Improving Students’ Speaking Skill through Project Based Learning Technique at Class III-B of the Third Semester Students in STKIP “Tapanuli Selatan

On the basis of the preliminary survey and observation it was found that the students had problem in speaking, they were lack of speaking skill and not interested in lecturer teaching technique. In order to solve the problems, the researcher implemented project based learning technique as one of the alternative techniques in teaching speaking. The aims of the research were to find out whether students’ speaking skill could be improved through project based learning and to gain information about what factors cause the improvement. This Classroom Action Research (CAR) consisted of two cycles. There were four stage/ steps applied in each cycle of the research, namely: plan, action, observation and reflection. There were four meetings in each cycle; three meetings for applying project based learning and one meeting for speaking test at the end of the cycle. Before doing research, the researcher had given pre-test to know the level of students’ speaking skill. The mean score of the test was 62.1 and almost all the component of speaking were at the low level of quality. From the two cycles of the research, it was found that through Project Based Learning Technique improved students speaking skill. That was increased from 65.73 (fair) average score in cycle 1 and increased become 76 (good) average score in cycle 2. The participants of this research consisted of 44 students in 2012/2013 academic year. This research was help by a lecturer as a collaborator. Based on the finding it can be concluded the used of Project Based Learning Technique could improve students’ speaking skill. The factors affected the improvements were activation of the student’s background knowledge, real life topic, and giving peer response to others friend’s project, group work. The activities above forced them to speak and it made them interested in studying speaking. So, project based learning technique can be useful to be applied in teaching speaking at the third semester, particularly at STKIP “Tapanuli Selatan” Padangsidimpuan.