Ernita Nur MAULIDIKA Pengarang Rostanti Toba, M.Pd. Dosen Pembimbing 1 Widya Noviana Noor, M.Pd. Dosen Pembimbing 2 Rostanti Toba, M.Pd. Penguji 1 Anis Komariah, M.Pd. Penguji 2 Dina Destari, S.S., M.Pd. Ketua Penguji

Ernita Nur Maulidika, 2024 “An Analysis of Students’ Difficulties in Speaking Skill at Eighth Grade of Islamic Boarding School Ar-Rahmah Samarinda”. English Department Thesis. Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Sultan Aji Muhammad Idris State Islamic University Samarinda. This research was under the guidance of Mrs. Rostanti Toba, M.Pd as the first supervisor and Mrs. Widia Noviana Noor, M.Pd as second supervisor. Speaking classes are notoriously challenging for teacher who struggle to keep their students engaged in speaking activities. This issue could arise if a significant proportion of students exhibit personality issues such as shyness, public speaking anxiety, or low self-esteem. Researcher saw several similar problems when conducting initial observations at the Ar-Rahmah Islamic boarding school. However, in this environment they do use English every day, but this is a requirement of the regulations or obligations in the Islamic boarding school. Therefore, there are quite a few students who use English but it does not comply with the rules of the language and its pronunciation, and it is not uncommon for them to choose not to speak much and there are also those who use English with an accent in their mother tongue or regional language. The research objectives are to find out the difficulties, the causes, and the solutions that students confront while learning to speak English. This research used qualitative descriptive, so this research needs to be discussed in depth. This study focused on the eighth grade, which comprised ten pupils, to determine what challenges or difficulties the youngsters encountered while speaking. The research tools for this study will be observations and interviews. The Miles and Huberman technique of data analysis is divided into three parts: data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification. The research findings show that almost all of the students had similar issues speaking English. Students frequently struggle to talk in English because they are worried about their ability to pronounce words correctly, apprehensive, and afraid of being mocked by their peers.