THE EFFECT OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING TECHNIQUES AND STUDENTS TOWARD LEARNING ENGLISH ON STUDENTS CONVERSATION COMPETENCE

The objective of this study are to find out whether: (1) students conversation competence taught by information gap technique is significantly higher than those taught by information transfer technique, (2) students conversation competence with positive attitudes toward learning English is significantly higher than those with negative attitudes, (3) there is interaction between teaching techniques and students attitudes toward learning English on students conversation competence. An experimental research with factorial design 2x2 was used in this study. There were 120 students of grade XI of 2010/2011 academic year of SMA Negeri 2 in Soposurung, Balige, Tobasa, North Sumatera as sample of this study. The students were divided into two groups, the first group was treated by using Information-gap technique and the second group was treated by using information transfer technique. Students attitudes toward learning English was measured with a questionnaire to classify the students into positive and negative attitudes. Students conversation competence was measured by a multiple-choice teacher-made test. The data were analyzed by applying Two-way ANOVA. The result reveals that: (1) students conversation competence taught by information gap technique (x = 87.5) is significantly higher than those taught by information transfer technique (x = 70.39) with Fobserved = 5.87 > Ftable = 3.92 at the level of significance α = 0.05, (2) students conversation competence with positive attitudes toward learning English (x = 70.39) is significantly higher than those with negative attitudes (x = 43.25) with Fobserved = 4.85 > Ftable = 3.92 at the level of significance α = 0.05, (3) there is significant interaction between teaching techniques and students attitudes toward learning English with Fobserved = 7.77 > Ftable = 3.92. Having applied Tuckey test, it showed that students with positive attitudes toward learning English got higher result if they were taught with information gap technique and those with negative attitudes got higher result if they were taught with information transfer technique.