The teaching of speaking through group discussion to year 7 students of Junior High School : an observational study

Talking about language, especially English cannot be separated from the four language skills which are very important. Those skills are Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. For learners, speaking seems to be the difficult thing that has to be mastered. Therefore the writer decided to have an observational study about group discussion. He intended to find the teachers’ strategies in applying the group discussion to teach speaking and also the students’ response to the lesson taught by using group discussion. In conducting the study, the writer used non-participation method of qualitative descriptive research. The writer was the observer who observed the class without any interruption to the teacher. In every meetings, the writer as the observer himself wrote some notes that would be important in his own journals. There would be four kinds of data that were analyzed: observer’s note, questionnaire to the students, interview to the teacher, and also rubric to the teacher. The subject in this research was 24 students of class 7a in one junior high school and the teacher. After the discussion about the teacher’s teaching step and students’ feedback, the writer made conclusions. The conclusions were the group discussion was presented in good order by the teacher and the group discussion had received good feedback from the students especially in their comprehension to the material, interaction, fluency, and confidence. However, the writer suggested the teacher to use additional books to enrich the students’ knowledge