IMPROVING SPEAKING SKILL BY EXPLAINING WORD AT THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS’ ENGLISH STUDY PROGRAM OF STAIN PALOPO

ABSTRACT Muh. Takdir , 2010. “Improving Speaking Skill by explaining word at the second year students’ English program of STAIN Palopo”. Thesis, English Study Program of Education Department of Sekolah Tinggi Agama Islam Negeri (STAIN) Palopo. Consultant I, Wisran, S.S., M.Pd.., and Consultant II, Amalia Yahya, SE., M. Hum. Key Words: Improving, explaining word technique, Students’ Speaking Skill, STAIN Palopo. This thesis focuses on the improvement of students’ speaking skill at STAIN Palopo by explaining word technique. This thesis focused on two research questions; can explaining word technique improve students’ speaking skill to the second year English program of STAIN Palopo?, and how are the students’ attitude toward expalining word in improving speaking skill? This researcher applied pre-experimental research with one group of pre-test and post-test design. This research was undertaken at the second year English program of STAIN Palopo. The numbers of population were 150 students and the researcher took 20 students as samples using the random sampling technique. The researcher used guided interview, and questionnaires as instruments of the data collection. The result of this research shows that there were significant developments on students’ speaking skill at the second year English program of STAIN Palopo after conducting the treatments by using explaining word technique. In which, the score of ttest (14,34) is bigger than the score of ttable (2,09). It means that explaining word technique gives significant improvement to the students’ speaking skill. In addition, the researcher found almost all of the students gave positive responds toward explaining word technique applied in learning speaking