IMPROVING STUDENTS INTERACTIONAL

CONVERSATION ABILITY BY USING ADJACENCY PAIRS

AT SMAN 2 SINJAI UTARA

Lukman Hakim Asnawi

English Education Department of UIN Alauddin Makassar
lukmanhakimasnawi.21@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: This research was conducted in order to

improve students interactional conversation ability at the third-
grade students of SMAN 2 Sinjai Utara through adjacency pairs
method. This research was related to the result of preliminary
study showed that the students were still poor in English
speaking skill especially in having conversation. This research
used a Classroom Action Research (CAR) which was conducted
to solve the students problem that was lack of having
conversation. The Classroom Action Research was done based
on Kemmis and McTaggarts design. The researcher did two
cycles in which each cycle consists of planning, acting,
observing, and reflecting. The data were gathered through
qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative data were
obtained by analyzing the interview and observation result.
Then, quantitative data were obtained from students speaking
score of cycle I and cycle II. The finding of this research
indicated that the implementation of action went well as
planned and it supported by the criteria of success were
achieved. The first criterion was 75% of students could pass the
target score 75 based on the KKM. The finding showed that
84.62% of students had already achieved the target score.
Besides, the second criterion was the students who become
more active involved in teaching learning process. The result of
observation sheet and the interview showed that by using
adjacency pairs method students were more creative and
confident in the classroom especially in conversation activity. By
implementing adjacency pairs method, each student has an
equal chance to take turn in conversation. In addition, the
students know how to give a good response, use appropriate
tones, gestures, and facial expression. Moreover, by knowing the
types of adjacency pairs, students have chance to become good
conversationalists and cooperative in conversation activity.
Thus, the researcher concludes that the implementation of
adjacency pairs method was successful. Based on the finding
mentioned above, the researcher suggests that the English
teacher could implement adjacency pairs method in teaching

1
speaking in order to motivate students in learning English
speaking.

Keywords: Students interactional conversation ability and

Adjacency Pairs

INTRODUCTION

Communication is an essential need for human being.

Language as a means of communication has an important role to
reveal an intention to someone else. Since language is a means
of communication, it is not enough for students to learn words,
phrases, and grammatical features if they want to produce
language in their daily communication or to interact with others
in English.
Therefore, Walter insisted that the most important thing
that should be noticed in teaching speaking is how to active all
of language elements, such as vocabulary, grammar, and
pronunciation which students have possessed to communicate
since the main function of language is a means of
communication.1 It means that the goal for students learning
English is that they are able to use language to communicate
effectively and appropriately for all lifes need, both social and
academic. The students have to be able to express their
thoughts, ideas, and feelings orally in English without thinking
too much before saying what they wish to say.
Realizing that speaking is very important for English
learners, it is essential for English teachers to encourage the
students to speak. They seem to have difficulties in deciding
what techniques or method must be applied in teaching
speaking appropriately. But, they must be able to find out ways

1Teresa Walter, Teaching English Language Learners (New York: Pearson Education,
2004), p. 16.

2
of how to make speaking easier and be the fun activities for the
students to learn.
Based on the preliminary study, some students of SMAN 2
Sinjai Utara when they have conversation, they did not really
pay attention for what makes a good conversation or how to
communicate well to each other. For instance, when A
complimented Bs stuff, B did not thank to A but only said
not really. In this conversation, the expectation of adjacency
pairs was not fulfilled because B should have thanked to A,
but did not. Secondly, the teacher used a monotonous method in
teaching conversation while there are so many methods that can
be applied in teaching speaking, especially for having
conversation. Adjacency Pairs are very effective to be applied in
small group (no more than two people). Schegloff believes when
more than two people are participating in a conversation, the
possibility of overlapping talk or interruption is high.2
Furthermore, the research problem was How is the
improvement of students interactional conversation ability by
using adjacency pairs at SMAN 2 Sinjai Utara?. Then the
research objective was to know the improvement of students
interactional conversation ability by using Adjacency Pairs at the
XII IPA 1 students of SMAN 2 Sinjai Utara. In addition, this
research was beneficial practically in the context for the
students (they could solve their conversation problems), the
lecturers (they could provide an alternative solution to the
problems in teaching speaking/conversation by using Adjacency
Pairs method), and the further researcher (they could use the
finding of this study as one of their references). Finally, this

2Schegloff, E. Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-taking for conversation.

Language in Society, 29(1), 1-63. 2000. International Journal of Educational
Investigations. 2, No.6, ed. Fatemeh Khoddamy Pour (2015), p.58-63.

3
research was focused on students conversation ability at the
third-grade students of SMAN 2 Sinjai Utara.

LITERATURE REVIEW

A number of researches had been conducted in order to

improve students conversation ability by using Adjacency Pairs
method. First, Kim et al. conducted a study of an Effective
Application of Contextual Information Using Adjacency Pairs and
a Discourse Stack for Speech-Act Classification.3 In their study,
the concentrated on how to effectively utilize contextual
information for speech-act classification. Their proposed model
exploited adjacency pairs and a discourse stack to apply
contextual information to speech-act classification. Experimental
results showed that the purposed model yields significant
improvements in comparison with other speech-act classification
model as well as baseline model, which did not utilize contextual
information.
As the result of their study, they found that their purposed
model using adjacency pairs and discourse stack were
experimentally verified as very effective methods in speech-act
classification. Finally, their purposed model achieved about over
6% improvements in both classifiers when they were compared
to the baseline model. In particular, their purposed model
achieved a high improvement for sparse speech-act classes. In
addition, their purposed model showed better performance than
other previous speech-act classification models in their
experiments.

3Kyungsun Kim. et al., An Effective Application of Contextual

Information Using Adjacency Pairs and a Discourse Stack for Speech-
Act Classification. International Journal of Innovative Computing
Information and Control, vol. 8, no. 11, 2012: p. 7713-7728.

4
 Besides, Nurhayati conducted research of the
Effectiveness of Using Hand Puppet to Improve Students
Speaking Skills in Performing Adjacency Pairs of Seventh
Graders of SMP 11 Semarang in the Academic Year of
2011/2012. In her research, she concluded that hand puppet
was effective to improve students speaking skill, especially in
performing adjacency pair dialogue to the seventh graders of
SMP 11 Semarang.4 It can be concluded that there were the
researchers above give some contributions to the researcher.
Therefore, the researcher would see whether there is any
improvement of students conversation ability by using
Adjacency Pairs method at the third-grade of SMAN 2 Sinjai
Utara or not.

Interactional Conversation

Conversation is a basic human need which must be

developed in a social context. If there is no social factor in it,
conversation does not make sense. The main reason for this is
that society marks the type of context or situation in which
conversation happens and has to adapt to.
Conversation is basically a form or a type of interactive
and spontaneous communication between two or more people.
Typically, it occurs in spoken communication, as written
exchanges are usually not referred to as conversations. The
development of conversational skills and etiquette is an
important part of socialization. The development of
conversational skills in a new language is a frequent focus of
language teaching and learning.

4Diah Nurhayati, The Effectiveness of Using Hand Puppet to Improve Students Speaking
Skills in Performing Adjacency Pairs of Seventh Graders of SMP 11 Semarang in the
Academic Year of 2011/2012. Thesis of UNNES, 2011, p. 72-73.

5
 Focusing on conversation itself, there exist many features
and strategies which characterize all exchanges and must be
taken into account when teaching conversation in the classroom.
Providing students with these strategies will contribute to their
conversation to be successful. With the appropriate strategies,
teacher will be easily teaching students instead of using
monotonous strategies.
Finally, Conversation is not just saying something
grammatically correct, it is a social activity and has a multitude
of internal and social rules (Roger).5 Generally speaking,
students are good conversationalists in their mother tongue, so
if we want them to create and reproduce a good output in the
second language, first, they need to be exposed to a kind of
input which is both authentic and motivating. The input must be
authentic so that the output can be as authentic as possible too.
At the same time, if it is motivating, it will be easier for teachers
to keep students attention and interest above all.

Ability

Ability is the mental of physical capacity, power or skill

required to do something (Hornby in Rahmayanti).6 Students
ability is a mental or physical capacity of the learner, their
power or skill as a conditional in doing something.

Students ability is the quality or state of being able power

to perform, whether physical, moral, intellectual, conventional,
or legal capacity skill or competence in doing sufficiency of
strength, skill, resources. Based on definition above, the

5E. Roger M, Teaching the speaking skill to Japanese students part 1: Construct and
practice (n.p., 2008), p. 9.
6S. Rahmayanti, Increasing the Second Year Students Speaking Ability through Watching
Movie at the Senior High School 1 Takalar. Thesis of UINAM, 2013.

6
researcher can conclude that students ability is power or
capacity as students to do or act physically, mentally, legally,
morally, and financially.
The ability to speak is the ability in pronouncing sounds
articulation or pronunciation of words in order to explain,
inform or express thoughts, ideas or feelings to the listener.
Conversation ability is the ability to communicate with
others, both when speaking, presentation, expression, arguing,
or other activities. The ability to have a conversation is
synonymous with the use of appropriate language, so that the
listener can understand what is said.
Tarigan said that the most basic communication skill is the
ability to grasp the meaning and message, interpret and judge
as well as the ability to express themselves with language.7 It is
expected that students were able to sharpen the sensitivity of
emotion, sentiment sharpen and improve the ability to think and
reason for the provision of the life to come. In accordance with
the purpose of language learning which is to produce skilled
students who primarily speak conversational skills, the teachers
and the method has a very important role. The main objective is
to convince people speaking listeners about something. Through
talks convincing, his attitude can be changed, for example, of
the refusal be acceptance.

Adjacency Pairs
An adjacency pair is a type of turn-taking. It is the
smallest unit of conversational exchange. One of the most
significant contributions of Conversation Analysis (CA) is the
concept of the adjacency pair. An adjacency pair is composed of

7Henry Guntur Tarigan, Berbicara Sebagai Suatu Keterampilan

Berbahasa (Bandung: Angkasa, 1981), p. 38.

7
two turns produced by different speakers which are placed
adjacently and where the second utterance is identified as
related to the first.
According to Sacks and Schegloff, adjacency pair is a
sequence of two utterances that follow one another. It is
adjacent and has two parts first pair part and second pair part.8
In line with that, Rymes states that adjacency pair is a two-part
interactional sequence in which the first part (e.g., a question)
produces the expectation for the second part (e.g. an answer).
Adjacency pairs also reflect how ordered speech is, regardless of
the number of people that are in the conversation, and how this
is achieved through turn-taking.9 Jovanovic also stated that
adjacency pairs are minimal dialogic units which consist of
paired utterances such as question-answer or
statement/agreement. The paired utterances are produced by
different speakers. Utterances in an adjacency pair are ordered
with the first part (A-part, the initiative) and the second part (B-
part, the response).10
Another definition comes from Thornbury and Slade, they say
that adjacency pair is composed of two turns produced by
different speakers which are placed adjacently and where the
second utterance is identified as related to the first.11 They
added, adjacency pairs include such exchanges as question/

8H. Sacks & E. Schegloff, Two Preferences in the Organization of

Reference to Persons in Conversation and their Interactions in
Psathas. Studies in Ethnomethodology (New York: Irvington Press,
1979).
9B. Rymes, Classroom Discourse Analysis: a tool for critical reflection
(Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2008), p. 55.
10Natasha Jovanovic, To Whom It May Concern Addressee
Identification in Face-to-Face Meetings, SIKS Dissertation Series No. 7
(The Netherlands: Zutphen, 2007), p. 14.
11S. Thornbury, & D. Slade, Conversation: From Description to
Pedagogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

8
answer; complaint/ denial; offer/ accept; request/ grant;
compliment/ rejection; challenge/
rejection, and instruct/ receipt.
In multiparty conversations, adjacency pairs do not impose
a strict adjacency requirement, since a speaker has more
opportunities to insert utterances between two elements of an
adjacency pair. For example, a suggestion can be followed by
agreements or disagreements from multiple speakers. Some
typical adjacency pairs in English in U.S. proposed by Rymes.
They are: greeting/ greeting; question/answer;
invitation/acceptance; assessment/disagreement;
apology/acceptance; and summons/acknowledgement.12 Thus,
according to Rymes, all of these typical adjacency pairs take
place in teacher student interactions in the classrooms day after
day in predictable ways.
Table 1. Types of Adjacency Pairs
Adjacency Pairs Types Example
Greeting/Greeting Teacher: Good morning!
Students: Good morning!
Question/Answer Teacher: Is today Friday?
Students: Yes!
Invitation/Acceptance Teacher: Would you like to read
next?
Students: Sure.
Assessment/Disagreeme Teacher: This is beautiful short
nt today.
Students: I thought it was creepy,
actually.
Apology/Acknowledgeme Student: I am sorry, Im late.
nt Teacher: Thats okay we started

12 B. Rymes, Classroom Discourse Analysis: a tool for critical reflection

(Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2008). p. 55.

9
 late
today anyway.
Summons/Acknowledge Teacher: John?
ment John: Yes?

However, there are some people who talk to themselves when

they are alone such talking is not considered as pair talking.
Michael McCarthy stated that pairs of utterances in talk are
often mutually dependent; a most obvious example is that
question predicts an answer, and that an answer presupposes a
question.13 It is possible to state the requirements, in a normal
conversational sequence, for many types of utterances, in terms
of what is expected as a response and what certain responses
presuppose.

RESEARCH METHOD

In this research, the researcher conducted a Classroom

Action Research (CAR). It is a research conducted by the
teacher who wants to make their students mastering the
materials. Commonly, Classroom Action Research is an effective
strategy in improving the quality for English teachers
performance in instruction as well as students achievement in
learning English in the classroom.
Classroom Action Research for English learning aims at
assessing the effectiveness of their teaching activities and
planning the improvement based on the result of the
assessment. Identifying classroom problems and trying to solve

13Micheal McCarthy, Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1991), p. 119.

10
the problems can be done through the process of Classroom
Action Research.

Kemmis and McTaggart in Jusman stated that CAR

activities involve repeated cycles, each consisting of planning,
acting, observing, and reflecting.14 The result of one cycle is
used to determine the need for the following cycle, until the
problems get solved by the strategy.

The researcher identified that dependent variable was the

ability of students interactional conversation and the
independent variable was the use of adjacency pairs. The
subjects of this research were the third-grade science one
students of SMAN 2 Sinjai Utara academic year 2016/2017.

The researcher was helped by the English teacher as the

research collaborator who was expected to objectively help in
observing the researchers performance during the teaching
learning process by using an observation checklist which had
been specified. Also, the researcher collaborator was expected
to give suggestion or revision regarding with the lesson plan,
implementation of learning improvement or other revisions.
From the explanation above, the researcher also conducted test
(pre-test and post-test) as an instrument of the research. The
researcher chose pre-test and post-test that would be done by
the researcher to collect information from the students about
the speaking problem.

Regarding with the research method and design that

mentioned previously, the researcher used quantitative and
qualitative approach to collect the data. For the quantitative
14Jusman, Improving Students Speaking Ability through Describing Pictures at the
Second Year Students of MTS Asadiyahkampung Baru Bone. Thesis of UINAM, 2014.

11
data, the researcher gained it from the result of students
speaking performance which has been scored and classified the
mean score, calculated the improvement score and class
percentage earlier.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

The Findings of Research
1. The Result of Pre-Implementation of the Action

The rate percentage of students speaking score of pre-test

No
x
. Indicators Total
Pro Com Students' score of
1 Gram Fluen n Voc p pre-test
34
72 65 69 70 72 1740 66.92
2 8

After analyzing the result of pre-test, it could be

concluded that most of the students at XII IPA 1 class of SMAN 2
Sinjai Utara had difficulty in Speaking ability in which only
23.08% the class percentage where the target of the action was
75% students pass the KKM. So, it needed to find out the
solution to overcome this problem. Then, the researcher came
up with the Adjacency {Pairs method in order to be applied in
every cycle of Classroom Action Research to solve the problem
and to improve students conversation ability.

2. The Result of Post Implementation of the Action

The rate percentage of students speaking score of post-test

in cycle 1
No
x
. Indicators Total
Com Students' score of
1 Gram Fluen Pron Voc p pre-test
35
72 68 71 72 74 1785 68.65
2 7

12
 Based on the calculation, the researcher knew that the
mean score of students is 68.65. Meanwhile, only eight students
(30.77%) who passed the minimum passing grade criteria
(KKM).

The rate percentage of students speaking score of second

post-test in cycle 1
No
x
. Indicators Total
Com Students' score of
1 Gram Fluen Pron Voc p pre-test
36
72 71 73 72 79 1825 70.19
2 7

Based on the calculation, the researcher knew that the

mean score of students is 70.19. The improvement of students
score of speaking from the first test to the second test is 2.24%,
and the improvement is not enough yet since the target of action
success 75% of students passed the minimum passing grade
criteria. There are twelve students (46.15%) who passed the
minimum passing grade criteria (KKM).

The rate percentage of students speaking score of post-test

in cycle 2
No
x
. Indicators Total
Com Students' score of
1 Gram Fluen Pron Voc p pre-test
38
73 74 78 75 81 1905 73.27
2 1
Based on the data above, the researcher knew that the
mean score of students is 73.27. The improvement of students
score of speaking from the first test (cycle I) to the first test
(cycle II) is 6.73%, and the improvement is still not enough
(^6.73%) yet since the target of action success 75% of students
passed KKM. There are eighteen students (69.23%) who passed
the minimum passing grade criteria (KKM).

13
 The rate percentage of students speaking score of second
post-test in cycle 2
No
x
. Indicators Total
Com Students' score of
1 Gram Fluen Pron Voc p pre-test
42
75 82 85 84 94 2090 80.38
2 0

Based on the calculation, the researcher found that the

mean score of students is 80.38. It also showed that twenty-two
students (84.62%) who passed the minimum passing grade
criteria. Furthermore, the whole of students score improvement
from the first test (cycle I) to the second test (cycle II) would be
17.09%. It means the action has met the requirement of action
success which was 75% students past the minimum passing
grade criteria in the score of 75. In this case, those scores
showed the success of the classroom action research toward
students of third grade of SMAN 2.
From all the calculations, the researcher could interpret
the result after the implementation of Classroom Action
Research from cycle I up to cycle II. It could be seen from the
result of first test, second test of cycle I and first test, second
test of cycle II. Here the researcher describes the result from
the first test (cycle I) up to the second test (cycle II) through
diagram below:

Figure 1.

14
 Students mean score improvement
100
90
80
70 80.38
70.19 73.27
60 66.92 68.65
50
40
30
20
10
0

First Test Second Test

Studen ts' class percen tag e wh o passed KKM

100
90
80 84.62
70
60 69.23
50
40 46.15
30
30.77
20
23.08
10
0

First Test Second Test

Fig
ure 2.

The researcher gained the quantitative data from the

result of pre-test and test in cycle I and cycle II. The pre-test
showed that the students mean score was 66.92. The first test
in cycle I showed that the students mean score was 68.65, while
the second test showed that the students mean score was
70.19. Furthermore, the researcher calculated the percentage of

15
students speaking score in order to know the students who
passed the KKM. The pre-test showed that the class percentage
was 23.08% in which six students passed the KKM. The first test
in cycle I showed that the class percentage was 30.77% in which
only eight students passed the KKM. The second test showed
that the class percentage was 46.15% which means there were
12 students who passed the KKM.
Next, the researcher conducted the cycle II because the
action target was not reached yet since the research target was
75% students passed the KKM in the score of 75. The first test
in cycle II showed that the students mean score was 73.27 with
the class percentage was 69,23% or eighteen students passed
the KKM. The second test showed that the students mean score
80.38 with the class percentage was 84.62% or twenty-two
students passed the KKM. Only four students did not pass the
KKM. It means that the criterion of the action was finally
reached.

DISCUSSION

In this research, the researcher found that the students

ability was increasing significantly after using Adjacency Pairs
method. It is indicated by the result of students speaking score
of pre-test was 1740 with the mean score was 66.92 (only eight
students passed the KKM or 23.08%) and the second post-test in
cycle 2 was 2090 with the mean score was 80.38 (twenty-two
students passed the KKM or 84.62%). It means that Adjacency
Pair is one of effective ways to improve the students
conversation ability.
Considering the computation result above, it was clear
that Adjacency Pairs method done by the students contributed to
their conversation ability improvement.

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CONCLUSIONS

The using Adjacency Pairs method was effective to

improve students interactional conversation ability at the third-
grade students of SMAN 2 Sinjai Utara. It was proved by
students result after giving the treatment, their scores
increased and become good with the mean score of the
students second post-test was 80.38 with the class percentage
was 84.62 while the pre-test had poor score with mean score
was 66.92 with the class percentage was 23.08 before the
treatment.

The researcher found that there was a significant

difference between pre-test and post-test. Also, the researcher
found some advantages in terms of implementing adjacency
pairs. First, adjacency pairs play an important role in provoking
interactions between teachers and students. Therefore, teacher
should try to understand what languages would be more
efficient to be presented to the learners especially in provoking
interactions in the classroom. Teacher also should be able in
creating an environment in which students feel more
comfortable and more confident in interactive activities. Second,
considering with some types of adjacency pairs had been
implemented, the students knew how to become good
conversationalists concerning with the good responses,
behavior, facial expression, gestures, tones, and body language.
Moreover, by implementing this method, the students have
chance to be more creative and cooperative in conversation
activity.

SUGGESTION

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 The research findings indicated that Adjacency Pairs
method could be applied in teaching speaking/conversation
since it could motivate the students to be eager and get used to
speak. As the result, some suggestions are proposed as follows:
1. It is suggested that the teachers can use Adjacency
Pairs method as one of many alternatives method in
teaching speaking to improve students conversation
ability.
2. The teacher should be able to encourage and motivate
the students to participate in Adjacency Pairs method.
3. The English teacher should be more creative to choose
method or strategy in teaching speaking/conversation,
arrange the learning environment and become the best
facilitator in learning situation to make students be
more interested and motivated to study English.
4. This research will be a useful information and
contribution for the next researcher especially about
students comprehension and reference in speaking.

18
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jovanovic, Natasha. To Whom It May Concern Addressee

Identification in Face-to-Face Meetings, SIKS Dissertation
Series No. 7. The Netherlands: Zutphen. 2007.
Jusman. Improving Students Speaking Ability through
Describing Pictures at the Second-Year Students of MTS
Asadiyahkampung Baru Bone. Thesis of UINAM. 2014.
Kim, Kyungsun. et al., An Effective Application of Contextual
Information Using Adjacency Pairs and a Discourse Stack for
Speech-Act Classification. International Journal of Innovative
Computing Information and Control, vol. 8, no. 11, p. 7713-
7728. 2012
McCarthy, M. Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers. New
York: Cambridge University Press. 1991.
Nurhayati, D. The Effectiveness of Using Hand Puppet to
Improve Students Speaking Skills in Performing Adjacency
Pairs of Seventh Graders of SMP 11 Semarang in the
Academic Year of 2011/2012.pdf. Thesis of UNNES. 2011.
Rahmayanti, S. Increasing the Second-Year Students Speaking
Ability through Watching Movie at the Senior High School 1
Takalar. Thesis of UINAM, 2013.

Roger, E. M. Teaching the speaking skill to Japanese students

part 1: Construct and practice. n.p. 2008.
Rymes, B. Classroom Discourse Analysis: a tool for critical
reflection. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. 2008.
Sacks, H & Schegloff, E. Two Preferences in the Organization
of Reference to Persons in Conversation and their
Interactions in Psathas. Studies in Ethnomethodology. New
York: Irvington Press. 1979.

19
Schegloff, E. Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-
taking for conversation. Language in Society, 29(1), 1-63.
2000. International Journal of Educational Investigations.
Vol.2, No.6: 58-63, 2015. ISSN: 2410-3446.
Tarigan, Henry Guntur. Berbicara Sebagai Suatu Keterampilan
Berbahasa. Bandung: Angkasa, 1981.
Teresa, Walter. Teaching English Language Learners. New York:
Pearson Education, 2004.
Thornbury, S. & Slade, D. Conversation: From Description to
Pedagogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006.

20