MURDER TECHNIQUE
PART
I. DEFINITION OF MURDER TECHNIQUE
MURDER
is one of the types of cooperative learning techniques. MURDER technique was
introduced by Hythecker, Dansereau, and Rocklin. The word MURDER stands for
Mood, Understand, Recall, Detect, Elaborate, and Review. This technique is done
in pairs or group. Moreover Hythecker, Dansereau, and Rocklin say that the
implementation of MURDER technique leads to better performance and more
effective than that produced by students using their typical study methods. In
this technique, the students can encourage themselves to process the content of
material with different goals for each steps. MURDER study asks students to
collaborate to perform the thinking tasks or summarizing and elaborating on
reading material. The “M” in MURDER stand for “mood”, the first step in which
the individual should attempt to find a time and place that set a positive
mood. This will allow the individual to study more effectively, because an
individual will usually not be able to read effectively if he or she is in an
environment that is distracting or just generally irritating. The “U” in MURDER
stand for “understand”, which the individual marks any information in the text
that he or she does not understand by circling it, highlighting it, or simply
drawing a question mark next to it. The “R” in MURDER stands for “recall” which
the individual should attempt to paraphrase and note everything that he or she
leaned from the section that he or she just went over. The “D” in MURDER stand
for “digest/detect”, suggests that the individual should go back over each
topic that he or she marked earlier and reread that material in an attempt to
understand that material better. The “E” in MURDER stand for
“expand/elaborate”, suggests that the individual should go back and start
asking and attempting to answer questions about the specific topics that he or
she still does not understand even after completing the digest step. The “R” in
MURDER stands for “review” all of the material that the individual actually
does understand in order to refresh material in the individuals mind .There are
two objectives of the MURDER script. First, learners are supposed to acquire
knowledge about text content. Second they are supposed to acquire text-learning
strategies. These strategies include cognitive skills such as explaining and
meta cognitive skills such as monitoring. In accordance with these objectives,
MURDER increases learners‟ engagement in cognitive and meta cognitive
activities. As an example for cognitive activities, learners are supposed to
engage in explaining.
PART II. THE STEPS, LEVEL AND IMPLEMENTATION MURDER
IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION.
The
MURDER technique can be used or can be collaborated into all the skill, they
are reading, listening, speaking and writing. But I choose two skill to apply
this technique, listening and reading.
1.
Listening.
Listening is the
ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves
understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his
vocabulary, and grasping his meaning. Listening is often confused with
hearing. Hearing is simply the act of
perceiving sound by the ear. If you are not hearing-impaired, hearing simply
happens. Listening, however, is
something you consciously choose to do. Listening requires concentration so
that your brain processes meaning from
words and sentences. Listening leads to learning. While hearing is a biological
process that can be scientifically explained, listening is a neurological
cognitive regarding the processing of auditory stimuli received by the auditory
system. Hearing is always occurring, most of the time subconsciously. Listening
is the interpretative action taken by the listener in order to understand and
potentially make meaning out of the sound waves.
Listening is the
foundation of language. Listening is an integral part of the reading process.
It helps to build vocabulary, increase fluency and aid in comprehension.
Supporting reading through listening enables students to build skills and
access curriculum at their grade level. We teach listening because listening is
very important to improves
relationships, improves our knowledge, improves our understanding, can save money, exchange information, enjoy
yourself, and share the feelings. And we teach listening to prepare our
students for these situations :
-
Attending
a lesson or a lecture. The aim of this activity is to understand the main
concept and to be able to distinguish the main information.
-
Listening
to announcements, news and weather forecast. In this situation listener’s
objective is to get relevant information.
-
Listening
to live situation in which one takes no part. This type of situation is usually
connected with eavesdropping. The person listening to the conversation is
usually unaware of the context so that he or she cannot interfere into the
conversation.
-
Listening
to or watching plays, watching TV or listening to a radio for pleasure.
-
The
aim of this activity is to entertain oneself.
-
Listening
to someone giving a speech. The listener is often interested in views and
attitudes of the speaker.
-
Following
the instructions. The listener’s objective is to accomplish the task
successfully .
For
example in junior high school.
a.
In
the implementation, teacher set the mood of students by relaxation and focused
on the task group. Teacher giving interesting information about phenomena like earthquake.
This activity is done at the beginning of the lesson or apperception. Teacher
gives motivation to the students so that students’ enthusiastic be increased.
Most of the students raise their hand and attempt verbal expression to the
problems posed by teachers, because these problems indeed close to life
day-to-day. This activity makes good the mood of students to participate in
future learning. In addition, teachers also deliver learning objectives, so that
students feel the material lessons learned have benefits for themselves.
b.
At
the Understand stage, students given the opportunity to form understanding
independently with listen the material that read by the teacher. This activity
done by each pair of students. In this stage students are not only acts as a
receiver of information in the learning activities, but students construct
their comprehension about what they heard. And teacher gives exercises to the
students and this stage students are actively exploring knowledge
independently.
c.
In
Recall activity each pairs of students discus about the exercises that given by
the teacher before. One of students express their opinion and other write down
the task. More interactive collaboration of students in the group, the results
of student evaluations at the end learning even more good.
d.
In
Detect, students are required to examine the delivery of responsive material
and information carefully. In this stage the student may submit opinions or if
there are questions.
e.
In
the Elaborate stage, teachers provide an opportunity for group renderer to
respond and provide objections related to the question of other group members
in detect activity.
f.
The
last stage of learning activities is Review stage. In this stage, students
under the guidance of the teacher summarizes learning outcomes that have been
studied.
PART III. THE STEPS, LEVEL AND IMPLEMENTATION MURDER
IN READING COMPREHENSION.
Reading.
Reading
is the process of constructing meaning in transaction with texts and not simply
the ability to recall what was directly stated in the text. Meanwhile
comprehension is the goal of both reading and listening. Successful
comprehension enables readers (or listeners) to acquire information, to
experience and be aware of other worlds (including fictional ones), to
communicate successfully, and to achieve academic success. Reading
comprehension is a complex activity where the reader can get knowledge from the
text both of information or message and new vocabularies; furthermore, to
understand text the reader need to find out the meaning or the correlation
between the sentences that establish in the whole text. They can retell again
the information that they have read depend on their knowledge, culture and
background. Finally, there are a lot of benefits that the reader can get from
reading. If we read a lot of books, magazines, articles, and many things you
can get a lot of knowledge and information from it. The
habit of reading can add to the information available on various topics. It
also helps the readers to stay in-touch with contemporary information and makes
them sensitive to global issues and helps them catch in hand what is going on
around them. Generally, reading texts are good sources and wealth choices for
self improvement and motivation. They have a great contribution towards
proficient achievement. In addition, they are informational and reliable for
what we may query for a long time without satisfactory answers. Students need
to read both complex text and a lot of text. According to Adams (2009), “To
grow, our students must read lots, and more specifically they must read lots of
„complex‟ texts that offer them new language, new knowledge, and new modes of
thought”. Reading is like every other human activity in that the amount of
practice really matters, especially the amount of reading done while reading
proficiency is being developed. Ensuring that students are given example
opportunities to read a variety of materials in a variety of ways increases
their motivation because teachers can tap into students‟ interests and give
students enough practice for reading proficiency to develop.
For example in
Senior High School.
a.
Mood.
The students are ask to set their proper mood. A pair of students sets a
relaxed purposeful mood before beginning their work. They make sure they are
clear on the procedure to follow and engage in a little chit-chat.
b.
Understand.
The students are ask read silently each section for understanding the general
idea of the text. A reading passage ( or section from a text ) has been divided
into sections. ( The teacher can do this or students can use natural breaks in
the passage, such as chapter sections ). Each student read the first section
silently.
c.
Recall.
The students (one member of the pair) are asked to recall the information or
key ideas of the text without looking at
the text. Without looking at the text, one member of the pair acts as a
recaller who summarizes the key ideas of the section.
d.
Detect.
The other partner looks at the text, detect any errors, omissions, or
unnecessary information in the summary and discusses these with the recaller.
The role of recaller and detector rotate for the next section.
e.
Elaborate.
Both students elaborate on the ideas in the section. The types of elaboration
include the following :
1.
Connections
with other things the students have studied.
2.
Links
between the section and students’ lives.
3.
Addition
of relevant information not included in the section.
4.
Agreements
or disagreements with the views or ideas expressed the section.
5.
Reaction
to the section such as surprise, gladness, or anger.
6.
Applications
of the ideas and information.
7.
Questions
either about things not understood or questions sparked by the section.
f.
Review.
When the entire text has been completed, the pair combines their thought to
summarize the entire text.
PART IV STRENGTH AND WEAKNESSES OF MURDER TECHNIQUE
This
technique has strength and weaknesses when applying in teaching learning
process.
-
Strength
1.
Making
the students can work together to share what they have learned to their friend.
2.
Research
on the MURDER technique suggests that they increase comprehension and recall.
Several elements of the technique may account for this:
a.
working
with someone else may help keep students on task,
b.
talking
about the text may help recall and comprehension,
c.
identifying
main ideas may help recall and comprehension,
d.
the
detecting step gives an opportunity to correct misunderstandings,
e.
the
elaborations may help connection the ideas in the texts with readers’ lives and
give them an opportunity to raise questions,
f.
the
review step may help put each section into a large overview,
g.
the
repetition involved in the various steps may aid recall.
3.
This
technique can be used for all the skills (reading, listening, speaking and
writing) so all the skill can be taught.
4.
Small
group (in pairs) can have quality discussion because if the students work in
pair they will more focus in study and also each member of the group will pay
attention to check his/her friend understanding.
5.
Making
positive interdependence (sink or swim together) its mean that each group
member’s efforts are required and indispensable for group success and also each
group member has a unique contribution to make to the joint effort because we
know everyone have difference skill, ideas so they can contribution what they
know to make their group can reach the goal.
The murder
technique also has its weakness, such as:
1.
It
can make the class little bit noisy because all the students have to speak with
their partner alternately to summarize the key ideas of the reading passage in
order his/her partner can detects any errors, omissions, or unnecessary
information.
2.
This
technique will take a longer because there are many steps that the students
have to done such as: first read the reading passage and then the students as
recaller to summarize the key ideas with the member, and the other member has
to detect any error from what his/her friend said, and then elaborate the idea
and the last the students have to combine their thoughts to summarize the
entire text (write down the conclusion).
3.
The
group setting should be heterogeneous based on the students’ characteristics,
and it should be not too big of each group.
4.
The
wrong choice of choosing the member of each group will make conflict among the
members that will not promote better learning.
5.
The
students will not succeed if they cannot work well together.
6.
The
technique does not work due to students’ passivity.
PART V CONCLUSION
Based on the explanation above, we
can conclude that MURDER as an alternative technique in teaching
learning process. It may improve the teacher’s capability to conduct teaching
learning activity appropriately. Moreover, this technique will encouraged
students to communicate with each others and with the teacher in the classroom.
So, they can work together and it is useful for their socialization and
communication. The students also will able to improve their ability. They can
be more active in the class and be more skillful in understanding an English
lesson because they have been trained to learn effectively using MURDER
technique.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar