STUDENTS' STRATEGIES IN OVERCOMING THE DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED IN SPEAKING

This research wasconcernedto find outstrategies were used by the eighthgrade students of MTsS SafinatussalamahLhokseumawe to overcome the difficulties in Englishspeaking, and to know the reason they chose those strategies. The design applied in this research was descriptive qualitative research. Meanwhile, the techniques of data collection were observation, field note, and interview. The researcher analyzed the data by Miles and Huberman model, namely data reduction, data display, and conclusion. The result of the research showed that there were variouslearning strategiesused by the students. There were meta-cognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, and social-affective strategies. They chose those strategies based on some reasons, such as because they wanted to check their language to be a good language in speaking, theyfelt easier to get the ideas in speaking, and they knew their ability in speaking. So, the strategies were very important to help students in learning process especially in learning English speaking. A good strategy also helped the students to learn fun and creative,so that the students would feel interested in learning and they could practice their speaking.Keyword:strategy, difficulty, speaking. A.Introduction English is one of the important subjects taught to the students beside the other primary subject at school. There are four skills such as; speaking, listening, reading and writing that are taught in English. Speaking is considered the most important skill to master, because there is an assumption that students must learn and speak English fluently in this globalization era. In junior high school, speaking should be learned and should be practiced in the classroom. The students must try to speak in English lesson to make them communicate in English.