Silent Way

Using Silent Way Method in Teaching – Speaking to Increase Speaking Skill for Students at The First Year of SMP Negeri 1 Wedarijaksa - Pati 2011/2012 Academic Year (A Classroom Action Research)

A.    Background of Study

Every human being living in society needs language. Language is an important tool that helps people make communication among individuals or even nations. There are more than thousand languages in the world and they are different each from others. In the modern era, one of international languages is English. English is an International language which has been received by countries all over the world. It functions as a means of communication in meeting business or other activities among government over the world. Besides, English is used at science of knowledge, new invention in field of modern technology, pharmaceutical, medical, etc.

English is international language and it is very important for students to study, so Indonesia government had come English in curriculum, from elementary school until Senior High School, even in University. Since English is needed from any people. Governments of Indonesia think that English is very important to the public, until now they are constantly looking for a way for improving in teaching English. In current years, however the teaching of English is expanding into primary or elementary school. The decree of the Ministry of Education and Culture, Republic of Indonesia No. 0487/4/1992 chapter VIII states that English can be taught as an extra instruction if it is needed by local community and if the teacher of English is available.

A number of ways of conceptualizing approaches and methods in language teaching have been made. Various attempts have been made to explore more systematically the relationship between  theory and practice within a method in the fifties and sixties, for example, language teaching represented a unified body of theory and practice. It was clearly linked in its theoretical foundation to linguistic and psychology. Language teachers in eighties, however, had considerable array of theories and methods to choose it. Contemporary language teaching draws a number of fields, which are unknown by the linguistic of the fifties and sixties. Methodologies unheard in the sixties are now familiar, such Silent Way, Total Physical Response, Community Language Teaching, Counseling Learning, and Suggestopedia (Fauziati,2002:3). Here the writer would like to conduct a research dealing with the application of Silent Way in teaching English to the first year of SMP Negeri 1 Wedarijaksa-Pati.

There are four skills in learning English, they are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Speaking is very important skill relate to communication. Speaking is used to express human idea and to communicate each other. We are much more to speak than other. That’s way; some problem conceives when the writer saw deeply in teaching – speaking in Indonesia that hard to be success with great achievement. Some problem happened in teaching – speaking, from many aspects. From students that doesn’t be ready yet for delivering their speech because nervous or shy. Many students feel confuse when they are asked question by their teacher and they have to answer with English. Many students are still hard to be good speaker.

There are two problem existed in the school actually. Firstly, the student has less confidence, and ashamed, also nervous when they are asked to speak English.

Students hardly apply between mind and their oral production, so it makes a lot of times. Secondly, the students are less in pronunciation and vocabulary, so it actually influence their speak when they are delivering their idea.

Based on the above statements, the writer will know how far the ability of the first year students of SMP Negeri 1 Wedarijaksa after being taught with speaking by using silent way method. The writer choose the little dealing with method used in the subject above is Using Silent Way Method in Teaching – Speaking to Increase Speaking Skill for Students at The First Year of SMP Negeri 1 Wedarijaksa - Pati 2011/2012 Academic Year. In this research the writer conducts an action research of Silent Way method in Teaching Learning process of English for the First Year of Junior High School students. The writer hopes that the research can be used as a literary by next researcher in different point of view.

B.     Limitation of the Research

In conducting this research, the writer limits the problem that is going to be discussed. This research deals with the implementation of Silent Way to improve speaking skill of the first year of SMP Negeri 1 Wedarijaksa-Pati. Here, the writer explains the implementation of Silent Way can improve speaking skill or not, the strength and weaknesses of Silent Way. This limitation is going to be made in order to make this study easier, effective and efficient.

C.     Problem Statement

Based on the explanation above, the writer will propose the following problems statement:

1.         How is the implementation of Silent Way in teaching-speaking?

2.         How can Silent Way increase speaking skill of the first year student of SMP Negeri 1 Wedarijaksa?

3.         What is the strength and weaknesses of Silent way?

D.    Objective of the Study

Based on the explanation above, the objectives of the study in this research are:

1.   To know the implementation of Silent way in teaching – speaking.

2.   To explain how Silent Way works to increase speaking skill.

3.   To show the strength and weaknesses of Silent way.

E.     Benefit of the Study

1.      Theoretically

This research is done by the writer to extensively our knowledge about method that to be effective if we use it in teaching-learning process.

2.      Practically

a.       The students

This research will be used to increase English achievement especially in teaching-speaking.

b.      The teacher

This research provides method that to be effective to the teacher in width option for teaching speaking.

c.       The other researcher

This research will be helpful for the students to understand about teaching – speaking by using silent way.

F.                  Underlying Theory

1.                  Previous Study

This research is not only research that done by the researcher. There is some previous researcher that is used Silent way method in teaching English.

Setiyaningrum, Cahyawati(FKIP Ums, 2010) conducted a research entitled “THE TEACHING LEARNING PROCESS OF ENGLISH, USING SILENT WAY TO THE FOURTH YEAR STUDENT OF SDN 1 GUMIWANG LOR, WURYANTORO, WONOGIRI”. She emphasizes in using silent way on commonly lesson, there is no specification for what matter. She wants to know about the effectiveness of using silent way. The conclusion of her research was that using silent way has strength and

weakness. The strengths of Silent Way are the method can save a lot of time, the writer can also observe that students can keep the material presented much longer in their mind, students become more active because the teacher gives more time to talk, the students are easier to remember the materials, especially about vocabulary. On the other hand Silent Way method also has some weaknesses, that is in providing the materials, the teacher needs some preparation. This method sometimes makes both teacher and students frustrated, especially when the students fail to guess the cues provided by the teacher.

Rofiqoh, Rusmalia (FKIP UMS, 2007) has conducted a research entitled “THE TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS OF ENGLISH BY USING SILENT WAY TO THE THIRD YEAR STUDENTS OF SDN 01 KARTASURA IN 2006_2007 ACADEMIC YEAR (AN ACTION RESEARCH)”. The conclusion from her research is using silent way has strength and weakness. The strength is silent way makes students can increase the vocabulary. It improves students’ concentration about material. For teacher, it actually saves more time.

This research is different from the research above, because this research focuses in using silent way on teaching-speaking. Many people see that  speaking foreign language is difficult. But if we know the first requirement in speaking is meaning. Meaning is important than other, using silent way is considered as the best way to teach speaking with the prominent benefit. It is able to improve the speaking ability and makes student apply grammar inside. Silent way teaches from under to be greater. Silent way is used as method that can improve speaking ability of students and encourage student produce more sentence than before. Silent way is used also for built good mental awareness for students. The writer tries to find new formula in teaching-speaking. Using silent way is method that actually many teacher use it, but they use it for any lesson skill in the class. The writer tries to develop using it method for teaching-learning, in order to teacher feel easy to choose which sustainable method with condition of the class or it should be changed with other method. Actually silent way can apply in many lessons, but in this case the writer emphasizes this method in teaching speaking. To be easy for teacher and student is good way in teaching-learning English. In this case, the writer studies “Using Silent Way Method in Teaching – Speaking to Increase Speaking Skill for Students at The First  Year of SMP Negeri 1 Wedarijaksa-Pati 20011/2012 Academic Year (A Classroom Action Research)”.