CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
It is an evitable fact that English language is the most widely used language around the world. In current situation, four big countries in the world use English language as their national language that are United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Australia. Besides, all commonwealth countries also speak English as their second language. English is also used as one of the formal languages in United Nation. From the facts, we can imagine how big the influence of English language in current global situation.
Indonesia government absolutely realizes with this situation, so that, they decide English language as a compulsory subject to learn in formal school. Even, since 1994, English has been decided as one of local-content subject at the elementary school in the fourth, fifth and sixth year.1 In line with GBPP (Garis- Garis Besar Pedoman Pengajaran/ The General Instruction of Teaching), the teaching-learning process of English language concentrates on the four skills, that are; listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
One of the four skills above which plays a significant role in mastering English is speaking. As a skill, speaking is the most used skill by people rather than the three other skills. According to Jack C. Richards, .Learners consequently often evaluate their success in language learning as well as the effectiveness of their English course on the basis of how well they feel they have improved in their spoken proficiency2.. From the statement, writer can say that most language learners study English in order to develop proficiency in speaking. Besides, many language learners regard speaking ability as the measure of knowing a language.
These learners define fluency as the ability to converse with others, much more than the ability to read, write, or comprehend oral language. They regard speaking as the most important skill they can acquire, and they assess their progress in terms of their accomplishments in spoken communication. Even, one of current models in literary of language education stated that language is a communication, not only a set of rule. It means that government and school with the model of language competences should prepare learners to communicate with the language in order to participate in the target language community itself.
Competence Based-Curriculum or 2004 curriculum as current curriculum applied by Indonesian Government becomes such a bridge to achieve communicative competence (CC) especially speaking skill. Canale and Swain, as cited in Mariane Celce-Murcia, proposes that the ability to communicate in a language comprises four dimension namely Grammatical Competence (Including rules of phonology, orthography, vocabulary, word formation and sentences formation), Sociolinguistic Competence (rules for the expression and understanding of appropriate social meanings and grammatical forms in different context), Discourse Competence (rules of both cohesion-how sentences elements are tied together in repetition, synonymy, etc-and coherence-how texts are constructed), and finally, Strategic Competence (a repertoire of compensatory strategies that help with a variety of communication difficulties)3. This four competences show the abilities underlying speaking proficiency and it is also really important elements in the process of developing speaking ability. In line with CC, one of the learning objectives of English language in 2004 curriculum is to improve CC including spoken communication. That objective is stated as follows: .Mengembangkan kemampuan berkomunikasi dalam bahasa Inggris, dalam bentuk lisan atau tulisan. Kemampuan berkomunikasi ini meliputi
