Furthermore, students lacked the sources needed for learning English. Most of them had neither LKS
Lembar Kerja Siswa
nor course books since they were not obligated to buy them. Therefore, sometimes, they just borrowed course books
from library. Handouts were also rarely given to them. So they had to spend all of their time copying the materials. As a
result, students‟ precious speaking time was reduced. Their limited time became even more limited.
If these kinds of situation kept going on, the students might not be able to speak English well. Here, the research team agreed to work collaboratively to
i mprove students‟ speaking skills by promoting the use of comic strips. Among
the various media, comic strips were chosen considering many advantages offered by them. One of them, as Csabay 2006: 25 notes, comic strips help students to
deal with spoken and even informal language. Moreover, they prevent students from sounding bookish as many of them are only exposed to written, formal
language.
B. Identification of the problems
The researcher worked with the English teacher to identify the problems of teaching and learning process of English in SMP N 15 Yogyakarta. There were
several problems appeared. However, the main problems that were faced came from the students, the teacher, the learning process, and the learning material.
1. Problem related to the students
Students‟ speaking skills were low. They often mispronounced some English words. They also lacked the necessary vocabulary items. Most of them
just relied on the teacher by asking her directly about the meanings of some English words. Besides, their grammar competencies were also poor.
Students ‟ participation was low. During the lesson, most students just kept
silence and acted as teacher‟s audience. They gave less responses to teacher‟s explanation or questions. This happened because students were not confident with
their language and ideas. Another reason was they were afraid of making mistakes and being laughed by their friends.
In addition, some students tended to avoid speaking due to their fear of teacher‟s scolding, fear of classmates‟ laughing or being
simply shy.
2. Problem related to the teacher
The teacher should use English as much as possible in the classroom, but in fact she used Indonesian almost all of the time to explain the material and to give
feedback. She only used English expressions to open and end the class.
Meanwhile, it was revealed that there was less opportunity for the students to practice speaking as the
teacher did not provide students with adequate opportunities to speak English. She believed in the importance of teaching
speaking yet she did not spend enough time for that because priority was given to the subjects tested in the national exam.
3. Problems related to process
In relation to the teaching and learning process, the problems laid on the classroom activities and speaking practices. They were monotonous that drove the
students to be bored. There were no fun and challenging activities letting the students to have speaking practices. The classroom activities were dominated by
translating words, sentences, or phrases and memorizing a dialog. The teaching and learning process also lacked the use of interesting media.
The writing board and board markers were the media used frequently in the classroom. Consequently, students were not attracted to the lesson. They got
bored with typical teaching and learning process in the classroom which depended too much on textbooks. As a result, some of the students did not pay full attention
to the teacher. Sometimes they talked with their friends about something unrelated to the lesson.
4. Problems related to learning material.
Most students had neither LKS
Lemba r Kerja Siswa
nor course books. They often relied on the books borrowedfrom library. Moreover, handouts
containing brief materials and tasks were rarely given to them. As a consequence, they had to spend a lot of time to take notes. It made the
students‟ limited speaking time became even more limited.
C. Limitation of the Problems
