The Importance Of Communicative Language In English

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of The Study

In Indonesia, English is taught as a foreign language. Based on English syllabus of Curriculum 2013, learning English for students is not easy. It is because there are many differences between English and Bahasa Indonesia in terms of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, etc.

According to the English core competence of Curriculum 2013, learning English aims to enable students to use English in the written and spoken communication. Therefore, the learning process purposes to get students understand about English text in terms of the language function and the usage.

Speaking is one of important skills because it requires us when we wants to convey the messages we try to communicate. Richard (2008:

Yet, in the real situation, the speaking activities conducted in the class are not interesting and challenging. Instead of attracting students to speak in English, the activities make the students get bored because of the strategy and the media are not interesting.

Furthermore, teachers should have an interesting media to help the students improve their speaking skills. The media needs to be interesting, so that the students will not be bored while learning to speak English. One of the various activities is conducting communicative games. Communicative games is an interesting media to make students feel interested in learning to speak English in the effective and fun ways.

Based on the explanation above, the researcher conducted a study entitled “The Use of Communicative Games to Improve the 8th Grade Students of SMP 6 Yogyakarta”. This study aims to help teachers to teach in a fun way and also to help the students to be able to speak in

Identification of The Problem

This study aims to solve the problems related to students’ speaking skills. Based on the observation conducted by the researcher in SMP 6 Yogyakarta, there were some problems found in line to English teaching and learning process.

First, when the researcher did the observation, it seemed that the students did not speak English much. Whereas, as we know, speaking activities requires us to speak. When the students are asked by the teacher, they do not answer. They just do not know how to utter what is on their mind in English. When they speak English they make mistakes in grammar and pronunciation. They also lack vocabulary. It makes them prefer to switch to Bahasa Indonesia because they do not know some words in English.

Second, the activities that were conducted in the classroom do not engage the students. The speaking activities are boring and monotonous. The most conducted activity is role play. The students just have to memorize the conversation the teacher gives to them. Then, they come forward to practice the role play. The teacher tends to give much explanation rather than the questions to engage the students. The learning process built in the class tends to be teacher-centered, not