The second problem came from the students. Generally, the studentsof SMP 3 Mertoyudan have low speaking ability. The students consider English
as a difficult subject and speaking is one of the difficult skills to be acquired. Most of them are not actively engaged in the speaking lesson. During the
lesson they use Bahasa Indonesia instead of English. Meanwhile, when they spoke English, they are still interfered with the rule of Bahasa Indonesia, so
that their speaking is not fluent and accurate. Most of the students are reluctant to speak English or to perform a conversation. Then they also lack of
English vocabulary so that they do not know the meaning of English words and sentences. When they are asked to speak English, they cannot pronounce
the word appropriately. The
third problem
came from
the activities.
The activities
implemented by the teacher sometimes not interactive. She mostly used individual practice so that the interaction between student is very limited. The
activities during the English teaching and learning process seemed monotonous so the students would get bored and not interested in classroom
activities. They are really not interested in monotonous or routine activity done by the teacher.
And the last problem comes from the media.The media is rarely used to make the students interested in joining the lesson. The media such as
pictures, cards, comic strips or other media that could be used as additional teaching resources in the class is not appropriately used.Mostly, the teacher
puts their hand down to the government’s book and the student’s worksheet.
In fact,media play important role in English teaching and learning processsince it is needed to reach the objective of the learning that is to create
real communication atmosphere in the classroom. Media, especially comic strips, is very useful to improve students’ involvement in speaking activities
because the students are mostly asked to work in pairs or in groups. Therefore, this researchtries to implement these media in the speaking teaching and
learning process in order to improve the students’ speaking ability and involvement.
C. Limitation of the Problem
Referring to the identification of the problem above, it is possible for the research to solve the problem related to student’s speaking skill. The
reseacher decided to apply comic strips as the media to improve the students’ speaking skill because comic strips as the media can play important role in
English teaching and learning process to be used as devices to stimulate conversations and to improve students’ involvement in speaking activities.
Therefore, this study only focused on the use of media to improve the students’speaking skill. Due to the limitation of time, fund etc., this study was
limited to the use of comic strips to improve the speaking ability of grade VIII students’ at SMP N 3 Mertoyudan.
D. Formulation of the Problem
Based on the limitation of the problem above, the research question is formulated as follows: How can comic strips be implemented to improve the
teaching and learning process of speaking for Grade VIII students of SMP N 3 Mertoyudan.
E. Objective of the Study
The research is aimed to improve the teaching and learning processof speaking for Grade VIII students of SMP N 3 Mertoyudanusing comic strips.
F. Significance of the Study
This study is expected to have significant benefit to the parties as follows:
1. For the English Teachers in SMP N 3 Mertoyudan The research can be used as a source of information about ways to
improve the students’ speaking ability. 2. For the Students
It is expected that the students have better learning experience after the teachers apply the ways to give improvements as written in this study.
3. For other Researchers This study is expected to be the starting point of further research on
language teaching and learning. Other research, the research can give knowledge of how to improve students’ speaking ability.
8
CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW
This study aims to improve the speaking skills of the second grade students of SMP N 3 Mertoyudan using comic strips. To support the
understanding of the problems formulated in Chapter 1, some theories that are related to the concepts of speaking skills and comic strips are reviewed. This
chapter presents some relevant research studies. Once those theories have been presented, a conceptual framework is drawn for this study.
A. Literature Review 1. English as Foreign Language
People can communicate with others by using language. Language is a means of communication in which people express their feelings, idea`s, opinion
and desires. In line with this, Brown states that language is able to create communications among members of a community because language is a system
of arbitrary conventionalized vocal, written, or gestural Brown, 2000:5. Based on this statement, it is known that people can communicate with others by using
vocal, written or gestural which are expressed through language. English is an international language which is used broadly in the world. It
has function as means of communication means so that people from different
