Journal Review: ‘The Effectiveness of Short Story Use on Students’ Speaking Skill Development’

Name : Anis Septianingsih

Class : 4E

NPM : 1910631060066

Journal : ‘The Effectiveness of Short Story Use on Students’ Speaking Skill Development’ by Retta Mestika Ompusunggu

Journal Review

In a country where English is considered as a foreign language, such as in Indonesia, learning and practicing it can be a difficult thing to do. In her journal called ‘The Effectiveness of Short Story Use on Students’ Speaking Skill Development’, Retta Mestika Ompusunggu tries to explain how using short stories in the EFL classroom can expose learners to distinctive opportunities for educational, intellectual, cultural and linguistic development. Short story is considered as one of the literary genres that can be used in the EFL classroom to enhance language skill, motivate students, and increase their cultural awareness and tolerance.

To further find out whether short stories use can be effective to develop students’ skill in English as a foreign language (EFL) context, Retta Mestika Ompusunggu conducted a pretest-posttest experiment design using two groups of experimental and control at SMPN 160 Jakarta. The experimental group was taught speaking using short stories, while the control group was taught speaking in the routine procedure of the English classes. The experiment occurred in six weeks, two forty-five-minutes-sessions per week. The data was collected using tests administering the interview technique. The results of the hypothesis test demonstrated that short story use had a significant effect on the participants' speaking skills improvement. Therefore, it was recommended to use short story to help students develop their speaking performance.

The journal has many advantages, one of them is that the researcher chose an interesting and simple topic for her research, and it seems that her method of using short stories to improve students’ speaking skill can be very easy to apply. Moreover, based on the result of her study it showed that the use of the method turned out to have a significant effect on the students, since the primary function of short stories is to entertain and inform, they keep interest alive in the classroom and motivate students, they have factual (real) and cultural values. In other words, short stories create a comfortable atmosphere and a good and enjoyable environment so that students become more interested in classroom participation.

However, the journal also has its weaknesses. First, this study focused only on the effect of the use of short story on students' speaking performance. Consequently, attitudinal factors of the students were not identified. As a consequence, there might be extraneous factors that affected the samples homogeneity. Finally, the experiment in this study was conducted only in twelve sessions using six short stories. Conducting studies with a greater number of short stories in a longer period of time in the future might produce a more valid result.