Sunday, March 15, 2015

Improving Student’s Speaking Skill at SMP Wahid Hasyim Malang by Using Communicative Language Teaching

By Sujito



CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents about background of the study, research problem, objective of research, significance of research, scope and limitation of the research and definition of key terms.
1.1  Background of Study
English become the most important language in the world. At present, learning English as a foreign language is very importance, since English is the key to the international currencies of technology and commerce (Hutchinson and waters, 1989:6). As international language, learning English become popular in some of country. As like in Indonesia, English become one subject that be mastered. And many society began realize about this fact.
Actually, there are four basics skill that should be mastered in Junior High school. They are: speaking, reading, writing, and listening. In Junior High school, each skill needs more understanding for the student. Because their level up to intermediate level and this is a new change for them improve the new language that different with their first language or mother language. It is not easy to master all the skills. There must be one important skill that covers the whole skills.
 Based on the statement above speaking is the most important skill that should be mastered by students in order to communicate in English fluently. In this case, the students must study hard to master it and the teacher should create a good atmosphere in class. Speaking activities do not work in class because many factors prevent students from speaking English with their friends. They are afraid of making mistakes, of being laughed at by his or her friends and having lack of confidence in their ability because all of them have different thing to each other. Perhaps it likes an extended family of different approach, it is the case with most families, and not all students live harmoniously together all of time. However, no one is willing to assert that they do not belong to the family’ (Nunan, 2004:7)
Considering problem, relating to speaking activities in class and helping students to improve their speaking skill in part of the teacher’s job. He or she expected to have right teaching method to provide students with appropriate teaching materials and to create a positive classroom environment.
As professional teacher in language teaching, especially the teaching of English a foreign language, teachers mostly spend much of time on appropriate teaching methodologist for greater effectiveness in student acquisitions on English, designing and implementing materials, test, and practice. Teachers are responsible to educate the students from little or no knowledge to sufficient English speaking environment. The teaching process should not only happen between teachers and students but also between students and students.
Speaking is to express or communicate opinions, feelings, ideas, or as talking and it involve the activities in the part of speakers as psychological and physical stages (Oxford Advance Dictionary, 13). It takes place very where and has become part of our daily activities. When someone speaks, he or she interact and uses the language to express his or her ideas, feeling and thought.  He or she also shares information to other through communication. In the classroom, the teachers must create the situation that can encourage real communication. Many methods can be designed to make major’s element lively.
            One of many popular methods is Communicative Language Teaching Method. Communicative Language Teaching Method centers on the essential belief that if students are involved in meaning-focused communicative task, plentiful exposure to language in used and plenty opportunities to use it are vitally important for a student’s development of knowledge and skill. Activities in Communicative Language Teaching Method typically involve student in real or realistic communication such as speaking, where the successful achievement of the communicative task they are performing is at least as important as the accuracy of their language use.
Speaking actually is to express opinions, feelings, ideas and the process of sharing meaningful through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in variety context. Speaking is important because by speaking people understanding the meaning that was expressed each other. Include Junior High School, it is important because it to understanding each other, students to students and students to teachers, especially speaking of English. Beside to understanding each other, in Junior High School speaking is one of the four subjects of English course that must be mastered.
In second year students of SMP WAHID HASYIM MALANG, the English course has a problem, especially speaking. Score of speaking English’s students in second year is low mostly. Their score is 5.5; this is lower than the minimal standard score.
Based on the statements above, the researcher will conduct the research to improve the second year students of SMP WAHID HASYIM MALANG by title “IMPROVING STUDENT’S SPEAKING SKILL AT SMP WAHID HASYIM MALANG BY USING COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODE”.




1.2 Research Problem
Based on the background of study above, the statement of the problem as follows: How can Communicative Language Teaching Method improve the students’ speaking at second year students of SMP WAHID HASYIM Malang?
1.3 Objective of Research
This study aims to describe how Communicative Language Teaching Method can improve the students’ speaking at second year students of SMP WAHID HASYIM Malang.
1.4  Significance of Research
This study expected to give contribution for English teacher in general, especially for SMP WAHID HASYIM MALANG and they can informed about the use of Communicative Language Teaching Method as means to improve the students’ speaking. The student can use it to improve their English speaking.

1.5 Scope and Limitation of the Research
The scope and limitation of this study is focused on improving one of the four subject of English course in SMP WAHID HASYIM MALANG, the subject is speaking English. The method will be used is Communicative Language Teaching Method. And the subject of this study is second year students of SMP WAHID HASYM MALANG


1.6 Definition of Key Terms
In order to avoid misunderstanding or get the same perception of the terms used in the study, the following definitions are given:
1.      Speaking: is process of communicate to express opinions, feelings, ideas in order to understanding each other, student to student or student to teacher, share information and build the relations. Speaking in this case is one of the subjects of English course that must be mastered in Junior High School.  
2.      Improving                                          
The term improving in this study is to increase the students’ score on one of four subject of English course that must be mastered, the skill is speaking skill. It means that the score of speaking skill should be rise up than before the Communicative Language Teaching given.
3.      Communicative Language Teaching Method
Centers on the essential belief that if students are involved in meaning-focused communicative task, plentiful exposure to language in used and plenty opportunities to use it are vitally important for a student’s development of knowledge and skill.


CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter deal with theoretical overviews related to the topic being discussed. They are:  Definition of Speaking, Students and Speaking, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), reviewing the Techniques and the Materials.
2.1 Definition of Speaking
Speaking is one of the skills that have to be mastered by students in learning English. It is important for the students to know definitions first. Many experts define speaking in deferent ways.
1.        Brown and Yule stated in their book: “The speakers say words to the listener not only to express what in her mind but also to express what he needs whether information service. Most people might spend of their everyday life in communicating with other.”
2.        Jane Revell: “Communication, of ideas, of opinions, of feeling.” Therefore, communication involves at least two people where both sender and receiver need to communicate to exchange information, ideas, opinions, views, of feeling.
Meanwhile, Jones stated, “Speaking is a form of communication.” We can say that the speaker must consider the person they are talking to as listeners. The activity that the person does primary based on particular goal, it is important that everything we want to say is conveyed in an effective way, because speaking is not only producing sounds but also a process of achieving goals that involves transferring message across. Jones said, “How you say something can be important as what you say in getting your meaning across.” Therefore, speaking process should pay attention to want and how to say as well as to whom appropriately.
2.2 Students and Speaking
Getting students to speak in class can sometimes be extremely easy. In good class atmosphere, students who get on with each other, and whose English is at an appropriate level, will often participate freely and enthusiastically if we give them a suitable topic and task. However, at other time it is not so easy to get students going.  Maybe the class mix is not quite right. Perhaps we have not chosen the right kind of topic. Sometimes it is the organization of the task which is at fault. But the problem that occurs more often than any of these is the natural reluctance of some students to speak and to take a part. In such situations the role(s) that teachers play will be crucial.
2.2.1 Reluctant students
Students are often reluctant to speak because they are shy and are not predisposed to expressing themselves in front of other people, especially when they are being asked to give personal information or opinions. Frequently, too, there is a worry about speaking badly and therefore losing face in front of their classmate. In such situations there are a number of things we can do to help.
2.2.1.1 Preparation
Wilson is describing the value of planning and rehearsal for speaking success, and students, too, will perform much better if the have the change to think about what are going to say and how to say it. This may involve just giving them quite time to think in their heads about how they will speak, or it mean letting them practice dialogues in pairs before having to do anything more public.
Marc Helgesen suggests making a feature of this thinking-in-our-heads (that is trying out a conversation in our minds). He suggests a series of ten tasks that students can do on their own (Helgesen, 2003). For example, when they are on bus, they can image they are in a taxi and give the imaginary taxi driver directions. They can practice telling themselves about the best thing that happened to them today or tell the person in their head about their plans for the future.
Paul Mennin describes how student’s record presentations they are going to make, transcribe what they have said, correct it and then hand it over to the teacher for further comment before finally making the presentation (Mennin 2003). There will be times when we want and expect spontaneous production from students, but at other times we will allow them to prepare themselves for the speaking they are going to do.
2.2.1.2 The Value of Repetitions
Repetition has many beneficial effects. Each new encounters with a word or phrase help to fix it inn the students’ memory. Repetition has other benefits, too: it allows students to improve on what they did before. They can think about how to re-word things or just get a feel for how it sounds.
When students repeat speaking tasks they have already done once (or twice), their first attempt is like a rehearsal for the final effort. Each rehearsal gives them more confidence as they are not attempting to get the word out for the first time when they try to speak in subsequent ‘performance’.
Repetition works even better if students get a chance to analyze what they have already done. This analysis may come from fellow students or from the teacher, but if the get a chance to evaluate what they have done-or at least get feedback about it – their performance second or third time round can only get better. Paul Howarth (2001a and b) describes this as process speaking, characterized by the pattern:
Plan → perform → analyze ←→ repeat
If we ask students to make presentations or tell stories, repetition obviously make sense in the same way as getting students to draft and re-draft their writing. But letting students rehearse conversational exchanges works, too. If students have had a chance to try out exchange, they will do it much more confidently and fluently when they do it in second time.
2.2.1.3 Big Groups and Small Groups
A major reason for the reluctance of some students to make part in speaking activities is that they find themselves having to talk in front of big group. A way of counteracting this is by making sure that they get chance to speak and interact in smaller groups, too. This can be preparation for dialogues-making or discussion.
2.2.2 The Role of the Teacher
As with any other type to classroom procedure, teacher needs to play number of different roles during the speaking activities. However, three have particular relevance if the teacher trying to get students to speak fluently:
2.2.2.1 Prompter
Students sometimes get lost, cannot think of what to say next or in some other way lose the fluency we expect of them. We can leave them to struggle out of such situations on their own, and indeed sometimes this may be the best option. However, we may be able to help them and the activity to progress by offering discrete suggestions. If this can be done supportively, without disrupting the discussion or forcing students out of role, it will stop the sense of frustration that some students feel when they come to a dead end of language or ideas.
2.2.2.2 Participant
Teacher should be good animators when asking students to produce language. Sometimes this can be achieved by setting up an activity clearly and with enthusiasm. At other times, however, teachers may want to participate in discussion or role-plays themselves. That way they can prompt covertly, introduce new information to help the activity along, ensure continuing students engagement and generally maintain a creative atmosphere. However, in such circumstances they have to be careful that they do not participate too much, thus dominating the speaking and drawing all the attention to them.
There is a special sense in which teachers act as participants and that is when they are in dialog with the class. Just as one-to-one teacher may engage in direct conversation with their students (and co-construct dialogue, thereby scaffolding their learning), so in dialogic events in larger groups, the teacher and students may talk together communicatively as near-equal participants. These are often very special moments in the lesson, although we have to be careful not to take over the classroom so that students lose opportunities for speaking.
2.2.2.3 Feedback Provider
The vexed question of when and how to give feedback in speaking activities is answered by considering carefully the effect of possible different approaches.
When students are in middle of speaking task, over-correction may inhibit them and taking the communicativeness out of the activity. On the other hand, helpful and gentle correction may get students out of difficult misunderstanding and hesitations. Everything depends upon our tact and the appropriacy of the feedback we give in particular situations.
When students complete activity, it is vital that we allow them to access what they have done and that we tell them what, in our opinion, went well. We will respond to the content of the activity as well as language used.
A crucial part of teacher’s job when organizing speaking activities is to make sure that the students understand exactly what they are supposed to do. This involve giving instructions and, where appropriate, demonstrating the activity with student or students so that no one is in any doubt about what they should be doing.
2.3 Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
The real problem when attempting to define CLT (or the Communicative approach as it was originally called) is that it means different things to different people. Or perhaps it is like an extended family of different approaches, and ‘… as is the case with most families, not all members live harmoniously together all the time. There are squabbles and disagreements, if not outright wars, from time to time. However, no one is willing to assert that they do not belong to family’ (Nunan 2004:7).
One of the things that CLT embrace within its family is the concept of how language is used. Instead of concentrating solely on grammar, pioneers such as David Wilkins in the 1970s looked at what notions language expressed and what communicative functions people performed with language (Wilkins 1976). The concern was with spoken functions as much as with written grammar, and notions of when and how it was appropriate to say certain things were of primary importance. Thus communicative language teacher taught people to invite and apologize, to agree and disagree, alongside making sure they could use the past perfect or the second conditional.
A Major strand of CLT centre around the essential belief that if students are involved in meaning-focused communicative task, then ‘language learning will take care of itself’ and that plentiful exposure to language in use and plenty of opportunities to use it are vitally importance to a student’s development of knowledge and skill. Activities in CLT typically involve students real or in realistic communication, where the successful achievement of the communicative task they are performing is at least as important as the accuracy of their language use. Thus role-play and simulation have become popular in CLT. For example, students make simulate a television program or the scene at an airport – or they might put together the simulated front page of a newspaper. In order communicative activities, students have to solve a puzzle and can only do so by sharing information. Sometimes they have to write a poem or construct a story together.
In order for these activities to be truly communicative, it was suggested from the very beginning, students should have a desire to communicative something. They should have a purpose for communicating (e.g. to make a point, to buy an airline ticket or to write a letter to a newspaper). They should be focused on the content of what they are saying or writing rather than on a particular language form. They should a variety of language rather than just one language structure. The teacher will not intervene to stop the activity; and the materials he or she relies on will not dictate what specific language forms the students use either. In other words, such activities should attempt to replicate real communication. All this is seen as being in marked contrast to the kind of teaching and learning we saw in an above. They are at opposite ends of a ‘communication continuum’ as shown in Figure 5.
Not all activities in CLT occur at either extreme of the continuum, however. Some may be further toward the communicative end, whereas some may be more non-communicative. An activity in which student have to go round the class asking question with a communicative purpose, but using certain prescribes structures (e.g. have you ever done a bungee jump? Have you climbed a mountain? Have you ever been white-water rafting?) May be edging towards the non-communicative end of the continuum, whereas another, where students have to interview each other about a holiday they went on, might be nearer the communicative end.
A key to the enhancement of communicative purpose and the desire to communicative is the information gap. A traditional classroom exchange in which one of student asks where the library? And another student answer it’s on Green Street, opposite the bank when they can both see it and both know the answer, is not much like real communication. If, however, the first students have map which does not have the library shown on it, while the other student has a different map with library written on the correct building – but which the first student cannot see – then there is a gap between the knowledge which the two participants have. In order for the first student to locate the library on their map, that information gap needs to be closed.
CLT, therefore, with its different strands of what to teach (utterance as well as sentences functions as well as grammar) and how to teach it (meaning-focused communicative task as well as more the traditional study techniques), has become a generalized ‘umbrella’ terms to describe learning sequences which aim to improve the students’ ability to communicative. This is in stark contrast to teaching which is aimed more at learning bits of language just because they exist- without focusing on their use in communication.
However, CLT has come under attack for being prejudiced in favour in native-speaker teachers by demanding by relatively uncontrolled range of language use on the part of the student, and thus expecting the teacher to be able to respond to any and every language problem which may come up (Medgyes 1992). In promoting a methodology which is based around group – and pair work, with teacher intervention kept to a minimum during, say, a role-play, CLT may also offend against educational traditions which rely on a more teacher-centered approach. CLT has sometimes been seen as having eroded the explicit teaching of grammar with a consequent loss among students of accuracy in the pursuit of fluency. Perhaps there is a danger in ‘a general over-emphasis on performance at the expense of progress’ (Wicksteed 1998:3). Finally, some commentators suggest that many so-called communicative activities are no more or less real than traditional exercises. Getting people to write a letter, buy an airline tickets, find out train times ( Prabhu 2003), or go and look something up ( Allwrigh, 2003), is just as contrived as many more traditional exercises, and does not, in fact, arise from any genuine communicative purpose.
Despite these reservations, however, the communicative approach has left an indelible mark on teaching and learning, resulting in the use of communicative activities in classrooms all over the world.
2.4 Reviewing the Techniques and the Materials
There may be aspects of CTL that can find appealing. This review has been provided in the event to try to use any of the techniques or materials associated with CLT.
2.4.1 Authentic materials
To overcome the typical problem that students can not transfer what they learn in the classroom to the outside world and expose students to natural language in a variety of situations, adherents of CLT advocate the use of language materials authentic to native speaker of the target language. In this lesson the teacher uses a real newspaper article. He or she also assigns the students homework, requiring that they listen to a live radio or television broadcast.
Of course, the class that observed was at high intermediate level of proficiency, for students with lower proficiency in the target language, it may not be possible to use language materials such as these. More accessible materials (for example, the use of weather forecast when working on predictions), or at least ones that are realistic, are most desirable. With a lower level class it is possible to use realia that do not contain a lot of language, but about which a lot of discussion could be generated. Menus in the target language are an example; timetable or another.
   2.4.2 Picture Narrating
This activity is based on several sequential pictures. Students are asked to tell the story taking place in the sequential pictures by paying attention to the criteria provided by the teacher as a rubric. Rubrics can include the vocabulary or structures they need to use while narrating.
2.4.3 Language Games
Games are used frequently in CLT. They students find them enjoyable, and if they are properly design, they give students valuable communicative practice. Morrow’s three feature, of communicative activities were manifested in the card game the observed in following way: an information gap existed because the speaker did not know what her classmate was going to do following weekend. The speaker had a choice as to what she or he would predict (which sport) or how she or he would predict it (which form would take). The speaker received feedback from the members of the group. If her or his prediction was incomprehensible, then none of the members of the group would respond. If she or hen meaningful response, she or he could presume her or his prediction was understood.
2.4.4 Picture Strip Story
Many activities can be done with picture strip stories. A way that suggested is one in the discussion of creambled sentences.
In the activities that observed, one student in small group was given a strip story. She showed the first pictures of the story to the other members of her group and asked them to predict what the second picture would look like. An information gap existed—the students in the group did not know what the pictures contained. They had a choice as to what their prediction would be and how they would word it. They received feedback, not on the form but on the content of the prediction, by being able to view the picture and compare it with their prediction.
The activity just described is an example of using a problem-solving task as a communicative technique. Problem-solving task work well in CTL because they usually include the three features of communication. What’s more, they can be structured so that students share information’s or work together to arrive at a solution. This gives students practice in negotiating meaning.
2.4.5 Role Play
Role plays are very important in CLT because they give students an opportunity to practice communicating in different social context and in different social roles. Role play can be set up  so that they are very structured (for example, the teacher tells the students who they are and what they should say) or in less structured way (for example, the teacher tells students who they are, what the situation is, and what they are talking about, but the students determine what they will say). The latter is more in keeping with CLT, of course, because it gives the students more of a choice. Notice that role plays structured like this also provides information gaps since students cannot be sure (as with most forms of communication) what the other person or people will say (there is a natural unpredictability). Students also receive feedback on whether or not they have effectively communicated.
2.4.6 Discussion
A discussion can be held for various reasons. The students may aim to arrive at a conclusion, share ideas about an event, or find solutions in their discussion groups. Before the discussion, it is essential that the purpose of the discussion activity is set by the teacher. In this way, the discussion points are relevant to this purpose, so that students do not spend their time chatting with each other about irrelevant things. For example, students can become involved in agree/disagree discussions. In this type of discussions, the teacher can form groups of students, preferably 4 or 5 in each group, and provide controversial sentences like “people learn best when they read vs. people learn best when they travel”.
2.5 Previous Study
There are some literature that researcher found related with this study. That literature can support the researcher to conduct the strategy will be used. The previous study as follows:
By Yusman (2008) State University of Malang, “Improving Student’s Speaking Using Communicative Language Teaching at second grade SMPN 1 PAGAK”. The study indicated that Communicative Language Teaching can improve students speaking and student’s English achievement, especially in speaking subject. 


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