AN ANALYSIS OF THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS’ PROBLEMS IN SPEAKING FOR ARGUMENT AT THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF BUNG HATTA UNIVERSITY

Abstrak

INTRODUCTION One of four English language skills which is very important to be mastered by students is speaking. It is widely known that speaking is the tool or bridge for people to interact with others directly and orally. Speaking has an important role in social life [1]. It is used as a means of direct communication among people in society in order to keep a relationship among them. Many people feel that speaking in a new language is harder than reading, writing, and listening for two reasons. First, unlike reading or writing, speaking happens in real-time, and as a matter of fact, the person you are talking to is waiting for your response. Second, when you speak, you cannot edit and revise what you wish to say, as you can do if you are writing. Because of that, learning to speak needs more chances to practice the target language [2]. Many ways to learn and practice speaking skills, one of them is Speaking For Argument. This subject is great for beginners majoring in English. In this subject, students can apply lessons regarding the basic concepts of English that they have learned to express their arguments or point of view on a topic. They are asked to talk or express what they think on various topics. All members of the groups should develop and give their arguments about it. However, some students have problems during learning this subject such as; the content of the argument is out of the topic and lack of vocabulary. Especially during Covid-19 pandemic, now all of us are required to study online because of the lack of opportunity to practice or students tend to be too lazy to practice their speaking skills in this subject because of the limit of the time and space. As far as the researcher knows there is no research about students’ speaking problems in speaking for argument at the English Department. Relating to this, the researcher conducted the study in the second year students’ speaking problems in speaking for argument at the English Department of Bung Hatta University. METHOD The design of this research was descriptive. Descriptive research involves collecting data in order to test hypotheses or to answer questions concerning the current status of the subject of the study [3]. The population of this research was the second year students of the English Department of Bung Hatta University. The number of samples was 37 students taken by total sampling technique. Total sampling technique is technique by selecting all the members from the population. In other words, the sample of this research was all members of the population [4]. The instrument used to collect the data was a speaking test in which the students chose three alternative topics. Then, the test was valid in terms of content because it had covered all materials that students had learnt. The reliability index of the test was 0.89 (very high correlation) which means that the test was reliable. The researcher used the degree of coefficient of correlations based on Arikunto’s idea in Putri (2015). To collect the data, the researcher gave 3 alternative topics and asked them to choose one of them. Then, the researcher gave 2-4 minutes to speak one by one and it was recorded. The researcher wrote the transcription of students’ speaking and gave them as well as the recordings to the second scorer and gave a score based on the criteria for scoring. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS The results of the research showed the students had no problems when speaking for argument at the English Department. It was supported by the fact that 19 of 37 students (51,35%) had no problem in speaking. Specifically, 1 student (2,70%) had a problem with content while speaking. Furthemore, 17 students (45,94%) had problems with grammar. Then, no student had problems with vocabulary, pronunciation and fluency. Those are described on the table below: The Table of All Findings No. Aspects Have Problem Percentage Have no Problem Percentage 1. Content 1 2,70 % 36 97,30 % 2. Vocabulary 0 0% 37 100 % 3. Grammar 17 45,94 % 20 54,06 % 4. Pronunciation 0 0% 37 100 % 5. Fluency 0 0% 37 100 % Total 18 48,64 % 167 451,6 % Average 3,6 9,73 % 33,4 92,27% Based on the finding, the students’ problem in speaking for argument is not the best because the students still have problems with content and grammar while speaking. It was 2,70 % of students (1 of 37 students) had problem with content in speaking for argument. It indicated that almost all students had no problem to gave the appropriate content in speaking for argument. It means that most students have mastery of the content of the conversation. Different from Putri’s (2019) finding that only 10 students (17,2%) were classified as high ability and 48 students (82,8%) as low ability, it shows that students’ ability in expressing idea (content) was low, it means that most of them do not master the content of the conversation. Also with grammar, it found that 45,9% of members (17 of 37 students) had problems with grammar in speaking. It was proved that some students had problems to apply the correct grammar in speaking for arguments in the forms of singular and plural, prepositions, article grammar, tenses, etc. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS Based on the result of the data analysis, the researcher concluded that in general, the second year students of the English Department of Bung Hatta University had no problem in speaking for argument. It was proved by the fact that more than 50% of students had no problems in learning speaking for argument. Second year students of the English Department of Bung Hatta University had no problem with content in speaking for argument. It was proved by the fact that there were 36 of 37 students (97,30%) who had no mistakes. Some of the second year students at the English Department had problems to apply the correct grammar when speaking for argument. It was proved by the fact that there were 17 out of 37 students (45,9%) who made grammatical mistakes. Then, no student had problems with vocabulary, pronunciation and fluency. Based on the conclusions above, the researcher would like to propose some suggestions for the English teachers should pay more attention to the students’ problem in speaking, especially with the content and the grammar when they are speaking, related to the students having problems in speaking for argument, the students should do more practices to express to their opinion about certain topics by paying attention to grammar, content and others speaking for argument aspects, and for the next researchers are suggested to do related research to find out how students can improve their mastery on grammar. Keywords: speaking, problem, argument, speaking for argument