IMPROVING STUDENTS' SPEAKING PROFICIENCY USING GAMES

spoken text especially in the form of descriptive, recount, and narrative to interactwith surrounding, b.) do the transaction activities for example inviting someone,accepting and declining an offer, asking for and giving opinion, praising andcongratulating. In reality the students are not able to express their idea fluently.Based on the goals that have been determined, the students are expected toachieve them. However, there is a gap between the goals and the fact whichhappens in the classroom. The fact can be shown through the observation and theinterview.In reality the ability of the eighth grade students in SMP N 2 BakiSukoharjo in speaking material does not meet the standard of curriculum. Fromthe observation done by the researcher, lack of students’ speaking proficiency isthe problem. Their vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation are low which makethem unable to say something during the speaking class. Related to thecompetence of the students speaking proficiency, there are some indicators whichshow that they do not speak accurately. First, in language teaching class, theyrarely answer the question given by the teacher orally. Second, they also speakwith a lot of pauses. Third, they get difficulties to find the appropriate words tocreate sentence or expression. Fourth, dealing with the vocabulary mastery, forinstance when the teacher asks the meaning of seldom, never, several of them cannot answer them. Fifth, in grammatical item when the teacher explains recounttext, she asks the past form of the words bring, and think, the students do notunderstand. Another difficulty is found in speaking material. The teacher has totranslate all the sentences first before explaining what kind of expression it is.xv