IMPROVING THE ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL OF THE STUDENTS BY USING “PAIKEM” APPROACH

"ARTIKEL BAHASA INGGRIS"
 

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, English is learnt at elementary school, not only at junior high school but also senior high school. Teaching English for children needs specific method. As we know, children play most of their time. They learn to express their thoughts and feeling in speech and action. They need good situation to keep them learning. A friendly environment can make them get motivation in studying English, so teaching English at elementary school of course needs a different method and way. In teaching learning process, teacher should have interesting lesson for them and the lesson has to be presented an attractive way. The teacher must make the student active and fun in learning process.
If the students are not interested in the lesson, it will be very difficult to make them understand the lesson. The teacher should always be aware that the lack of interest would make the teacher fail in teaching. English teachers have to create an interesting atmosphere in teaching learning process because student’s ability of learning English depends on their previous experience, and how the teacher attracts their feeling and interest. A teacher should prepare simple way to make students’ interest in learning English.
To raise the students’ interest in learning speaking, there is an approach called PAIKEM approach. PAIKEM approach can make student active, creative, innovative, effective and joyful learning.
Many methods are used in PAIKEM; there are teacher talk method, discussion method, demonstration method, role-play method, and stimulus method. Beside that PAIKEM use many source and media include environment to make learning become interesting, fun and effective. The writer uses PAIKEM approach as a way to make classroom activity more fun, and interesting to for practicing speaking.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

• Definition of Teaching
Teaching is education activity. Teaching helps someone how to do something and make them understand the new knowledge. Achieving new knowledge is the goal of teaching.
As H. Douglas Brown states: “Teaching is showing or helping someone to learn how to do something, giving instruction, guiding in the study of something; providing with knowledge, causing to understand.” (2000:07)
Based on the statement above, in teaching there is an interaction process between teacher and students in the case of knowledge transferring. And the purpose of language teaching is also to improve the four language skill; speaking, listening, reading and writing.
Students should learn English in their earlier ages as foundation to get English at the next level of education. English is easy to learn at the early age especially in pronunciation. It is stated by Brown as follows: “That starting the physical skill at a young age is advantageous; the same should clearly be true of language with respect to pronunciation of a language. It is the wonder that children acquire authentic/ pronunciation while adults generally do not”. (1987:46).
Studying English at elementary school has some benefits because the speech muscles of children are more flexible and still easier to get new words. It is stated by Allyn and bacon as Follows:
The ability to speak usually well established when children enter elementary school. Physiological development has reached the stage where the children have command of speech producing function in fact many children talk fluently. (1960:258).
Nowadays in the educational system in Indonesia, the students are introduced English when they are at the fourth grade at elementary school. The English subject at elementary school is not compulsory subject but as a local course. Although it is as a local course, the government regards English very important to be taught because English is a compulsory subject at SMP and SMA.

To teach English to the students of elementary school, the English teacher has emphasized the psychological development of the children. In learning English, the elementary students need more opportunity to be exposed. They like repetition, exploring and experimenting. The elementary students using all their senses get fully involved. The English teacher should motivate the students to learn English and to feel positive about English.
To teach English, an English teacher must have the capabilities in English. The English teachers should also master the materials and be able to express the idea clearly, and the English teachers must be creative in presenting the materials when they are teaching in front of class.
There are some cases that make the students stop from learning English. They are feeling uncomfortable, confused, tired, and bored. So, teaching English at elementary school needs a specific method and technique. The English teachers need the technique and method to attract the students to learn English.


• Definition of Speaking
There are various definitions of speaking and one of them that the writer agrees with is from Jones, R (1989: 86) who defines speaking as “Speaking is a form of communication, so it is important that what you say conveyed in the most effective way.”
Speaking is one of the basic skills that must be mastered by students since it is very important for them to communicate in the class or outside the class. They must practice it especially in learning teaching in order to be fluent, without an ability to speak, it would be impossible to have a natural communication among people.
In learning speaking, most of the students face difficulties such as lack of confidence, shyness, and silence that impede a natural communication. They often make mistake while trying to communicate in English. Students might have so many ideas to convey but such lacking have made them to utter or say what they suppose to say.
Speaking is one of the English skills that is taught in elementary school. Speaking is one of the language skills that has to be mastered by students in learning foreign language. Learning the language is learning how to speak language. According to Nunan, “Success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the target language”. (www.teaching –english.com).
Speaking is fundamental to human communication. In our daily lives, most of us speak more than write. According to Paul, “the students can listen to English at home, read English at home, and even write English at home. But, most of them have few opportunities to speak English at home”. (2003;76). So that, speaking skill should be taught and practiced in the language classroom.
Dealing with speaking practice, Paul also says: the students need to speak, speak, and speak”. (2003:78). To make the students learn to speak English, each of the students must have many opportunities to speak during the lesson. They need practice, practice, and practice. To be able to speak fluently in foreign language requires a lot of practice. The importance of practice speaking is put forward by Stern, H who mentioned that, “In language teaching, we must practice and practice, again and again, just watch a small child learning his mother tongue, he repeats over stage, he practice all the time”, (1970:57-58). Practice and always practice will enable growing speaking ability.
Speaking is important to learn in the language classroom. According to Dixon in Petty et.al, “learning to read and write should not be made a sudden transition. These activities should be preceded, accompanied and followed by talk”. (1918:299). But many students think that spoken English language is the most difficult to learn. The students have difficulties in expressing their ideas in English. The teachers have to motivate the students in learning English especially in speaking skill. According to Forest, “you talk, write and draw pictures your smile, not frown, shrink and more your hands those are all ways in which you can communicate or send message to other people”. (1989:4)
When the students enter English language classroom, they should enter a world of English. It should not be a world where they do the required practiced in English, but carry out genuine communication among them selves or with us. The teacher wants the students to speak English. The students may easily lapse into speak English, if the activities are not clear or too difficult. So, the teacher needs to make sure that activities are clear, not too difficult, and fun.
Being able to communicate means being able to use English to express genuine thoughts and feelings. According to Paul, to prepare the students to communicate, the teacher need to concentrate on the followings:
- Introducing and practicing English in ways that feel meaningful to the students, such as in games, in situations where the students genuinely want to express themselves.
- Practicing new patterns in combination with the other patterns the students have learned.
- Giving the students many opportunities to speak out.
- Giving the students confidence to speak out in front of others.
- Using English accompany by mime and gesture. (2003-77).
As one of the language skill, speaking must be studied by the students to improve their English. Here are the aims of speaking for the English learners:
- To active and extend the Lerner’s linguistics competence.
- To increase their confidence in using spoken English
- To develop their ability to analyst and evaluate spoken performance
- To sharpen their strategic competence in face to face interaction.
Based on the aims above, speaking are very essential factors in learning a language. Therefore, the students must master speaking because it enables the students to communicate.

• Method of Speaking
Some methods used in teaching speaking are:
a. Audio lingual method
In audio lingual method, teacher must create the students to be able use the target language by using habit formation models of learning.
In a typical audio lingual lesson, the following procedures would be observed:
1. Students first hear a model (either read by teacher or on tape) containing the key structures that are focused of the lesson. They are repeating each line of the dialogue individually and in chorus.
2. The dialogue is adapted to the student’s interest or the situation, through changing certain key words. This is acted out by the students.
3. Certain key structures from the dialogue are selected use as the basic for pattern drills of different kinds.
4. The students may refer to their text book, and follow-up reading, writing or vocabulary activities based on the dialogue may be introduced.
5. Follow-up activities may take place in the dialogue laboratory where further dialogue and drill work is carried out.
b. communicative language teaching
Communicative approach is an approach used in language teaching that aims is to make the students have communicative competence, as stated by Brown, “the communicative approach in language teaching starts from a theory of language communication. The goal of language teaching is communicative competence”. (1987:69)
Some of the characteristics of this communicative view of language are as follows:
1. Language is a system for the expression of meaning.
2. The primary function of language is for interaction and communication.
3. The structure of language reflects it’s functional and uses.
4. The primary units of language are not merely in grammatical and structural features, but categories of functional and communicative meaning.


• Definition of PAIKEM approach
PAIKEM approach can make student active, creative, innovative, effective and joyful learning.
- Innovative learning is ideas; technique and etc which is have a new quality.
- Creative learning means using new creation or different from before. So the teacher be able to create varieties learning activities so can fulfill kinds of range of students ability.
- Effective learning means achieving target of the basic of competence which has constant.
- Joyful learning is joyful situation given by teachers so the students can be focused with deeply attention to the process learning so they have deep attention.

Based on the statement above the teacher must create a condition, so the students can be active in asking, building ideas, and doing activity directly by experience, and students will be able to be responsible in their learning process. In learning process there is innovative learning to build ideas, and new quality of knowledge. And the teacher makes a joyful learning which can make students to l pay their full attention in the learning process.
Active and joyful condition is not enough if learning process is not effective, and it can be not resulted to what the students achieve in after learning process directly, because learning have learning purpose to achieve. If the learning is only active and joyful but is not effective, therefore learning process just only like play.

The characteristic of PAIKEM:
The characteristic of PAIKEM there are:
- Student centered
- Joyful learning
- Competency based learning
- Mastery learning
- Continous learning

According Depdiknas (2005) about the important things in teaching learning PAIKEM:
- Understanding students’ characteristics
- Knowing Students’ personality
- Making students’ attitude more organized
- Improving critic, and creative thinking, and solving problem skill
- Improving class room situation as entering learning environment
- Using environment for the source
- Giving good feed back to increase learning activity
- Differing physical and mental active
Many methods are used in PAIKEM: there are teacher talk method, discussion method, demonstration method, role play method, and stimulus method.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS

A. Conclusion
Based on the result of teaching speaking through discussion method to improve the students speaking activity ,the writer made some conclusion as follows:
1. The students speaking skill through discussion method achieved better than the ones taught without discussion method. It is proven by the mean result of skill the first ones achieved 85 and second ones 56,5.
2. The teaching speaking skill through discussion method influenced positively toward the result of the students speaking skill. Based on the counting of distribution of sampling test, than t-table is 2,04 and t-counted is 42,66. So, t-counted is higher than t-table. It means that H is rejected.
3. Based on the result of the questioner, discussion method is exciting so that the students were interested in getting involved with speaking activity. There are 97% of the students think that speaking is important to learn. There are 3% of the students find enough difficulties in learning speaking. Discussion method makes them enthusiastic and interest to learn speaking.
B. Suggestion
The suggestions presented here are expected to be useful in getting a better goal in teaching English as a foreign language.