English Skills

  SPEAKING SKILL

Tarigan (1990:3-4) defines that speaking is a language skill that is developed in child life, which is produced by listening skill, and at that period speaking skill is learned.

Based on Competence Based Curriculum speaking is one of the four basic competences that the students should gain well. It has an important role in communication. Speaking can find in spoken cycle especially in Joint Construction of Text stage (Departmen Pendidikan Nasional, 2004). In carrying out speaking, students face some difficulties one of them is about language its self. In fact, most of students get difficulties to speak even though they have a lot of vocabularies and have written them well. The problems are afraid for students to make mistakes.

Speaking is the productive skill. It could not be separated from listening. When we speak we produce the text and it should be meaningful. In the nature of communication, we can find the speaker, the listener, the message and the feedback. Speaking could not be separated from pronunciation as it encourages learners to learn the English sounds.

Harmer, (in Tarigan, 1990: 12) writes that when teaching speaking or producing skill, we can apply three major stages, those are:

1)      Introducing new language

2)      Practice

3)      Communicative activity.

Speaking has been regarded as merely implementation and variation, outside the domain of language and linguistic proper. Linguistic theory has mostly developed in abstraction from context of use and source of diversity. Therefore, Clark and Clark (in Nunan, 1991: 23) said that speaking is fundamentally an instrument act. Speakers talk in order to have some effect on their listener. It is the result of teaching learning process. Students’ skill in conversation is core aspect in teaching speaking, it becomes vitally aspect in language teaching learning success if language function as a system for expression meaning, as Nunan (1991:39) states that the successful in speaking is measured through someone ability to carry out a conversation in the language. We confess that there are many proponent factors that influence teaching speaking success and there are many obstacle factors why it is not running well.

According to Ladouse (in Nunan, 1991: 23) speaking is described as the activity as the ability to express oneself in the situation, or the activity to report acts, or situation in precise words or the ability to converse or to express a sequence of ideas fluently. Furthermore, Tarigan  (1990: 8) said that “Berbicara adalah cara untuk berkomunikasi yang berpengaruh hidup kita sehari-hari”. It means that speaking as the way of communication influences our individual life strongly.

From the explanation above, the researcher concludes that speaking is what we say to what we see, feel and think. When we feel something, we want someone can hear us. So, in this process we can call it is an interaction between two sides.

When someone speak to other person, there will be a relationship. The relationship itself is communication. Furthermore, Wilson (1983:5) defines speaking as development of the relationship between speaker and listener. In addition speaking determining which logical linguistic, psychological a physical rules should be applied in a given communicate situation”. It means that the main objective of speaking is for communication. In order to express effectively, the speaker should know exactly what he/she wants to speak or to communicate, he/she has to be able to evaluate the effects of his/her communication to his/her listener, he/she has to understand any principle that based his speaking either in general or in individual.

Based on the statements above the researcher infers that if someone speaks, he/she should understand what is he/she about. In this section, the writer should develop ideas or build some topics to be talked and to make other responds to what speakers says.

Stern (in Risnadedi, 2001: 56-57) said watch a small child’s speech development. First he listens, then he speaks, understanding always produces speaking. Therefore this must be the right order of presenting the skills in a foreign language. In this learning of language included speaking, there is an activity of speaker or learner and it has to have an effect to build speaker’s or learner’s desires and express how his/her feeling and acting out his/her attitudes through speaking. Thus the learning of speaking can not be separated from language.

On the other hand, speaking can be called as oral communication and speaking is one of skills in English learning. This become one important subject that teacher should given. That is why the teachers have big challenge to enable their students to master English well, especially speaking English in class or out of the class.

Wallace (1978:98) stated that oral practice (speaking) becomes meaningful to students when they have to pay attention  what they are saying. Thus, the students can learn better on how to require the ability to converse or to express their ideas fluently with precise vocabularies and good or acceptable pronunciation.

Speaking ability is the students’ ability in expressing their ideas orally which is represented by the scores of speaking. Speaking is only an oral trail of abilities that it got from structure and vocabulary, Freeman (in Risnadedi, 2001: 56-57) stated that speaking ability more complex and difficult than people assume, and speaking study like study other cases in study of language, naturalize many case to language teachers.

1.      Problem in Speaking

There are some common problems appear in speaking :

a)      Students reluctance to speak and take part in speaking activity

Students are often reluctant to speak because they don’t have self-confidence and they are not forced to express themselves in front the other people. By using Thinh Pair Share, every students are encouraged to contribute their opinion each other and the students will be easily to express their ideas and they will be more confidence to speak.

b)      The teachers’ role in speaking

The teachers’ role in speaking should be the prompter, facilitator, and feedback provider that can make the students have frequent time to practice speaking English. The teacher merely focus on providing adequate speaking task and guiding the students to actively practice speaking English. In the real life, sometimes most teachers still uses the conventional method to teach speaking in the class. The teacher didn’t give appropriate activity that support the students practice speaking English widely. It makes the students feel bored and they don’t have enough encouragement to practice speaking English (Harmer,2007, pp.345-346).

2.      Characteristic of Successful Speaking Activities

Brown (2001:270) says spoken language is easy to perform, but in some cases it is difficult. In order that they can carry out the successful speaking, they must have some characteristics of successful speaking activity such as:

a)      Students talk a lot when they take part in speaking activity

They talk as much as possible of the period of time allocated to the activity of speaking. The students speak a lot in that duration and they comprehend the topic of speaking.

b)      Students have high motivation to join speaking class

It can be seen from their behavior to have a great desire to acomplish their speaking task and achieve the task objective.

c)      Language is of an acceptable level

Learners express themselves in utterance that are relevant, easy comprehensible to teach other and acceptable level of language accuracy. Means that the students are capable to build good interaction each other in sharing their ideas and information.

 

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