Students’ Learning Strategies in Improving Speaking Skill: A study at English Education Department of Bung Hatta University

This research was a descriptive study which purposed to describe learning strategies that were used by high, average and low achievement students of English education department of Bung Hatta University. This research was aimed at describing what strategies they have used in learning speaking, and what strategies are better improved their speaking skill. Respondent of the research was the third year students of English Education Department of Bung Hatta University enrolled in 2008/2009 who has passed speaking II subject. Data were collected from speaking test, questionnaire, and interview. After doing the research, it was found some important findings. First, it was found that speaking learning strategy that is most frequently used by high achievement students was memory strategy with mean score (3.9). Second, speaking learning strategy that was most frequently used by average achievement students were memory and social strategies that have the same mean score (3,5). Third, speaking learning strategy that was most frequently used by low achievement students was social strategies with mean score 3, 3. The last one, it was found that ten subs of each strategies, they are setting goals and objectives, paying attention, making positive statement, practicing, self evaluating getting help, paying attention, positive thinking, practicing naturally, self evaluating, creating mental link, organizing and scheduling, getting help, cooperating with others and asking question and sharing ideas that are most frequently used by high achievement students, regarded as better speaking learning strategy to improve students speaking skill. Based on the above finding, the researcher concluded that the strategies which have been found to be most frequently used by the high achievement students in speaking might be considered as effective strategies for particular group of EFL learner to improve the students speaking skill. For the speaking lecturers, it also suggested to train the average and low achievement students to use the strategies used by high achievement students identified.