Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

English currently develops into more significant language for people in Indonesia. First of all, Indonesia as a developing country needs some information exchange of science, technology, economy, and etc. from other developed countries to improve the quality of human life. For example, how to encourage the people in conducting a research and making inovation in technology; how to improve the quality of health and education institution; how to solve the poverty, and etc. In this situation, it is difficult for Indonesian people to get some information and knowledge without understanding English well. For that reason, Indonesian people need to be able to learn and speak English fluently for narrowing gap among the people on the world through communication. English language teaching to vocational school learners has some important roles in recent years. Firstly, the vocational schools learners in Indonesia aim to enable students to develop oral communication competencies in school context. It means that the students are expected to have a good speaking skill in communicating with different people and different communicative purposes. Secondly, the vocational graduates are prepared to enter the working world or entrepreneur business. It means that English hopefully may help the students to open the connection among people in this world to support their business. Therefore, English is important to vocational school learners in 2 developing skills in communication and helping the students to build up the awareness of the importance of English for the future. The students of vocational schools are demanded to have some skills to support their specific competence especially in English. They are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Listening and speaking skill can help students to improve their oral skills in English. These skills are useful when two or more people are involved in direct communication. A good oral skill is needed to communicate with people in schools, people in working areas, and foreigners. Moreover, writing and reading will help students in written expressions. These skills are usually used in indirect communication. In conclusion, listening, speaking, reading, and writing are essential skills in English to be learned. Speaking is one of important skills in English for some reasons. First, speaking is process to carry out conversation. In the process of speaking, it involves two or more people in the same time and context. One is a listener and the other is speaker, or in other words, it is called with reciprocal process. The process of speaking is running since two people or more have a conversation at the same time. Second, speaking is process to get information or meaning from others. When the people are talking with others, they are actually telling or sharing information about something which are discussed. In order to know that information can be kept in people’s mind or not, it is depend on process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving, and processing information. If the people consider some points are important or have a deep emotion, the people’s mind send an order to brain for saving the information in 3 short-term memory for a while and continued with sending into long-term memory. Otherwise, if the people think some points are not important, the people’s mind send an order to brain for saving the information only in short-term memory. As a result, the people will forget unnecessary things easily. Third, speaking is the way to build a good social relationship. The mankind cannot live without interacting with other people. In addition, the people need someone’s help to make sure their daily activities are running well. Furthermore, with speaking activities, the people can give motivation, support, effort, symphaty to express what they feel toward others. It helps people to make a good relationship to each other. Thus, speaking skill is necessary things for our life. The problems occur in SMK N 1 Depok related with this speaking skills. Commonly, they come from teacher and student problems. For teacher’s problem, it might occur for the current situation. For example, the method or technique is not interesting for the students to support their speaking activities in class. So, the students are not motivated to practice speaking effectively. Another problem from teacher is related to opportunities that are given to the students itself. Speaking needs more allocation time to practice. So, practicing in group is one way to facilitate and give the students more chances to ask, respond, give a comment without afraid to make mistakes. Next problem comes from the students. For instance, the students are not maximum and active in the practice of speaking skill in the class. They are mostly passive and difficult to involve in conversation or discussion of speaking lesson in English. So, there are only few students who can follow the speaking class 4 material given by the teacher. Furthermore, the students do not speak fluently because lack of vocabulary mastery. It makes them feeling afraid to speak and make mistakes because their spoken language full of grammatical errors. In conclusion, these create a problem in developing the skill, particularly speaking skills.

B. Identification of the Problem