<![CDATA[Speaking is still one of the most difficult skills in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms, as students usually have problems with expressing their ideas confidently and taking active part in oral interaction. Even though communicative learning and culture-based pedagogy have been discussed separately in previous studies, there is a lack of studies on the use of pantun in a case-based learning (CBL) setting in EFL speaking instruction. Thus, this research is aimed at analyzing the implementation of CBL based on Pantun and investigating students’ perceptions toward the learning process. This research was conducted by using a qualitative descriptive approach to 40 students of grade eight at SMP Muhammadiyah 1 Sidoarjo, Indonesia. A classroom observation was used to collect data; semi-structured interviews were conducted and thematically analyzed. The findings indicated three major themes: engagement and collaborative interaction, development of speaking through linguistic scaffolding, and linguistic challenges and meaning negotiation. Contextualized case scenarios and collaborative pantun construction were used to encourage students to be active in speaking activities. Generally, students were positive in their perceptions of the activities, as they were perceived as relatively more interactive and conducive to speaking participation. Furthermore, pantun was a linguistic scaffold that assisted students in more systematically organizing spoken expressions. The current study concludes that CBL based pantun has the potential to support communicative participation and culturally contextualized speaking instruction in EFL classrooms.]]>
