CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background

In an oral communication, speaking skill or speaking ability is the most

important skill that have to be owned by the people who want to do

communicative event, as Donn Byrne in Nurftri (2008) said that oral

communication is a two-ways process between speaker and listener (or listeners)

and involves the productive skill of speaking and the receptive skill of

understanding.

The communicative event can be considered running well when a speaker

uses a language (English) as well as produces sentences which can be easily

received and understood by listener, and then the listener gives respond to what

has been heard, in this situation, the listener changes position to be a speaker. Of

course, it really needs good speaking skill. However, as people or society where

English as foreign language is the cause of our difficulty to communicate in

English.

As the researcher explained just now, that cause also becomes reason why

the students who have learned English from elementary school until senior high

school show no improvement. To make it more sure, the researcher visited one

of senior high school in Makassar and met one of English teacher at the school.

It is SMA Cokroaminoto Tamalanrea Makassar, to observe about the problem

that he thought. When the researcher shared his assumption to the teacher, she

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considered his assumption and she also give some addition about students’

problem in learning speaking. She said that the students can get material

theoretically but when they ask to apply in speaking event, it will be difficult

thing to do. Another problem is most of students can lose their mood and spirit

easily while teaching-learning is running. Then, several of students also have no

confident to speak in English. They are shy and afraid of making mistake

because their friends will laugh at everyone who does mistake either in grammar,

structure or pronunciation.

As all of problems that has been found, the researcher assumed that the

students need creative way which can offer fun and happy situation and also

useful to increase their speaking ability. Then, the researcher took one of

applicative skills in speaking; that is producing question to increase the students’

speaking ability as the focus in his research and he applied Interview an

Interesting Personality Technique, it is one of activity in Five-Minute activities

(Ur and Wright, 2007).

Finally, relating to explanation above, the researcher decided to conduct

on “Increasing students’ speaking ability in producing question by using Five-

Minute activities: Interview an Interesting personality Technique” in his

research.

B. Problem Statement

Based on the previous background, the researcher formulates the problem

research question as follows:

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“What is the speaking ability of the second grade students of

Cokroaminoto Tamalanrea Senior High school Makassar in producing

question after applying Five-Minute Activities: Interview an Interesting

Personality Technique?”

C. Research Objectives

Considering the problem statements above, the objectives of the research

is to find out the students’ speaking ability in producing Question at the second

grade of Cokroaminoto Tamalanrea Senior High school Makassar by using Five-

Minute Activities: Interview an Interesting Personality Technique.

D. Research Significance

There are three significances of this research. They are:

1. Significance for the students

By this research, the researcher really hopes that all of the

students can make correct and good question especially in producing

Question. To achieve this, the researcher applies Five-Minute

Activities: Interview an Interesting Personality. Expectation of

researcher is all of students can enjoy when they learn to speak

English and it can present happy and fun situation at the class. Finally,

the students can increase their skill in speaking.

2. Significance for the teacher

By this research, the researcher really hopes it can be useful to

help the teacher to improve their students’ achievements. It is also

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expected to give great information and good contributions for all

teachers in teaching their subjects. The teacher can make her/him

students interested to learning English especially in speaking.

3. Significance for the next researcher

This research is expected to give meaningful information and

to give motivation for the next research to create another research

about teaching.

E. Research Scope

This research is focused on the application of Five-Minute Activities:

Interview an Interesting Personality technique in order to increase students’

speaking ability in producing Question at the second grade of Cokroaminoto

Tamalanrea Senior High School Makassar. The researcher did not include all the

students in the second year but he only took the class XI. Exact as the subjects of

the research.