A Study of the Speaking Ability of Second-Year Students

Speaking is one of the language skills which are important for second language learners to be developed. Capability to speak English is the priority for many scandalmonger or foreign language learners. Therefore, this research was aimed at knowing the speaking ability of the second year students of SAM N 2 Sick Hull.The students may tell their experience after preparation before performing in front of the lass. This is the important part in developing their memory to make a well-arranged story. Their speaking will be analyzed through five components: pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. This research needs three raters in order to avoid subjectivity in evaluating the test. Keyword :Descriptive Research, Speaking ability, telling experience INTRODUCTION Speaking is a productive skill with which people produce words or send a message orally. This skill is closely bound up with the listening.Harmer (2001) states that in many situations productive skill is comb ined with the practice of receptive skills. The communication between two or more people is a blend of listening and speaking where the comprehension of what has been said is necessary for what the participant says next. Productive skills include speaking and writing, two critical components of the complex process of communication. There are countless reasons for communication between individuals: they have something they wish to express, there is something they wish to learn, and the list goes on and on.Speaking requires a greater degree of fluency and thinking â€Å"on the spot†, and requires practice and exposure to the language over time. While productive skills are the skills that involve the process of language production either in oral or written forms. Speaking as one of the productive skills should be learned by the students in order to carry out a communication with other people easily. Speaking plays an important role in social communication. Perhaps, this is becau se we can deliver our ideas and information to other people with oral communication.According to Martin Begat (1987) People speak to make interactions with other people, we often need confidence to speak in order to carry out many of our basic interactions. Consequently, improving your English speaking skills will help you communicate more easily and effectively. Furthermore, speaking is good for motivating the students to learn the language in their school. Speaking is designed to enable the students to communicate and interact to other people in order to gain and enrich their knowledge. Essentially, the goal of language learning is to enable the students to communicate in the language.Therefore, the main purpose of learning is aimed at increasing the students' skills in communicating English well. Definition of immunization mentioned is to understand and express information, mind, feelings and develop science, technology, and culture by using the English language (Depending, 2003) . English achievement in the future expected by learning English can develop their knowledge to all people in the world. Harris (1969) stated that speaking ability has five components which are generally recognized in analyzing speaking.They are as follows: a. Pronunciation includes the segmental features of vowels, consonants, stress, and intonation patterns. B. Grammar correct use of language with respect to word form and word order at the sentence level . Vocabulary is one of words include in language, have many words that must mastery to make the acquisition of an adequate vocabulary as essential for successful second language use. D. Fluency is probably best achieved by allowing the air stream of speech to flow then as some of this speech spill over beyond comprehensibility. E.Comprehension in brief speaking requires that not only knowing how to produce it well but also understanding when, what, and why to produce the language. The ability to speak cannot be separated from thes e five components. A good speaker will deliver the topic to make listener understand it easily. In some cases, students get problems in speaking. It is the fact that to be a good speaker or able to speak becomes a problem for most of students. Teachers always give lessons Just with old teaching techniques without give the students' chances to speak or deliver their ideas; students might be shy to make mistakes in speaking.In fact, students are not interested in studying more about English because of lack of motivation in classroom learning, students only receives materials, write, and follow all the teachers command. According to Joanna Baker and Heather Western (2003), there are many reasons why dents may find learning and using English difficult such as cultural differences, personal differences, and lack of confidence, no time for speaking when studying for examinations, preparation for speaking, and interest in topic.This can lead to real barriers to communication, and can contr ibute to poor motivation in learning. Whereas, we know that the purpose of learning English especially in speaking is to enable the students to use English well both accurately and fluently. In a language lesson, students need to spend time on becoming more accurate. But they also need o practice using the language fluently. 2 METHODOLOGY The population of this research is the second year students of SAM N 2 SICK HULL academic year of 2012-2013.The number of the students is 315. Because the population is large enough, it is necessary to have sample. According to Gay (2004), sampling is the process of selecting number of individuals for a study that represented the larger group from which they were selected. There are several appropriate techniques for selecting a sample which is suitable in certain situations. In this research, the writer use cluster random sampling technique. Cluster random sampling is sampling in which groups, not individuals, are randomly selected.The reason for choosing this technique is less time and easier to obtain permission to use all the students in certain class than several students in many classes. So, the writer takes only one class out of 9 classes as the sample of this research. There are 35 students who took the speaking test. The process of choosing the class is by using lottery. In this case, the writer uses the research instrument of speech in telling experience (recounting events) to collect the data. Each student will speak about their experience in front of the class one by one as a performance test.In order to get the data needed for this research, the writer had administered a test. The test was conducted to know the students' ability in speaking. Three raters checked the result by listening to the students' recorded speech and checking the pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension aspects. The raters give scores for each student. Finally, the scores of the raters are totaled and then divided by th ree. In scoring the students speaking ability, the writer uses the scoring which found in Harris (1974). All the aspects of speaking is divided by 5.Analyzing the students' speaking ability can be done as follows: 5 In order to know the level of ability of the students' speaking ability can be classified as follows: Test Score Level of Ability 81-100 Excellent 61-80 41-60 Mediocre 21-40 Poor 0-20 Very Poor Harms (1986) 3 RESULT AND DISCUSSION There are 35 students who took the speaking test. The students' score has been analyzed by three raters. After calculating the real scores of the students from each rater, the writer computes the students' scores from each rater to know the regenerates of the students who get excellent, good, mediocre, poor, and very poor level in speaking.The result of it can be seen as in the following table: Table 1 . The Percentages of the Students' Ability According to the Three Raters No 2 4 Score Range 81 -100 61 -80 41 60 21 -40 Total Frequency 9 17 35 Percentage 0. 00% 25. 71% 48. 57% 100% From table 1, the result of the test is mediocre. It is calculated by combining the students' scores from each rater and it divided by three. It shows that none of the students is in excellent level, 9 (25. 71%) students are in good level, 17 (48. 57%) dents are in mediocre level, then 9 (25. 1 are in poor level, at last, there is none of the student who got very poor level. By this, the writer concluded that this speaking test is not difficult for the students. After getting the score of the students from the raters, the writer classified the students' scores based on each component of speaking as shown in the following table: Table the Students' Average Scores for Each Aspect of Speaking According to The Three Raters Rater 1 The Aspects of Speaking Pronunciation Grammar Fluency Vocabulary Comprehension Rater 2 x 89 79 102 2. 26 2. 54 2. 57 2. 91 72 78 7 107 Rater 3 2. 06 2. 3 2. 49 3. 06 85 91 101 2. 29 2. 43 2. 60 2. 89 The Average Scores of Three Raters 44. 0 48. 0 47. 4 49. 0 59. 0 49. 5 Table 2 shows that the students' average scores for each aspects of speaking according to the three raters. The average scores of Pronunciation aspect is 44. 0. It means that 4 the most difficult aspect in speaking is pronunciation. Few students can say the words correctly and some of them frequently use wrong words. It can be shown in the following table: Table 3. The Percentages of the Students' Pronunciation Score Range Level of Ability Frequency 15 42. 86% 12 34. 29%