Using Comic Strips to Improve the Speaking Skill of the Eighth Graders of SMP Negeri 10 Malang

ABSTRAK Nugroho, David Bagus Setyo. Using Comic Strips to Improve the Speaking Skill of the Eighth Graders of SMP Negeri 10 Malang. Thesis, English Language Teaching, Faculty of Letters, State University of Malang. Advisor: Siti Muniroh, S.Pd, M.A. Keywords: teaching speaking, comic strips, SMP grade 8 The students in SMP Negeri 10 Malang had difficulty in learning English speaking. The lack of motivation and confidence were the main problems in the teaching and learning process. Besides, teacher rarely use media to teach in the class to attract their interest. The purpose of the study is mainly improving the students speaking ability through the use of comic strips as the instructional media. The study was designed as a Collaborative Classroom Action Research (CAR). The subject of the study was 43 students of grade VIIIA SMP Negeri 10 Malang. The Classroom Action Research employed in this study comprises four steps: planning the action, implementing the plan, observing the action, and reflecting the action based on the observation. This study was conducted in one cycle consisted of three meetings. The limited time permitted by the school was the cause why this research was done only in one cycle. The first meeting was for the modeling, the second meeting was for group discussion, and the last meeting was a test for the students’ performance. There were two types of criteria of success; the process oriented criterion and the product oriented criterion. The process oriented criterion was at least 22 out of 43 students should be actively involved in the teaching and learning process. Meanwhile, the product oriented criterion was at least 32 out of 43 students should reached 75 in their final speaking score in scale of 0 to 100. The instruments used in this study were the observation checklist, the field notes, questionnaires, and the scoring rubric. According to the findings of the study, 26 students out of 43 students were active in the teaching and learning process in the meeting one. The number of students who were active in the group discussion conducted in the second meeting was improved. 32 out of 43 students classified into active students during teaching and learning process in the second meeting. Besides, 33 out of 43 students reached 75 in the speaking test done in the third meeting. However, most of students still had difficulties in pronouncing the words and using the grammar in sentences. The use of comic strips in teaching speaking is effective to improve the students’ speaking skill in telling a recount text by improving the students’ interest in learning English. Moreover, the pictures provided in the comic strips help the students to create story based on the context given in the comic strips. The future researchers who have the same interest in developing the use of comic strips in teaching speaking are expected to provide many different comic strips in one activity, so each student can tell different story from the others and share the story to the other students. Besides, the future researchers can use other monologue texts such as narrative and report text to test whether the media of comic strips are applicable in other genres or not