CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
Language as
the tool of communication has an important role to reveal an intention to
someone else. People will be able to express their thought and feeling by using
language. Language, communication and life can not be separated. Language can
be applied in many aspects, such as: education, society, politics, economics,
and culture. One of the ways in communication is through speaking.
Speaking is
one of the important and essential skills that must be practised to communicate
orally. By speaking people are able to know what kinds of situations the world.
People who have ability in speaking will be better in sending and receiving
information or message to another. Speaking is the process of building and
sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non verbal symbol in various
contexts.
According to
Stevick (1982: 103) speaking refers to the gap between linguistic expertise and
teaching methodology. Linguistic expertise concerns with language structure and
language content. Teaching speaking is not like listening, reading, and
writing. It needs habit formation because it is a real communication. The
speaking needs to be practiced as often as possible. It is not like writing and
reading but speaking must be practiced directly in full expression.
Related to
the statements above, the researcher did pre - observation that was done at the
eighth year students of SMPN 27 Makassar, the researcher faced many problems in
teaching learning English. The crucial problems were the students’ problems in
speaking. The problems were; first, the students always did mistakes in grammar
and pronunciation aspect. Basically, they only spoke English but they did not
pay attention to the sentence structure and correct pronunciation. Second, the
students were afraid of making mistake in speaking English. It indicates that
the students had limited vocabulary. Third, the students were difficult to
speak fluently because they were seldom to practice their English language.
Based on the
result interview of the English teacher at the eighth year students of SMPN 27
Makassar in VIII - I stated that the mean score of the students’ achievement in
speaking English was very low. It was about 5.5 mean score and the target score
that would be achieved was 7.5.
From
the problems above the researcher applied one of teaching techniques. That was
an interesting technique and it could improve the student’s speaking ability,
namely Cue Card. The
technique was designed to create the students’ interest to learn with pleasant
method. The core of Cue
Card is corporation between groups and shared.
Cue card is
introduced as one of the teaching media. Cue card is card with words or picture
on, which are used to encourage the students to respond (Harmer, 2001:134). Cue
card is interesting due to its simplicity and attractiveness. Besides
inexpensive, the process of making it is not quite complicated. A teacher,
sometimes, needs creativity to make the cards more attractive. Cue card as the
modification of picture has many advantages, one of which is that
it is clearly visible. Thus, when students are asked to describe
something/someone in detail, cue cards can help them to produce the description
easily
Based on the
statements above, the researcher used cue cards to overcome the students’
problems in speaking. The researcher was interested to apply this technique to
teach speaking at the eighth year students of SMPN 27 Makassar in order to
improve their ability in speaking.
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