Background of the Study

Secondly, the problem comes from the teacher. Successful measurement of teaching learning process is the teacher’s competencies. A good teacher must have four initial competencies: technicalprofessional knowledge, pedagogical, interpersonal and social skills. An EFL teacher should have sufficient knowledge and master English well so that the students will get the correct thing from the teacher. Besides having good knowledge of English, preparing suitable media and material are also the teachers’ capability that should exist. In addition, they should really know the way in teaching and delivering material for the learners based on their need analysis. It is called as a pedagogical skill. For instance, the teacher can make a strategy thoughtfully when there were found lesser student in certain class or even bad tempered student. By considering those factors, it is argued that the need of the interpersonal skill like being patient in working with lesser students’ ability can be very useful. Moreover, the EFL teachers should have enthusiasm, warmth rapport, and sense of humor also awareness of cross cultural differences. The teacher is responsible in creating students’ behavior to be better. So a good instructor must have good attitude and skill in maintaining an inquisitive mind in trying out new ways of teaching. Those are the examples of social skill that should be had by EFL teacher in the class. The existing material and supporting media were the third problem that was found in SMAN 2 Sleman. There was only one LCD projector in that school and all of the teacher will take turn to use it. The teacher mostly uses LKS worksheet in presenting the material than uses the authentic material. Speaking class need more practice than doing the written assignment as in the LKS does. Because of the used of LKS in a half time of teaching learning process, the students did not get understanding of many certain expressions and how to use it properly. The next problem deals with the methodology that the teacher applied in a classroom that was also far from appropriateness. There were inadequate meaningful activities which were provided by the teacher in speaking session. Teaching grammar was mostly done by the teacher during the classroom process. The teacher did not imply communicative language teaching consisting meaningful activities in the English classroom. In this case, students had less oppoto rtunity practice speaking orally in front of the class. Thus, to make students willing to practicing English, the teacher should provide proper modeling text and creative activities so that the students can use the language easily and be more active to speak English in the following day. The last problem is related to the school environment. The students’ habit in speaking English in English lesson was limited. In addition, the students were ashamed and felt hesitation to speak English. In fact, supporting environment is very needed to build students’ confidence. Based on those found problems, there must be new formulas as a solution of the problems to improve the students’ speaking ability.

C. Limitation of the Problem

From the identification of the problems, the problems were found in the teaching and learning process in grade XI IPS 2 at SMAN 2 Sleman Yogyakarta are various and wide. The problems are related to the students, the teacher, the materials, the teaching methods and the school environment. Unfortunately, in this action research, the researcher had limited time to overcome all of the problems. Based on that, there would be two of the problems that would be solved; those were the problems were the students and the teaching technique.

D. Formulation of the Problem

As the researcher discussed in the background of the problems, identification of the problems, and the limitation of the problems, the formulation of the problem in this research can be formulated as follows. 1. How are directed discussion games used to improve the students’ speaking ability? 2. Can the use of directed discussion games improve the students’ speaking skill?