The background of this research is when speaking skill has become the first priority to be taught over other skills since communicative approach implementation has been influential in foreign language learning. It is based on instructional goal of the curriculum of 2006 of KTSP. English teachers should create active learning condition and develop their technique to help learners communicate more effectively by considering suitable activities for each group of learners. Besides, teachers also must pay attention to the factor of sex differences, because this factor can affect their proficiency and achievement. As some theories say that women are superior in verbal ability than men, but men in mechanical ability.
This research is aimed to find the answer of the problem of this study which is to what extent the speaking ability of male students is different from that of female students. This study is to find out the extent to which the speaking ability of male students is different from that of female students.
This study employed a comparative study of male and female students of the fourth semester of English Department IAIN Walisongo. They was selected based on their similarity background. Actually there are two classes were selected proportional by the process of simple proportional sampling. As result get the 10 female and 10 male students as the sample. After that, the researcher tests the 20 students with asking them to compare pictures and analyzes the result using quantitative approach.
In this study the obtained data were analyzed. The test of significance of the difference between male and female speaking ability was measured by employing t-test computation. The research result shows that the significance was seen at 40% level of significance as the criterion for the rejection of null hypothesis. By the 18 degrees of freedom, the critical value for t at the 40% level of significance was 0.862. Meanwhile the t value calculated for the difference between male and female was 0.925. Thus, the calculated t value shown that the difference between male and female on students speaking ability was greater than the critical value found in the table 40% level of significance. It means that Ho is rejected.
The main finding of this study is there is difference between male and female students on speaking ability. Although, the result shows that the difference between male and female students do not occur for all of the components of speaking ability. But, it is real that there is significant different. So, the teachers are supposed to pay attantion on the factor of student sex differences