Speaking

Definition of speaking

There are some definitions of speaking that have been proposed by some experts in language learning. According to Bailey (2005), speaking is a productive oral skill. It consists of producing systematic verbal to convey meaning. While another definition, Fulcher (2003) defines “ speaking as the verbal language to communicate with others. Brown (2001:267) states that when someone can speak a language it means that she can carry on a conversation reasonably competently.

Richards and Renandya (2002:204) state that effective oral communication requires the ability to use the language appropriately in social interactions that involve not only verbal communication but also paralinguistic elements of speech such as pitch, stress, and intonation. Moreover, nonlinguistic elements such as gestures, body language, and expressions are needed in conveying messages directly without any accompanying speech. Brown (2007:237) states that social contact in interactive language functions is a key importance and in which it is not what you say that counts but how you say it that you convey with body language, gestures, eye contact, physical distance and other nonverbal messages.

From some definitions above it can be concluded that speaking skill is always related to communication. Speaking skill itself can be stated as the skill to use the language accurately to express meanings in order to transfer or to get knowledge and information from other people in the whole life situation.

Component of Speaking

In English, there are some important components that are related in speaking. Harris (1969) states that there are four components used in speaking ability such as pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and fluency.

1. Pronunciation: pronunciation is the way for students to produce clearer language when they speak. It deals with the phonological process that determine how sounds vary and pattern in a language (1997, p.4)
2. Grammar: it is needed for students to arrange a correct sentence in conversation, or the student’s ability to manipulate structure and to distinguish appropriate grammatical form in appropriate ones. The utility of grammar is also to learn the correct way to gain expertise in a language in oral and written form (1997, p.4). Grammar is common in both written and spoken form of the language, so its existence is strongly needed in learning and speaking skill. The explanation above shows that grammar focuses on some roles to form words that can be easily understood and match with the rules. In addition, it also focuses on how to make good sentences and easily comprehended
3. Vocabulary: one cannot communicate effectively or express their ideas in both oral and written form if they do not have sufficient vocabulary. So, vocabulary means the appropriate diction which is used in communication (1997, p.4)
4. Fluency: fluency can be defined as the ability to speak fluently and accurately (1997, p.4). The students can be called master of English or have a good ability in English if they can speak fluently. It means that the student’s fluency in English is a sign that they are masters of English.

After reviewing some resources that talk about testing speaking skill, the researcher adopted these definitions for the five components and created a new rating scale that used 1-4 points.

Teaching Speaking

There are 5 principles of teaching speaking proposed by Nunan (2003:54-56), they are: (1) be aware of the differences between second language and foreign language learning contexts; (2) give students practice with both fluency and accuracy; (3) provide opportunities for students to talk by using group work or pair work, and limiting teacher talk; (4) plan speaking tasks that involve negotiation for meaning; and (5) design classroom activities that involve guidance and practice in both transactional and interactional speaking.

The first principle discusses how foreign language and second language context are different in nature. A learner in foreign language (FL) context needs more effort in learning the target language, due to it not being a language of communication in the society. Especially in learning speaking skills, it is very challenging for the students in FL context, because they have very few opportunities to use the target language outside the classroom. While in a second language (SL) context, the target language is the language of communication in the society. It seems no problem for those who were born in the country with the target language as a second language, but not for the others – like the refugees, international students, and immigrants. Those who arrive in their new country as children can achieve notable speaking skills, but many others progress to a certain proficiency level and then go no further. Their speech seems to stop developing at a point where it still contains noticeable, patterned errors. These can be errors in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, or any combination of problems that affect the learners’ ability to communicate by speaking.

The second principle is about how to give students practice with both fluency and accuracy. In language lessons – especially at the beginning and intermediate levels – teachers should give an opportunity to the students to develop both their fluency and accuracy. By giving them a fluency-building practice, students can develop their fluency by themselves. Teachers may not constantly interrupt them to correct their oral errors, but they should realize that they make some mistakes when the teacher gives some feedback at the end of the lesson.

The principle number three emphasizes the teacher's talking time. Most teachers in the school do approximately 50 to 80 percent of the talking in the classroom. The teacher should manage their talk time appropriately in order to give an opportunity to the students in practicing speaking. Pair work or group work activities can be used to maximize the amount of time that students have to speak in the target language during the lesson.

The next principle focuses on students’ speaking tasks. Designing an appropriate speaking task in the form of negotiating meaning can reflect speaking activities that they have in their real time. It involves checking to see if you’ve understood what someone has said, clarifying your understanding, and confirming that someone has understood your meaning. By asking for clarification, repetition, or explanations during conversations, students get the people they are speaking with to address them with language at a level they can learn from and understand.

And the last principle concerns the purposes of transactional and interactional speaking activities. In the speaking class, students must be practicing both transactional and interactional speaking to achieve a real situation that they will meet in real life. The interaction speech is much more variable and unpredictable than transactional speech. Speaking activities inside the classroom need to embody both interactional and transactional purposes, since language learners will have to speak the target language in both transactional and interactional settings.

The Roles of the Teacher in Speaking Class.

Speaking is a means to communicate with other people; it can be done in monologues or dialogues. So the role of speaking in human life is so important, because humans can not live normally without communicating with other people. But the problem that is commonly faced by the teacher in speaking class is so complicated, such as the students who are mostly afraid to speak up. It is so difficult for the teacher to make them speak, the students are not only afraid to speak up but also they do not have much vocabulary to speak. So the teacher has an important role in encouraging students to speak.

The role of a teacher in the classroom can affect the success of the teaching and learning process. According to Diane in Ratna (2009:11), the teacher facilitates communication in the classroom. In this role, one of the major responsibilities is to establish situations likely to promote communication. Teachers should play such different roles in teaching speaking. Harmer (2001:271) states the roles as follow:

1. Prompter: Students sometimes get lost, cannot think what to say next, or in some other way lose the fluency the teacher expects of them. The teacher can leave them to struggle out of a situation on their own, and indeed sometimes this may be the best option. However, the teacher may be able to see the activity progress by offering discrete suggestions.
2. Participant: Teachers should be good animators when asking students to produce language. Sometimes this can be achieved by setting up an activity clearly and with enthusiasm. At other times, however, teachers may want to participate in discussion or role play themselves. That way they can promptly covertly, introduce new information to help the activity along, ensure continuing students’ engagement, and generally maintain a creative atmosphere. However, in such circumstances they have to be careful that they do not participate too much, thus dominating the speaking and drawing all the attention to them.
3. Feedback provider: When students are in the middle of a speaking activity, over-correction may inhibit them and take the communicativeness out of
   the activity. On the other hand, helpful and gentle correction may get students out of the mistakes or errors they have made.

Activities of Teaching Speaking

Average person who wants to learn English language, most certainly has the same reason. It is can speak English. So, they learn English language to try speaking English. Usually, failure of learning to speak causes a boring situation in the class, unattractive, less fun and silent in the class. There are many activities of learning to speak. Adopted by Yelia (2015:59-64), there are some activities of learning speaking as follows:

1. Dialogue is a language learning technique where students are taught simple dialogues that are then practiced in pairs, whether in the student sitting or in front of the class. although the technique has started to be rarely used but for novice learners or learners who have less confidence this technique is considered quite good (Urr, 1991: 131-132)
2. Plays are the development of the dialogue technique. In this technique students learn and display a play. Practice and preparation to be done quite a lot of time but according to Urr (1991: 132) this technique is very useful for learning and development of students' self-confidence and morale.
3. Free discussions is an activity that provides an opportunity for students to be actively involved in discussing a topic. This activity also encourages students to use the languages needed to keep the conversation going at a certain time. In addition, with this technique students will have the opportunity to practice the strategy strategies needed in interpersonal communication (Hedge 2000: 277)
4. Role-play is an activity where students are given a situation along with a problem or task but they are given individual rules (Urr, 1991: 132; Harmer: 125). In the role-play students who choose the language
   they will use. They are given the opportunity to improvise using the language as used in everyday life (Hedge, 200: 279)
5. Simulations are an activity in which participants speak and act as themselves but the rules, situations and tasks they perform are imaginative (Urr, 1991: 132). In simulations students do not have much freedom in using language to express the various emotions or relationships between speaking or interactive speech. This activity is usually done in small groups without any of the audience.
6. Information gap is an activity where students work in pairs or in groups. Each student has information that other students do not have, then they will share the information they have. Information gaps do not engage students in conversational strategies as well as in role-play or simulations (Hedge, 2000: 281). In order for the students to fully understand the procedure of this activity, the teacher should first demonstrate it in front of the class (Harmer: 129)
7. Storytelling is an activity where students can briefly summarize a tale or story they heard from somebody beforehand, or they may create their own stories to tell their classmates. Story telling fosters creative thinking. It also helps students express ideas in the format of beginning, development, and ending, including the characters and setting a story has to have. Students also can tell riddles or jokes. For instance, at the very beginning of each class session, the teacher may call a few students to tell short riddles or jokes as an opening. In this way, not only will the teacher address students’ speaking ability, but also get the attention of the class.
8. Brainstorming is an activity which is on a given topic to students, students can produce ideas in a limited time. Depending on the context, either individual or group brainstorming is effective and learners generate ideas quickly and freely. The good characteristics of brainstorming is that the students are not criticized for their ideas so students will be open to sharing new ideas.
9. Interview is an activity where Students can conduct interviews on selected topics with various people. It is a good idea that the teacher provides a rubric to students so that they know what type of questions they can ask or what path to follow, but students should prepare their own interview questions. Conducting interviews with people gives students a chance to practice their speaking ability not only in class but also outside and helps them become socialized. After interviews, each student can present his or her study to the class. Moreover, students can interview each other and "introduce" his or her partner to the class.
10. Story completing is an activity where all member class free-speaking activities. Free-speaking activity for which students sit in a circle. For this activity, a teacher starts to tell a story, but after a few sentences he or she stops narrating. Then, each student starts to narrate from the point where the previous one stopped. Each student is supposed to add from four to ten sentences. Students can add new characters, events, descriptions and so on.
11. Reporting is done by standing in front of the class to give a report. Before coming to class, students are asked to read a newspaper or magazine and, in class, they report to their friends what they find as the most interesting news. Students can also talk about whether they have experienced anything worth telling their friends in their daily lives before class.
12. Picture narrating is an activity based on several sequential pictures. Students are asked to tell the story taking place in the sequential pictures by paying attention to the criteria provided by the teacher as a rubric. Rubrics can include the vocabulary or structures they need to use while narrating.
13. Picture describing is an activity to give students just one picture and having them describe what it is in the picture. For this activity students can form groups and each group is given a different picture. Students discuss the picture with their groups, then a spokesperson for
    each group describes the picture to the whole class. This activity fosters the creativity and imagination of the learners as well as their public speaking skills.
14. Finding the differences is an activity where students can work in pairs and each couple is given two different pictures, for example, a picture of boys playing football and another picture of girls playing tennis. Students in pairs discuss the similarities and/or differences in the pictures.