BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter consists of five major parts. The first part, background of the study, explains the writer‟s reasons in choosing the topic. The second part, problem identification, formulates the problems that the writer wants to discuss. The third part, research questions, presents the questions to be answered in this study. The fourth part, research goals, presents the goals of this study. In addition, the last part, research benefits, explains some benefits of this study.

A. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

As an international language, English is widely used in every aspect of life such as science, technology and trade. This condition encourages people to be able to communicate in English because they consider that English is an important language in the globalization era. Besides important, English is also considered as beneficial because it can help people communicate with people around the world, get better access of technology and have better education and jobs. There are four skills that people need to acquire when they are learning English; listening, speaking, reading and writing. Speaking is one of the English skills that plays an important role in language studies because it is related to the development of communication skill. Speaking is defined as a process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal or oral form Chaney, 1988 and Gebhard, PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 2 1996. Speaking consists of producing systematic verbal utterances to convey meaning Nunan, 2003. There are four components underlying speaking competency proposed by Canale and Swain 1980; grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. Grammatical competence deals with the construction of grammatical sentences including vocabulary and pronunciation. Sociolinguistic competence deals with how the utterances are produced and understood in different contexts. Discourse competence deals with the rules of cohesion and coherence. Strategic competence deals with how the speaker uses the language to achieve the communicative goals. Those four aspects are important points for English learners to consider if they want to be able to speak English well. In fact, most people have difficulties to accomplish those components in their speaking. Therefore, they feel reluctant to practice their speaking skill. Moreover, they have limited English exposure in their environment because Indonesia is not an English speaking country. From the stated problem, it can be seen that limited English exposure makes students rarely practice their English. It makes students get difficulties in pronouncing words, recognizing new vocabulary and producing grammatical sentences. To overcome the problems, teachers need to facilitate their students to practice their English inside and outside the classroom by providing a tool which can provide them with enough English exposure. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 3 The development of technology makes significant changes in people‟s life. Technology helps people to be more efficient by providing some tools which ease people‟s work. Technology can also help people in the educational systems such as teaching English as a foreign language. Since the object of the study is Senior High School Students, technology is used to facilitate them because they are enthusiastic about technology. In addition, they like spending their time to use gadgets to play games, listen to music, and mingle with friends in social media. This is an opportunity for teachers to develop technology in teaching and learning processes. In this case, technology can be used as a tool which can help teachers to teach English easily and practically by using the mobile technology in language learning. Mobile learning as an educational activity makes sense only when the technology in use is fully mobile and when the users of the technology are also mobile while they learn El-Hussein and Cronje 2010. It means that mobile learning enables students to have a mobile learning process which can be accessed anytime and anywhere. The use of technology in English language learning also enables English learners to have an enjoyable learning because it provides the learners with some interesting features which will make the learners become more motivated and become independent learners. Android is one of the examples of the development of technology which is useful for people. Android is a mobile operating system that is based on a modified version of Linux Li 2012. There are many features provided by Android such as Storage, Connectivity, Messaging, Web browser, Media support, 4 Hardware support, Multi-touch, Multi-tasking, Flash support and Tethering Li, 2012. Those features makes android has similar systems to computer systems. Therefore, it enables teachers to use android to make teaching media which can make English teaching and learning processes easier; especially speaking skill. By using Android, teachers can make interesting and interactive speaking activities which can motivate students to practice their English. The more the students practice their speaking, the better English communication they have. Therefore, it would be more effective to learn through practicing rather than attending lectures or trying to understand theories. The Android application will provide accessible English exposures which enable the students to practice their English anytime and anywhere to facilitate the students to improve their speaking skill.

B. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION