In Indonesia, English is a foreign language taught at all school levels from Elementary School up to the University level. It is a major subject that must be taught at school in Indonesia. The objective of teaching English in Indonesia based on the 2006 Standard of Content is that the students can develop their communicative competence both in oral or written forms to achieve a certain functional literacy stage. It involves four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The four language skills should be taught integratedly (Puskur, 2006).
Speaking is one of the four language skills that should be developed beside the other three language skills. According to Spratt et.al (2005:34) speaking is a productive skill like writing, it involves using speech to express meaning to other people. We can develop learners’ speaking skills by focusing regularly on particular aspect of speaking, e.g. fluency, pronunciation, grammatical accuracy or body language. Because speaking is such a complex skill, learners in the classroom may need a lot of help to prepare for speaking.
Burn & Joice (1993:3) argue that one of the most important aspects of speaking is that it always occurs within a context. When someone speaks, he/she is both using language to carry out various social functions and choosing forms of language which relate in a relevant way to the cultural and social context.
Kayi (2006:1) says that teaching speaking is a very important part of second language learning. The ability to communicate in a second language clearly and efficiently contributes to the success of the learners in school and success later in their life. Thus, it is essential that language teacher pay great attention to the teaching of speaking.
Furthermore, Richard and Renandya (2002:201) state that a large percentage of the world’s language learners study English in order to develop proficiency in speaking. It means, speaking as one of four language skills should be mastered by students or people if they want to interact with people around the world and get success later in their life.
Meanwhile, Brown & Yule in Nunan (1989:27) distinguish oral presentation into monologues and dialogues. The ability to give uninterrupted oral presentation requires different skill from those involved in having conversation with one or more speakers. So, in monologue, there is no interaction between people or more.
From the above discussion, it shows that mastering speaking skill is very important for the students in order to make the students are able to communicate in English with other people from other countries easily. Especially if they want to go abroad, it is an obligation for them to be able to communicate in English since English is applied as the first international language in countries all over the world. In addition, mastering English for the students of MTs or SMP level is very important since they want to continue their study to the higher level or they want to get a job.
But in fact, students face a lot of problems in mastering the speaking skill. The lack of practice of the language both inside and outside the classroom is the main cause of the students’ failure in mastering speaking skill. Besides, the very limited time is also considered to support the failure of the students’ speaking skill since the English lesson at school is usually held just for four hours per week which is divided into two meetings. One meeting lasts for 80 minutes. Schools apply the integrated teaching of English consisting of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Consequently, the proportion of teaching speaking is very limited because it is integrated with the other three language skills. Since the time for teaching speaking is very limited, English teacher are expected to be able to make use the available time more effectively and efficiently by applying a certain strategy that can involve all students more actively in joining the speaking class. This seems to be real condition faced by most students in Indonesia. This condition is also faced by the students at MTsN Selatbaru Bengkalis Regency - Riau in learning English especially in mastering speaking skill.
Based on my teaching experience in my classroom, I found many problems related to the teaching of speaking. Most of the students were not really motivated in speaking task. Some of them really wanted to express their ideas or feeling about the material being taught, but they don’t know how to express their idea. This was due their limited vocabulary. Some of them knew how to construct sentences but they were reluctant to speak. They were afraid of making mistakes in pronouncing the words or English grammar. Besides, they were afraid of being laughed at by other students, so they just keep silent and bore their ideas and feeling in their mind. Harmer (2007:345) states that students are often reluctant to speak because they are shy and are not predisposed to expressing themselves in front of other people, especially when they are being asked to give personal information or opinion.
In addition, teacher, as a facilitator was not creative and innovative enough. So far, teacher never used special or particular strategy or various media in teaching English. Teacher only used board marker and white board to explain the material taught and never analyzed the students’ problems in learning English especially speaking skill. As a result, the students are not motivated to study and getting bored soon.
Dealing with this reality, the English teacher is supposed to try to apply different way in teaching speaking that is using Multimedia Presentation strategy.
According to Brinton (2001) in Thao (2003) supposed that multimedia tools serve as an important motivator in the language teaching process because media materials can lend authenticity to the classroom situation, reinforcing the students, the direct relation between the language classroom and the outside world".
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