IMPROVING STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL THROUGH DRAMA TECHNIQUE Chapter I

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Research Speaking is the process of building, and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols. Speaking is a crucial part of foreign language learning and teaching in Indonesia. However today every schools is requires that the goal of teaching speaking should improve students’ communicative skills because students can express themselves and learn how to use a language. Mostly

the teaching method before the past few decades, found the

teacher tend to carry out the teaching process in the classroom by applying traditional and monolingual principle ways of teaching unsatisfactorily. This shows that teachers need enrichments to appropriate ways of teaching atmosphere. That’s why in teaching English as the foreign language by applying new and modified fashions in order that the result of the teaching learning process would contribute more input to reach satisfied learning outcome. All over the world recently, where the people encourage that English as their target language used based on whole interactions and communication holding the dominant role of very aspects of their life. English is most widely used in teaching learning process of broader Educational occasions either formal or informal environment.

Nowadays, many teachers agree that students should learn to speak the foreign language by interacting to other. For this case, students should master several speaking components, such as: comprehension, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and fluency. In brief, English teacher should be creative in developing their teaching learning process to create good atmosphere, improve the students speaking skill, give attention to the speaking components and make the English lesson more exciting. Considering such the problems, relating to speaking activities in class and helping students to improve their speaking skill is part of the teacher’s job. He or she is expected to have right teaching techniques to provide students with appropriate teaching materials and to create a positive classroom environment. Therefore, the students will have opportunity to use English among themselves. The teaching – learning process should not only happen between teacher and students but also between students and students. Speaking is an activity used by someone to communicate with other. It takes place every where and has become part of our daily activities. When someone speaks, he or she interacts and uses the language to express his or her ideas, feeling and thought. He or she also shares information to other trough communication. Although speaking has been included in the educational plan for English teaching at school in the past years, the percentage of time devoted to activities in

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which students can communicate with each other in English remains small in the whole class. Speaking is the skill that the students will be judged upon most in real-life situation .It is an important part of everyday interaction and most often the first impression of a person is based on his/her ability to speak fluently and comprehensibly .So, as teachers, we have a responsibility to prepare the students as much as possible to be able to speak English in the real world outside the classroom and the testing room. In English subject, there are many skills that should be learned by the students to master the four basics of language, the skills are: listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Besides the four skills, they also have to master grammar properly. Many students feel difficult in practicing speaking. They are not confident to practice what they have learned in school. Based on the writer’s observation at the second grade of SMPN ……………….., the students are poor in English speaking skill. When the writer asked them some questions about their self identity, some of them cannot answer the questions correctly even some of them did not say anything, they were just silent. The writer found that they are poor in pronouncing their words, intonating their expressions, and they are less in mastering vocabulary. Therefore, the students answered the questions unclear and there are major hesitations. Actually, they have learned this lesson at their

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elementary school. Other case, the students were shy in pronouncing the words because they are afraid to be laughed at by others. English language teacher should also be able to play their role as facilitator for students in their attempt to acquire the spoken language. In the sense that English language teachers should facilitate students in learning the spoken language by giving many oral practices. The other ways are doing group discussion, conducting role play, drama technique and games . These can reduce students’ boredom and allow students to interact with others naturally and may create good competition among them. The English teacher of SMPN ….…………, should apply appropriate method and technique of teaching speaking. Therefore, to successful this method the teacher need a technique and one of them is by using drama technique. Why use drama? Because, it integrates verbal and non-verbal aspects of communication, thus bringing together both mind and body, and restoring the balance between physical and intellectual aspects of learning. Drama, integrates language skills in a natural way. Careful listening is a key feature. Spontaneous verbal expression is integral to most of the activities; and many of them require reading and writing, both as part of the input and the output. Language can be seen as having two functions: transferring information (transactional function) and establishing/maintaining social relationships (interactional function).

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Interactional spoken language is characterized by shifts of topic and short turns. The accuracy and clarity of information is not of primary importance, and facts/views are not normally questioned or challenged. In transactional spoken language longer turns are the norm and there is a clear topic. Since the effective transference of information is the goal, interlocutors are actively engaged in the negotiation of meaning. This reason is transactional language (dialogue) will helps the students practice in speech, pronunciation, intonation and stress like the native speaker. Today, many teachers still use traditional technique in teaching speaking. That is the students read dialogues and then find the difficult words to get the meaning of the dialogue. They are less in practice to speak English. One of the teacher’s reasons that the time constraint and the class size. Based on the background above, the writer conducts as research entitled, “Improving Students’ Speaking Skill through Drama technique: A Classroom Action Research at Eighth Grade of SMPN ………………...

B. Identification of the Problem

Based on previous background, the researcher would like to identify the problem, as follows: 1.

Why do students feel unconfident and shy in speaking English?

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Why are the students afraid of making mistakes in pronouncing word or sentence?

3. What method can be applied in learning speaking? 4. How does drama technique improve the speaking ability of students?

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What can teacher do to help students improve their speaking ability?

6. How to improve students’ speaking skill through drama technique?

C. Limitation of the Research

In this research, the writer should limitation the research on improving the students’ speaking skill through drama technique at eighth grade students of SMPN ……………………..

D. Formulation of the Problem After identifying the problem and then make the limitation of it, the writer would formulate the problem as follow: “How to improve the speaking skill of the students through drama technique?”

E. Benefits of the Study The researcher hopes that this thesis can develop education institution to perform a language laboratory, teacher to use the approach and method properly

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in teaching speaking to their students; it can be use for English teacher in studying which guidelines of the better ways to achieve the successful English Study. The benefit of this research for elementary in SMPN ………………… that the headmaster of the school knows actually teaching and the teacher expects teaching speaking. The students and the headmaster tries provide the equipment of speaking so that, the students speaking can be improved by practicing actively. The students of STKIP ……………… can have a good reference for their knowledge and someday they will make try connected with learning speaking. Then they may make some references of this thesis because this thesis can be put in the library of STKIP ………………… and everybody can read it. By using drama technique in teaching speaking skill to the eighth grade students of SMPN ……………………., it can motivate and encourages of the students to practice speaking English. It makes them enjoy expressing their feeling, ideas, opinion and even in messages and suggestions. Since it is fun activity, it helps students to take port in practice.

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