IMPROVING THE EIGHTH YEAR STUDENTS’ SPEAKING ACHIEVEMENT BY USING ENGLISH SONGS AT SMP 11 JEMBER.

Abstract

English as an international language plays an important role in the global communication. Nowadays, people around the world are using English as the way to communicate with others across the country. Considering the importance of English, it has been decided as the compulsory subject that is formally taught to the students studying at junior high school, senior high school, and also university level. In learning English, the students of junior and senior high schools need to learn the four skills of English namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. The students should also learn the three language English components, namely vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. In this case, Speaking is one of the four basic skills that students should acquire in their periods of study. Speaking skill becomes one of the tools of communication for people. They will be forced to use the language creatively and communicatively. Brown and Yule (1983:27) state that the aim of a course in a spoken language is to prepare the students to be able to express themselves in the target language in an active skill such as exchanging greetings, thanks and apologies, to express his “needs" such as request information, service , etc. Based on the result of interview with the English teacher of SMP N 11 Jember, most of the students studying at junior schools were afraid of speaking by using English in their teaching learning process. As a result, they spent more time in listening to the foreign language than in producing it. That condition happened because they didn’t have enough vocabulary and lack of knowledge to pronounce the English words.