<![CDATA[This study was aimed at finding out if there would be a significant difference in achievement between students who were taught speaking using the Information Gap technique and those who were taught speaking by conventional methods, and finding out which speaking sub skills would be most improved by using the Information Gap technique with eighth grade students at Islamic boarding school SMP IT Daruzzahidin, Aceh Besar. It employed a true experimental design in which there were two classes; one the experimental group (EG) and the other the control group (CG) that each had 30 students. The data was collected through quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative data was obtained from the results of the pre-tests and post-tests of the students’ speaking. The qualitative data was obtained from the results of the students’ speaking proficiency improvement. The results of the quantitative data showed that the mean of the post-test scores of the experimental group was 82 while the mean of the post-test scores of the control group was 70. T-test result of the t-test was 4.68 while the results showed that the students taught by using the information gap technique achieved significantly better performances than those who were taught speaking by using the conventional method. Meanwhile, the data analysis from the students’ speaking proficiency showed that the students’ speaking proficiency had improved by more than 20% for all five aspects: pronunciation, grammar, lexical, speaker’s intentions, and general meaning. Thus it was shown that the experimental group achieved a significant improvement in their speaking proficiency.]]>
