IMPROVING SPEAKING SKILL THROUGH PICTURE DESCRIBING TECHNIQUE

Abstrak

The use of pictures to improve the students’ speaking skill is important because it may give a significant impact in teaching learning process, especially in teaching English skills that had been conducted in some schools. Actually, the students understand English text but they have no skill to speak English fluently. Sometimes, it is difficult to say what they are thinking because they are missing two or three important words. The use of picture may also create an interesting situation in the classroom. The purpose of this research is to find out the students’ speaking skill in describing the picture because pictures are good visual aid in teaching learning in the classroom. As a media pictures can help the teacher to make the students interest and enjoy in learning especially English. The research method in this research uses the Classroom Action Research (CAR) which is focused to improve students’ speaking skill. The subject of this research is students of the tenth grade of the Senior High School 1 Trimurjo Central Lampung. There are four classes of the tenth grade, but the researcher chooses one of these classes. In conducting this research, the researcher chooses class X C that consists of 22 students. Action research is research that is carried out in the classroom by the teacher that has the purpose of solving the problem or improving the teaching or learning process. In this research, the researcher conducts in 2 cycles. If the first cycle is failed, it will be continued in the second cycle. It is conducted until there is an increasing on the students’ speaking skill.The student’s activity in the implementation of cycle I and II is very active. It means that picture describing technique can improve the student’s activeness. The result of the students’ activities in cycle I and cycle II is increase. It can be seen on the progress of students’ activities from pre-test to cycle I and cycle II. The students’ attention to the teacher’s explanation from 77% become 91%, the students ask/answer question from 68% become 82%, the students’ ability to do the task from 82% become 86%, and the students’ activity in the class from 82% become 91%. So, picture describing technique makes students easy in speaking skill and able to increase the students’ speaking score. It can be seen on the progress from pre-test to cycle I and cycle II. The average score of pre-test is 62.72 and in cycle I is 68.40 while in cycle II is 72.40. It can be inferred that Picture describing technique can improve the students’ speaking skill.

Keywords: Speaking skill, Pictures, Describing Technique