INTEGRATING THINK-PAIR-SHARE WITH CHAIN DRILL TO ENHANCE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING ACHIEVEMENT.

This study examined the significant differences in students’ speaking achievement between those instructed through the integration of the Think–Pair–Share (TPS) strategy with the Chain Drill technique and those taught using the conventional TPS strategy. It also aimed to identify the speaking aspect that showed the greatest improvement following the implementation of the integrated approach. The participants were eighth-grade students of SMP Darusalamah, with classes VII A and VII B serving as the research sample. A quantitative research design was employed, in which the experimental group received instruction through the integration of TPS and the Chain Drill technique, while the control group was taught using the original TPS strategy. Data were collected using a speaking test and analyzed through independent samples t-tests and paired samples t-tests. The results indicated a statistically significant difference in students’ speaking achievement, this was reflected in the n-gain scores for speaking, which were 72.7for the experimental class and 59.2 for the control class, it was also evidenced by a significance value of 0.000. Furthermore, fluency emerged as the most improved speaking aspect. Overall, the findings demonstrate that integrating TPS with the Chain Drill technique is more effective than the original TPS strategy in enhancing students’ speaking achievement. Keywords: Think-Pair-Share, Chain Drill, speaking achievement, cooperative learning, descriptive text, seventh-grade students