STUDENTS’ LEARNING STYLES IN LEARNING SPEAKING EMPLOYED BY THE ACCELERATION STUDENTS AT SMAN 03 MALANG

Abstract

In recent years, English becomes a world language that is used in science, technology, trade and cultural relations.Hundreds of books, magazines and newspapers are printed in English and are read all over the world. Many schools in the world teach English to their students. They are prepared to face globalization era by learning this language to communicate with others. When the students would like to continue their study to the higher level, most of universities give an English test to the prospective students.
 
 Learning English is not an easy step that can be managed in short time because students have to learn four basic skills such as reading, writing, listening and speaking all at once. In order to learn effectively, learning style is highly important to know by the learners to understand the lesson in an appropriate way. This study was conducted to find out the kinds of learning styles employed by the students, the problems faced by them in employing their learning styles, and the ways they solved their problems.
 
 The descriptive research design with qualitative approach was employed in the research. The subjects of this research were the acceleration students at SMAN 03 Malang of 2015 academic year for Senior High School. It concerned on English Speaking subject. Observation, questionnaire, interview, and documentation were used as the instruments to collect the data of this research.
 
 The research findings showed that, first of all, there were three learning styles employed by the acceleration students, namely visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles. Secondly, there were also two problems that the students faced in employing their learning styles, namely crowded class and teacher’s monotonous way in explaining the text. Finally, the students tried to solve their problems in employing their learning styles by communicating it with their friends and the teacher.