The particular dialect or language that a person chooses to use on any occasion is called a code Copyright © 2018 The Author IDEAS is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 License Issued by English study program of IAIN Palopo 56 IDEAS Journal of Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) Volume 6, Number 1, June 2018 pp. 56 – 65 Improving Students’ Speaking Skill at Sman 1 Soe Kabupaten Timur Tengah Selatan (TTS) Nusa Tenggara Timur in Expressing Simple Present Through Describing Picture Yanpitherszon Liunokas yanpiters69@gmail.com Nusa Cendana University, Kupang NTT, Indonesia Received : 11 Mei 2018; Accepted : 28 Mei 2018 URL : http://ejournal.iainpalopo.ac.id/index.php/ideas Abstract The objective of this research was to find out whether the use of describing picture activity effective or not to improve the students’ speaking skill at the SMAN 1 Soe Kabupaten Timur Tengah Selatan (TTS). This research employed pre experimental design. The population of this research was the students of SMAN 1 Soe Kabupaten Timur Tengah Selatan (TTS) The sample of the class was 20 students. The research data was collected by using speaking test to get the students’ speaking achievement, which was analyzed by inferential statistic through SPSS version 20.0 for windows program. The students’ result of posttest of pre experimental class is significantly improved than the students’ result of pretest by the mean score 68.00 > 50.10. The difference of both scores is statistically significant based on the t-test value at significant level 0.05 in which the probability value is lower than the significant level (0.00 < 0.05). So, H1 was accepted and H0 was rejected. It can be concluded that the use of describing picture effective to improve the students’ speaking skill. . Keywords: Speaking; Describing Pictures; http://u.lipi.go.id/1457703302 http://ejournal.iainpalopo.ac.id/index.php/ideas I D E A S , V o l . 6 , N o . 1 , J u n e 2 0 1 8 I S S N 2 3 3 8 - 4 7 7 8 ( P r i n t ) I S S N 2 5 4 8 - 4 1 9 2 ( O n l i n e ) 57 Introduction English is the international language. By this statement we can analyze that English holds important role in international communication. English also is spoken either native or non native speakers. That’s why we can say that by English, people can communicate and relate with other people although they are from different countries. Beside that English can be used to know some human life aspects like economy, culture, education and so forth. Therefore English exists in regional and international area. Nowadays technology develops rapidly. The sophisticated technologies like computer, internet, television, and many more can motivate us in learning English because most technologies introduced surrounding us use English as operating system, or we can say that most technologies are used to fulfill human activities. There are four skills in English, they are listening, reading, speaking and writing. One thing that we have to know that, many students have been learning English for quiet long time, but they still cannot master English as their daily conversation. The reality shows that studying English particularly speaking is very important but it cannot be proved because the way they learn English especially speaking is not effective and efficient, so that it can become one of the problems that can obstruct the success of learning English particularly speaking. Analyzing the situation at SMAN 1 Soe Kabupaten Timur Tengah Selatan (TTS) Nusa Tenggara Timur, they need to be improved in speaking as the University students must master four skills of English particularly speaking skill. Based on the researcher’s experience when he walked around Cokroaminoto University, he spoke to several University students of the first semester, but many of them were not able to speak English well. From the above experience, the researcher is interested in choosing the title about Improving the Students’ speaking skill at SMAN 1 Soe Kabupaten Timur Tengah Selatan (TTS) Nusa Tenggara Timur in Expressing simple present through Describing Picture. The researcher would like to carry out a research on a teaching technique of speaking. This teaching technique applies expressing simple present which is formulated into describing events on the picture. The describing events are guiding points of speaking for the students. These events deal with the progressive activities. The researcher believes that this teaching technique gives the students chance to practice and improve their speaking skill. Therefore the researcher is curious to see how expressing simple present through describing picture can improve the speaking skill. This research is applied on the learning activities of the students at SMAN 1 Soe Kabupaten Timur Tengah Selatan (TTS) Nusa Tenggara Timur. Based on the background above, the problem statement is formulated as follow: “Is the expressing simple present through describing picture able to Yanpitherszon Liunokas: Improving Students’ Speaking Skill at SMAN 1 Soe Kabupaten Timur Tengah Selatan (TTS) Nusa Tenggara Timur in Expressing Simple Present through Describing Picture 58 improve the students’ speaking skill at SMAN 1 Soe Kabupaten Timur Tengah Selatan (TTS) Nusa Tenggara Timur?” Related to the problem statement above, the objective of this research is to find out whether or not the expressing simple present through describing picture is able to improve the students’ speaking skill at SMAN 1 Soe Kabupaten Timur Tengah Selatan (TTS) Nusa Tenggara Timur. The significance of this research is to give as a reference for the English teachers or instructors and English students in learning process particularly teaching and learning process of speaking. It is also expected to guide the students how to speak based on correct structure. The scope of this research is aimed to the effectiveness of expressing simple present through describing picture in improving students’ speaking skill. It is formulated as a teaching technique of speaking. The expressing simple present through describing picture is focused to how the students can describe the picture given which is formed into describing progress events on the picture using the simple present as a guidance of student to talk. The speaking skill which are meant are accuracy, fluency, and comprehensibility. Method This research employed experimental method .The design of the research was one group pretest - posttest design. The Treatment was given between pretest (O1) and (O2). The schematic representation of the design as follows: PRETEST TREATMENT POSTTEST O1 T O2 (gay, 1981:297) Where: O1 : Pretest T : Treatment O2 : Posttest There were two variables in this research. The Variables are: The describing picture is as independent variable (2) The skill to express simple present is as dependent variable. The population of this research was students at SMAN 1 Soe Kabupaten Timur Tengah Selatan (TTS) Nusa Tenggara Timur. The total of population is 180 students. The researcher used random sampling technique and determined 20 students as the sample. The instrument of the research was I D E A S , V o l . 6 , N o . 1 , J u n e 2 0 1 8 I S S N 2 3 3 8 - 4 7 7 8 ( P r i n t ) I S S N 2 5 4 8 - 4 1 9 2 ( O n l i n e ) 59 speaking test, treatment materials and tape recorder. The tape recorder is going to be used to record students’ speech when they are describing the picture. The speaking test consisted of two sessions. The students were given a picture and explain based on what they see on the pictures. The explanation was describing events on the picture using present progressive. There were two speaking tests namely pretest and posttest. The treatment materials was the same form of speaking test. The procedure of collecting data in this research is described as follows: 1. Pretest The pretest was done before the treatment. The pretest is the test given to the student to measure the skill of the students before being improved. The researcher gave four Questions for each student. Three questions was given in the class and another question was given outside the class. The students was ordered to answer the questions one by one based on the questions given. Their answers were recorded and transcribed. 2. Treatment The treatment was conducted in 15 meetings after the pretest is conducted. Each meeting will take 90 minutes. The treatment that was done is guiding the students to describe picture formulated in to describing events on the picture using simple present. There were several pictures given. During the treatment, the students were guided to improve their accuracy, fluency, and comprehensibility in speaking. Here are the activities that was done during the treatment. a. The first meeting; the researcher explained simple present tense, particularly in positive sentences. After explaining it, the students are given a chance to make other examples and master them and then invite them one by one to come to the front to tell what they have done orally. After all the students perform, the researcher will correct the students’ mistake in order that they can understand their mistake. b. The second meeting; the researcher explained simple present tense particularly in negative sentences. After explaining it, the researcher will be given a chance to make other examples and ask them to master them. After the students make the examples, the students will be invited one by one and given positive sentence to be changed into negative sentence. After all the students perform, the researcher will correct the students’ mistake. c. The third meeting; the researcher explained simple present tense, especially the interrogative sentences. After explaining it, the researcher will divide the students into several groups. Every group consists of two students. Each group must have conversation by asking each other using simple present, after that invite each of the groups in front of the class to state their work orally. After all groups perform, the researcher will correct their mistake. Yanpitherszon Liunokas: Improving Students’ Speaking Skill at SMAN 1 Soe Kabupaten Timur Tengah Selatan (TTS) Nusa Tenggara Timur in Expressing Simple Present through Describing Picture 60 d. After giving explanation about simple present for three meeting, the researcher will give the treatment material (picture). One picture was discussed in two meetings. In the fourth meeting, Firstly the researcher divided the students into four large groups, A, B, C, and D in order to be easy to be controlled, after that give each student a picture and study it in a couple of minutes. The picture was given is about the progress events in the living room. The next step, the researcher explained what the student want to do with the picture, and then asked them to construct the progress events on the picture in 30 minutes, and invited them one by one in front of the class to describe the progress evens on the picture given using simple present tense. Every student was given three minutes to describe the picture given. The students, who don’t have opportunity to present their picture, was continued to the next meeting. e. The fifth meeting; in this meeting, the researcher continued to discuss the picture which will have discussed at the fourth meeting. The researcher invited the students who don’t perform yet. After all the students perform themselves, the researcher corrected their mistakes. f. The sixth meeting; the researcher started giving the student different picture from the fourth meeting. The researcher printed the picture as many as the students. The researcher divided the students into five groups, and then give each of them a picture about the progress events in the bathroom. They were given 15 minutes to study it. After studying the picture given, the researcher invited every member of the groups to tell the progress events on the picture using simple present tense, and other groups correct the student who is performing. Every student was given three minutes to describe the progress events on the picture. The students, who didn’t have opportunity to present their picture, was continued to the next meeting. g. The seventh meeting; in this meeting, the researcher continued to discuss the picture which will have been discussed at the sixth meeting. The researcher invited the students who don’t perform yet. After all the students performed themselves, the researcher corrected their mistakes. h. The eighth meeting; the researcher continued to improve the students’ speaking by giving different pictures from the previous meetings. The pictures were about the progress events in the family room. The researcher handed out the pictures to the students without I D E A S , V o l . 6 , N o . 1 , J u n e 2 0 1 8 I S S N 2 3 3 8 - 4 7 7 8 ( P r i n t ) I S S N 2 5 4 8 - 4 1 9 2 ( O n l i n e ) 61 dividing them in to several groups in order to let the students work individually without discussing with their friends. They were given 25 minutes to construct the progress events on the picture, and then invited them one by one to describe their picture using simple present tense. The time presentation was 4 minutes for each. The students, who didn’t present yet, was presented in the following meeting. i. The ninth meeting; in this meeting, the researcher continued to discuss the picture which had been discussed at the eighth meeting. The researcher invited the students who didn’t present yet. After all the students performed themselves, the researcher corrected their faults. j. The tenth meeting; the researcher trained the students to describe another picture. Each of the students will be given a picture about the progress events in the built house. The researcher divided the students into several groups. Each of the groups consists of two students. They were given 5 minutes to study their picture. After studying the picture, the researcher invited every group to come to the front, and asked them to speak about the progress events on the picture using simple present. One student was asked what the progress events about using simple present, and another student answer the question using simple present as well. Every group will be given 5 minutes to describe the picture given. The students, who didn’t present yet, would be presented in the following meeting. k. The eleventh meeting; in this meeting, the researcher continued to discuss the picture which had been discussed at the tenth meeting. The researcher invited the groups who didn’t present yet. After all the groups performed, the researcher corrected their faults. l. The twelfth meeting; the researcher gave to the student the different picture. The picture was about the progress events that are occurring in the hospital. In giving the treatment the researcher prepared twenty copies of picture, and then the students was invited one by one to come to the front without picture. After coming to the front, the researcher gave a copied picture and asked the student to describe the picture given. This method aimed to know how far the students understand the treatment material. The students didn’t perform yet, performed at the following meeting. m. The thirteenth meeting; in this meeting, the researcher continued to discuss the picture which had been discussed at the twelfth meeting. The researcher invited the groups who didn’t present yet. After all the groups perform, the researcher corrected their faults. n. The fourteenth meeting; after giving the treatment at the previous meetings, the researcher gave the students pictures about the simple Yanpitherszon Liunokas: Improving Students’ Speaking Skill at SMAN 1 Soe Kabupaten Timur Tengah Selatan (TTS) Nusa Tenggara Timur in Expressing Simple Present through Describing Picture 62 events in the market. The researcher had speaking presentation with the pictures. The presentation was conducted in competition form. The students was given a chance one by one to describe the picture in front of the class and the researcher judged them who was the best performance when they are describing the picture. The students who don’t have a chance to perform, they have given a chance at the last meeting. o. The last meeting; in this meeting, the researcher continued to discuss the picture which had been discussed at the twelfth meeting. The researcher invited the groups who didn’t present yet. After all the groups performed, the researcher corrected their faults, and gave the conclusion about the activities during the treatment. 3. Posttest The posttest was done after the treatment conducted. Posttest was given to know whether or not the treatment given is effective in improving the students speaking skill, by seeing if the mean score of student posttest is greater than pretest. The questions of the posttest will be the same as the pretest. Each student will be given four questions that had been given when the pretest conducted. The students’ answers will be recorded and transcribed. The data was collected from the research was tabulated into scoring classification, mean score, test of significance, standard deviation, and percentage of score classification. Results The findings consist of the student’s score pretest, posttest and differences between the matched pairs or gain (D), classification and percentage of the students’ scores, the students’ matched scores accuracy, fluency and comprehensibility in pretest and posttest mean score and standard deviation of pretest and the posttest, and the test of significant between the pretest and posttest. I D E A S , V o l . 6 , N o . 1 , J u n e 2 0 1 8 I S S N 2 3 3 8 - 4 7 7 8 ( P r i n t ) I S S N 2 5 4 8 - 4 1 9 2 ( O n l i n e ) 63 The mean score and standard deviation of the students pretest and posttest Type of Test Mean Score Standard Deviation Pretest 4.1667 4.4072 Posttest 9.889 9.843 The table above shows that the mean score of posttest is greater than the mean score of pretest (9.889>4.1667). The data above shows that in teaching speaking use picture can improve the students’ speaking ability. In order to know whether the pretest and posttest are significantly different, the researcher used t-test. The result of the t-test was t = 12.866. To find out the degree of freedom (df), the researcher used the following formula: df = N-1 df = 18 – 1 df = 17 For the level of significant (p) = 0.5 and df = 17, then the value of the t-table = 2.110. Thus, the value of the t-test is greater than t-table (12.866 > 2.110). It means that there was significance difference between the pretest and posttest of the students in speaking ability before and after using picture. By looking at the result of the t-test above, it is concluded that the null hypothesis (H0) is rejected while the alternative hypothesis (H1) is accepted. It means that teaching speaking through describing picture is effective in improve students’ speaking ability. Discussion After calculating the data analysis, the researcher found that in pretest, no one student got excellent, very good, good score for accuracy and there were two students got average, there were four students got poor, and there were twelve students got very poor score for accuracy. Than no one student got excellent, very good, and good score for fluency and there was one student got average, there were three students got poor, and there were fourteen students got very poor score for fluency. And no one student got excellent, very good, good score for comprehensibility and there was one student got average, there were six students got poor, and there were eleven students got very poor score for comprehensibility. Also, the researcher found in posttest, no one student got excellent, very Yanpitherszon Liunokas: Improving Students’ Speaking Skill at SMAN 1 Soe Kabupaten Timur Tengah Selatan (TTS) Nusa Tenggara Timur in Expressing Simple Present through Describing Picture 64 good, very poor score for accuracy and there were four students got good, there were eleven students got average, and there were three students got poor score for accuracy. Than no one student got excellent, very good score for fluency and there were four students got good, there were nine students got average, there were four students got poor and there was one student got very poor score for fluency. And no one student got excellent, and very poor score for comprehensibility and there were five students got very good, there were seven students got good, there were five students got average and there was one student got poor score for comprehensibility. Some important data analyzed from the previous section are noted in this section. The first, the mean score obtained by the students in the pretest (4.1667) is smaller than the mean score obtained in the posttest (9.889). It means that the student’s ability in speaking is improved through teaching speaking using picture. The second, from the test statistical analysis, the researcher finds that the value of t-test (12.866) is greater than t-table (2.110). They are significantly different. The mentioned data analysis above prove that teaching speaking through describing picture is effective in improving students’ speaking ability. Conclusion Based on the findings data analysis and the discussion of the findings, it can be concluded that describing picture in teaching speaking is effective in improving students’ ability of the first year student at SMKN 2 Walenrang academic year 2009/2010. Based on the findings, conclusion, and the application of the research proposes some suggestion as follows: 1. In teaching speaking, the teacher should pay attention to the students’ accuracy, fluency and comprehensibility in speaking. These three aspects also include grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Teacher should also stimulate students to do oral practice. 2. In teaching speaking, the teacher should present material which can stimulate the students to speak more actively. Whatever they see it can be guide them to stimulate their willing to speak. It is suggested to other researcher to carry out a research about teaching speaking through describing picture in teaching the other English skill such as: reading, writing, and listening.. I D E A S , V o l . 6 , N o . 1 , J u n e 2 0 1 8 I S S N 2 3 3 8 - 4 7 7 8 ( P r i n t ) I S S N 2 5 4 8 - 4 1 9 2 ( O n l i n e ) 65 References Aik, Kam Chuan and Kam Kai Hui . (1999) . Dictionary of Grammar and Usage . New edition . 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