A STUDY ON SNOWBALL THROWING GAME IN IMPROVING STUDENTS’ ENGLISH SKILL.

The growth of English is vast and creates a huge impact on Indonesian learners. Learning English properly could bring students to receive more inputs in knowledge and technology, therefore, mastering all skills of English could make easy access to globalization. Speaking skill by far is the underrated skill that is rarely taught in the classroom. Most students find it is difficult to do the speaking task due to the lack of confidence and motivation. The situation is aggravated as the teacher also employs unvaried teaching technique. In this research, the researcher implements a cooperative learning method that will engage students. The teacher applied snowball throwing games; a game that makes the player throwing a paper ball with a written question. This research aims at knowing whether students’ who have been taught by snowball throwing games improved their speaking skills than before the application of the method. It examines the impact of cooperative learning on students’ Speaking skills. This research applied CAR (classroom action research) to improve and give students a new learning environment for speaking. This study was conducted in four cycles following the procedures for action research, namely planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting. To collect data, the researcher used instruments of observations, lists, and interviews. The data obtained were presented in two ways, qualitatively and quantitatively. The teacher applied snowball throwing games. This research was conducted at MTS AL-IHSAN KAYUARU. The research subjects of this research were seventh-grade students in Class A which consisted of 19 students. The result indicates that snowball throwing game improves student’s speaking skill. There were two major indicators used as criteria of success in this research. First, the school Minimum Standard of Mastery (KKM) is 60, and the student’s final assignment in cycle four reached more than the KKM. Second, on every cycle, their every performance increased. It can be seen by the rise in the students’ mean scores in the test results: 61 in the first cycle, 64 in the second cycle, 73 in the third cycle, and 77 in the fourth cycle. Improvement was also seen based on the results from the observations that showed positivity, and good responses from the students