CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A. Background of Study
The emergence of globalization era which has caused no distance between countries in this world, force people to decide an international language
to overcome the communication problems when people from different countries with different languages meet in some occasions. Today, the first international
language is English. Therefore, almost all people in this world try to master English in order to be accepted in this globalization era.
The ever-growing need for good communication skills in English has created a huge demand for English teaching around the world.
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Millions of people today want to improve their command of English or to ensure that their children
achieve a good command of English. The opportunities to learn English are provided in many different ways such as through formal instruction, travel, study
abroad, as well as through the media and the Internet. The worldwide demand for English has created an enormous demand for quality language teaching and
language teaching materials and resources. Communication is an essential need for human being. Language as a
means of communication has an important role to reveal an intention to someone else. Since language is a means of communication, it is not enough for students to
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Jack C. Richards, Communicative Language Teaching Today, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p.1
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learn words, phrases and grammatical features if they want to produce language in their daily communication or to interact with others in English. Therefore, we
should consider the goal of English teaching today, that is to develop what Hymes in Jack C. Richard’s referred to as “communicative competence”. Communicative
competence is a definition of what a speaker needs to know in order to be communicatively competent in a speech community.
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One of the ways in communication is through speaking. Therefore, the most important thing that should be noticed in teaching speaking is how to
activate all of language elements, such as vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, which students have possessed to communicate, since the main
function of language is a means of communication. It means that the goal for students learning English speaking is that they are able to use language to
communicate effectively and appropriately for all life’s requirements, both social and academic.
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The students have to be able to express their thoughts, ideas, and feelings orally in English without thinking for a long time before saying what they
wish to say. Speaking in a second or foreign language has often been viewed as the
most demanding of the four skills.
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Many people today realize that their aims to study English is to be able to communicate in English, it is suitable with the
theory of language according to communicative approach that is “language as a means of communication”.
Students often think that the ability to speak a language is the product of language learning, but speaking is also a crucial part of the language learning
process. Effective teachers teach students speaking strategies that they can use to help themselves expand their knowledge of the language and their confidence in
using it.
2
Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rodgers, Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching A Description and Analysis, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 69.
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Teresa Walter, Teaching English Language Learners, New York: Pearson Education, 2004, p. 16.
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Kathleen M. Baley and Lance Savage, New Ways in Teaching Speaking, Bloomington: Pantagraph, 1994, p. vii
The frequency in using the language will determine the success in speaking ability. Therefore, teacher should create a teaching strategy that
stimulates and motivates student to talk in English. Since English in Indonesia is a foreign language, so the most comfortable place for the students to speak English
is in the classroom. There are three main reasons for getting students to speak in the classroom. Firstly, speaking activities provide rehearsal opportunities –
chances to practice real-life speaking in the safety of the classroom. Secondly, speaking tasks in which students try to use any or all of the language elements
they know to provide feedback for both teacher and students. Finally, this is also the opportunities for the students to activate the various elements of language they
have stored in their brains.
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Unfortunately, this condition rarely occurs to the students of X grade of SMA Triguna Utama Ciputat.
In teaching speaking at X grade of SMA Triguna Utama, the teacher teaches the students traditionally. The teacher asks the students to read a dialogue
in the textbook together. Then, the teacher asks the students to perform that dialogue in front of the class without asking them to develop a more
communicative dialogue using their own way. So, they only memorize the dialogue and most of the students do not know how to use some expressions
taught by their teacher in a real communication. This teaching strategy can not help the students to use language as a means of communication.
This strategy influences the teaching of speaking which cause many problems. First, it relates to the condition of students who are lack of vocabulary
which will make them unable to say words or sentences in a real communication. Second, the students get used to speak Indonesian language while the most
comfortable place for the students to speak English is in the classroom, since English in Indonesia is a foreign language. Fourth, most of the students are not
confident to use English in speaking class. For instance, when the teacher asks them to come forward to have a conversation with their friends, they refuse it.
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Jeremy Harmer, How to teach English, Harlow: Pearson education limited, 2007, p. 123
They are shy to perform English conversation in front of their friends. Consequently it makes them uninterested in learning English.
The teacher also has difficulties to teach in large class. The main problem is the way to manage it. During the teaching hours the teacher should make the
students pay attention to the materials given to them and also to their friends’ performances in front of the class. It needs hard work for getting students
attention without giving them an interesting activity for more than one hour. Based on the problems above, the writer tries to give a solution for the
teacher to implement an English teaching strategy which can motivate and give more opportunities for the learner to speak English in the class, that is information
gap activities. This strategy is designed to create students’ interests to learn with pleasant. In an information gap activity two speakers have different bits of
information, and they can only complete the whole picture by sharing that information-because they have different information, there is a ‘gap’ between
them.
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Using information gap activities in teaching speaking will encourage the students to speak and it will activate the various elements of language they have
stored in their brains. Another advantage of information gap activities is that students are forced to negotiate meaning because they must make what they are
saying comprehensible to others in order to accomplish the task. These types of activities are extremely effective in the foreign language classroom. They give
every student opportunity to speak in the target language for an extended period of time and students naturally produce more speech than they would otherwise. In
addition, speaking with peers is less intimidating than presenting in front of the entire class and being evaluated.
Based on the problems above, it encourages us to think how to manage a classroom activities to be a communicative class so that the students can
participate actively in the teaching and learning process and then we can achieve the objective of English learning as stated above, that is “communicative
competence”. So, in presenting this paper the writer will try to study how to
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Jeremy Harmer, How to teach English, Harlow: Pearson education limited, 2007, p. 129
improve student’s speaking ability by using information gap activities at X grade of SMA Triguna Utama Ciputat.
B. Limitation and Formulation of Problem
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