However, English achievement at school as the educational institution has not shown its significant success in terms of students’ mastery in language skills. Students generally considered that the importance of studying English subject is to pass the minimum score and because it is one of the subject that is used to pass the Final Examination. In their mind, studying English is all about the pattern or structure of the language and that is what being tested in the exam. The teacher, in this case, is still not successful in guiding the students’ paradigm toward English language learning that they are not going to learn about the language but they learn how to use the language. In result, after more than 6 years of studying English, students are still unable to use the language for communication.
Speaking is one of the language skills that is important to be mastered by the students. In line with the aim of language learning stated before that language is a means of communication, it means that the learner should be able to use the language for communication, especially in daily life context. In mastering speaking skill of course the students need a lot of practice besides knowing the grammar or the structure of the language, etc. But, in fact, the teacher still cannot make the students learn how to speak. Perhaps, the teachers did not use appropriate models of learning which interest them to produce the language.
From the researcher’ pre-observation at the first grade of SMAN 9 Bandar Lampung (class 2 Social 2), she found that many students still got difficulties in speaking. Only few students who had confident in sharing their ideas dominated the process of learning activity in the class. Meanwhile, the other students used to keep silent and tend to be passive. The teaching learning process, especially in speaking class then became classical because the teacher just gave them the material and they were asked to write the dialogue and memorizing the patterns, and when they were asked to perform in front, only 55% of them responded well. They would speak English only when the teacher wanted to take their speaking score.
There were some reasons that influenced this problem, i.e. students’ motivations and attitudes, teacher’s teaching performance, material, learning models used and some other problems. Morever, SMA N 9 had already applied SKS system just like in the University so the students had more responsibilities in maintaining the good score for each subject they had taken. It would make them bored easily in the learning process if the teacher could not handle it well.
According to the researcher, the students’ reluctant to speak was more related to the learning models used by the teacher. Teachers in common have not paid attention to the learning models they use in teaching speaking that can match the students’ learning style so there are still many students who are sucessful in passing the exam cannot use the language (English) for speaking. Because whatever the teachers do while teaching in class, they must apply a learning model. A learning model applied by the teacher in the class is very important in determining the success of a learning process. For this reason, this research is meant to provide a model which is effective and could improve the students’ speaking ability.
Learning models provide the teachers with an organized system for creating an appropriate learning environment and planning instructional activities. It also affects what the teacher does, what the student does, the organization of the classroom, the nature of the procedures, materials, and the instructional tasks. Seeing this, implementing appropriate learning model in the learning process should be considered by every teacher when they are going to teach. In this case, learning model used in this research is based on the result of previous research and development by Abdurrahman, Tarmini W, and Kadaryanto (2012). They developed a thematic learning model on the basis of constructivism which was oriented in three pillars of literacy and awareness characters: Understanding, Consciousness, and Alertness. From that research, there comes a learning model which its main syntax consisting of Exploring, Clustering, Simulating, Valuing, and Evaluating named EXCLUSIVE learning model. Because this model was still in the form of concept and it had never been applied before, so the researcher also tried to develop the procedure in using this model in teaching learning process.
EXCLUSIVE learning model is developed by determining certain topic, a theme or main topic, then the theme that has been chosen is used as a base to determine the sub-themes. It can be done by the teacher or students which is taken from the students’ environment and close to them so the theme can be developed based on their need and interest. This kind of learning model is useful to learn and gain the information from the facts around related to the students’ real experince in their daily life. Beside that, this learning model is also developed by using Student Centered Learning (SCL) approach which can make the students active in the learning process, and metacognitive learning strategy which enables the students to develop their understanding. From this explanation, it can be said that by implementing EXCLUSIVE learning model, students can be active in every phase of learning because the topic is related to students’ real experience and the learning process is centered on the students. If the students are actively involved in the learning process, hopefully they can improve their speaking skill because they will have more chance to practice the language during the class.
It is essential to keep in mind that language teacher is not to inform what language is but to facilitate the students and enable them to use the language. So far, our education is still dominated by the view that knowledge is a set of fact to be memorized transfered by the teacher. Our class focuses on teachers as the only learning sources and speech as the main learning strategies. Therefore, there should be a new learning strategy that can expose the students’ language competence. EXCLUSIVE learning model is considered as an alternative.
EXCLUSIVE learning model is not at the level of implementation yet, so that it is needed to conduct an action research in order to find the technique that can be used to make the model applicable in teaching learning process, especially in teaching speaking.
Considering all of those reasons, the researcher conducted an action research entitled “Implementing EXCLUSIVE Learning Model in Improving Students’ Speaking Skill at the First Grade of SMA Negeri 9 Bandar Lampung”. By conducting this research, it is hoped to produce an effective model that can be used by teachers in order to help students improve their speaking skill, student participation in the class and the quality of teacher’s teaching performance by considering the principles of EXCLUSIVE.