The use of presentation by PowerPoint in improving students’ speaking skill

Abstract

PowerPoint is very helpful in making presentations to display points that can be captured quickly by the audience, and is expected to be a learning medium that can help students in speaking instruction. The purposes of this research are to find out the effectiveness of Presentation in improving speaking skills, and to find out obstacles that students face. This research used mixed methods with an explanatory research design. It was conducted at one of private vocational high school in Bandung Barat regency, and involved 35 tenth grade students. Data collection techniques used in this study were tests and questionnaires. The results showed that PowerPoint presentation was effective in improving students' speaking skill. The analysis indicated a normal distribution with Pretest Sig. (0.205), Posttest Sig. (0.241), and homogeneous (Sig. 0.384). The average results of the paired sample statistics included Pretest = 7.997, Posttest = 6.992, and the sample test in pairs is sig (2-tailed = 0.000). In addition, it was revealed there were obstacles faced by the students including lack of confidence, grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. There were also several difficulties faced by the students in describing text, establishing 2-way communication, making the text interesting, and technical problems in creating PowerPoint.