, it could improve the
students speaking skill from poor to
good to very good. And, the

students motivation could improve

from low to high. It could be seen
from their performance in doing the
task either in groups or in front of the
class.
Moreover, the TBA is a tool to
help students low motivation and
speaking skill. It applied through
discussion, question and answer to
complete and practice the dialogue
completion. It means that they can
increase students motivation and
speaking skill. Taylor (2002:399)
states the effective of group work for
several reasons:
1. to increase actual participation
and thus language learning
opportunities
2. to improve the quality, or
naturalness, of students talk, so
that it is closer to genuine
interaction
3. to help individual instruction
4. to promote a positive affective
climate
5. to increase students motivation
Then,
the
other
expert,
Wahjosumidjo (1984:177), states
that performance is the result of
interaction
between motivation,
capability, and perception about
himself/herself. For example, a
student who has high motivation ,
but he has low capability, will result
low performance. Also, the student
who has low motivation and
capability will produce the low
performance. So, the ideal one is
the student who has high motivation
and capability will result high
performance.
So, the effectiveness of applying
TBA above is relevant to what
Lochana and Gitoshree (2006) who
created textbook into meaningful
task in pre-task stage. And the result
11

showed the students were active

working through it in the group.
In conclusion, the application of
TBA to the students through
choosing the appropriate subcategories from pre-task, during-task,
and post-task phase to the level of
the students background knowledge,
the learners and teachers role are
clear with the communicative
material
can improve their
motivation (the willingness to speak)
and speaking skill (from bad to good,
and to very good).
E. Conclusions
After doing the action research in
the classroom through applying the
TBA to improve the students
motivation and speaking skill at the
second year student of Baiturrahmah
Midwife Academy of Padang, the
researcher analyzed them. And, the
interpretations could be concluded as
follows:
1. By applying TBA through three
phases strategies had made the
improvement of the students
motivation and speaking skill.
The most important thing was
that this task had increased their
understanding of meaning and
interaction. In other words, they
were not only encouraged to talk
something with their friends, but
also to interact in nature.
2. TBA
through
dialogue
completion helped the students to
be more confident to speak
English even though with the
simple utterances.
3. The use of TBA: dialogue
completion as the teachers
teaching strategies could improve
the effectiveness of teaching and
learning speaking. Because the

teachers and students roles in

applying TBA were clear.
4. By applying the TBA: dialogue
completion step by step could
minimize
the
students
passiveness either in group or in
the classroom.
5. The students were responsible to
the result of their poor
performance and motivated to
face difficult learning work
materials. These also supported
their
speaking
skills
improvement such as interaction
with friends and teacher, and
known more about the English
terms of midwife. And, few of
them could produced complex
sentences through repeating the
same dialogue with changed
condition.
6. TBA
through
dialogue
completion,
discussion
and
question and answer
had
provided the students to use the
English language based on their
field of activities.
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