IMPROVING STUDENTS’ SPEAKING ABILITY THROUGH PROJECT WORK A Classroom Action Research at SMK Negeri 2 Surakarta in the Academic Year of 2008/2009

The research was conducted at SMK Negeri 2 Surakarta; the subjects of the research were the tenth grade students in the academic year of 2008-2009. The research aims to find out (1) whether the use of project work in teaching English improve the students‘ speaking ability; (2) how/the atmosphere of the teaching-learning process is when project work is applied in the speaking class; and (3) the strengths and weaknesses in using project work in the classroom practice. The study applied action research technique to improve students‘ speaking ability through Project Work (PW). The research consisted of three cycles, with four meetings in every cycle. Each cycle consisted of planning, implementing, observing and reflecting. There are two types of data in the research, namely the numerical and non numerical data which were collected by observation, interview, questionnaire, and test. The numerical data was analyzed using comparative analysis, finding out the mean of the scores in the test and the significant improvement of the scores using t-test of non-independent variable. The non-numerical data were analyzed using Constant-comparative technique proposed by Strauss and Glasser consisting of the following steps: (1) comparing incidents applicable to each category; (2) integrating categories and their properties; (3) delimiting the theory; and (4) writing the theory. The results of the study showed that: (1) Project Work can improve students speaking ability‘ in terms of: (a) raising achievement in speaking, (b) improving students‘ ability to express ideas using new vocabulary and grammatical form, (c) improving students‘ ability to answer questions, (d) improving; (2) Project work can improve the teaching-learning process, in terms of, (a) creating live teaching atmosphere, (b) increasing students‘ participation, (c) improving students‘ interest, motivation and self-confidence and (3) Project work has strength and weaknesses. The strengths: (a) It was beneficial to improve the students‘ speaking ability and teaching-learning process, (b) It made the students have a capability in organizing something, such as job description, managing the time, and designing something (c) project work motivated students to learn from the environment; while the weaknesses: (a) it is not easy to encourage the students who do not like English to involve in this activity, (b) the discussion in group work used the mother tongue, (c) projects needed extra work, (d) monitoring students will be difficult if the project is done outside the classroom. Related to the research findings above, the writer wanted to propose some suggestions for the English teacher in vocational school to apply project work to teach speaking ability. They should be creative in exploring authentic materials for the teaching materials. The students are suggested to be involved in all steps for designing the project because their involvement improves their motivation. The researcher also suggests to other researchers to develop their points which can be obtained from implementation project work