Background of the Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

English is an important means of communication which is used worldwide. It plays an important role as an international language that is used in various fields. Realizing the importance of English, Indonesian government proclaimed that it is one of the compulsory subjects which becomes parts of national exam at junior and senior high schools. The teaching of English in junior high schools should be emphasized at helping them to be able to communicate in English. They have to master English both in spoken and written forms. As stated in School-based Curriculum KTSP in junior high school, one of the English learning objectives is understanding andor producing speech andor written texts which are realized in four skills namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Among the four skills, speaking skill is considered as the most essential skill to be mastered because it is the primary indicator of successful language learning, which means that success in language learning is often measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the target language Richards, 2008: 19. Thus, teachers should concern about teaching speaking without ignoring other skills. Although speaking is considered a main language skill that students should improve, it has been widely noticed that majority of students face difficulties in speaking English. Students‟ lacks in speaking are also seen in SMP N 15 Yogyakarta. The observation and interview results revealed that the students encountered difficulties in pronouncing English words. Even many students had no idea how to pronounce words that were commonly used. Likewise, they lacked the necessary vocabulary items. Moreover, they found it difficult to form sentences in English. Their sentences were grammatically incorrect. The observation and the interview results also showed that the students ‟ participation was low. Many of them were not willing to participate in the speaking activities or just sat silently at the desk without desire to get involved in the speaking activities. They rarely raised their hands to answer the teacher‟s questions voluntarily. Even, some of them often missed the chance when they were asked to speak in front of the class. During the learning and teaching process, the students did not get sufficient Englishexposurestoo. The teacher explained the materials, gave the meaning of some words, and gave instructions mostly in Indonesian. She only used English expressions to open and end the class. No wonder, students preferred to use their native languages rather than English. They tended to switch English to Javanese or Indonesian while they were talking. Obviously, it is necessary to support students to develop their speaking skills but, in fact, it was given less teaching emphasis. The focus is mainly on teaching reading because speaking was not included in the national exam. As we know, learners often do not have opportunities to speak English outside the classroom. For many of them, the course book is the only place where they meet English. 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