Abstract

This study aims at finding the significant difference in students’ speaking skill after being taught by using HOTS-based communicative language teaching. A quantitative study in the form of a quasi-experimental design was conducted which involved 27 students from the tenth grade in SMKN 1 Pugung, Tanggamus. The data were collected through pre-test & post-test. The data were collected in form of recording. The data were analyzed using paired sample test and independent sample t-test. The findings showed that 1) there was a significant improvement in students’ speaking skill after being taught by using HOTS-based communicative language teaching. The mean in the speaking pre-test is 65.52 while the post-test is 78.30, with a value of sig. (2-tailed) is 0.000 and it was lower than 0.05. 2). In conclusion, HOTS-based communicative language teaching is appropriate for improving the student’s speaking skills since the student can be more active, and creative, and comprehend the language used.