MASRIAH Pengarang Dr. Umar Fauzan, M.Pd. Dosen Pembimbing 1 Anis Komariah, M.Pd. Dosen Pembimbing 2 Rostanti Toba, M.Pd. Ketua Penguji Anis Komariah, M.Pd. Penguji 2 Dina Destari, S.S., M.Pd. Penguji 1

Masriah, 2023. The Problems of Speaking Ability at Eighth-Grade Students of SMP Islamic Center Samarinda in The Academic Year 2022/2023. Thesis, English Education Department, Teacher Training and Tarbiyah Faculty, State Islamic University Sultan Aji Muhammad Idris Samarinda. This research is under the guidance of Mr. Umar Fauzan, M.Pd., as the first advisor, and Mrs. Anis Komariah, M.Pd., as the second advisor. Besides Indonesian, English is also a language that Indonesians must master by Indonesians. In learning English, there are four skills that must be mastered, namely, speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Among language skills, speaking is one of the skills that must be mastered. While learning to speak, students face several problems. The objective of the research is to know the problems of speaking ability at the eighth grade of SMP Islamic Center Samarinda in the academic year 2022/2023. The research used a descriptive qualitative design. The main instruments were speaking assessment, interview, and observation. The primary data of this research were taken from twenty-three students by the eighth grade of SMP Islamic Center Samarinda in the academic year 2022/2023. The rubric speaking assessment was from David P. Harris. The topic of the speaking assessment was “vacation”. The interview consists of seven questions. The interviews were conducted with the 5 students who got the lowest speaking assessment scores. This research finding showed that students are weak in almost all aspects of speaking assessment except pronunciation. This is related to the result of the speaking assessment of students who are at the average level with a C score. In fact, it turns out that the most problems faced by students are fluency, there are 7 students who get C scores, 14 students who get D scores, and 1 student who gets an E score. This showed that fluency is also problematic. Other problems were students feeling embarrassed to speak English in front of their friends and lack of practice.