Characteristic of Successful Speaking Activity

To support the teaching learning process of speaking skill, the teachers must know about the characteristics of students and also the characteristics of successful speaking activity. If the teacher knows about the characteristics of each student, the teacher can easily give the material to students. According to Underhil (1987; 120), there are some characteristics of successful speaking activity:

1.   Students talk a lot

As much as possible period of time allotted to the activity occupied by students talk. This is obvious, but often most time is taken up with teacher talks or pauses. It means the students must be active to speak with their friends as mush as possible. It is very clear that the students are busy, but they seldom spent their time to talk with their teacher.

2.   Participation is even

            Classroom discussion is not dominated by a monitory of talkative participants: all get a chance to speak, and contributions are fairly evenly distributed. It means that the classroom discussion is not dominated by one participant only, but all of participants get a same chance to speak.

3.   Motivation is high

Students are eager to speak: because they are interested in the topic and have something new to say about it, or because they want to contribute to achieve an objective task. It means that the students have high motivation to speak English. By having a high motivation, the students will be interested in learning English, especially in speaking. They often try to deliver their own idea confidently.

            4.   Language is of an acceptable level

Students express themselves in utterances that are relevant, easily comprehensible to each other, and of an acceptable level of language accuracy. It means that they use the components of speaking which are relevant with the acceptable level of language such as, pronunciation, grammar, fluency, and comprehensible. So, the students often try to speaking English correctly in real communication.

Source :

Underhil nic. 1987. Testing Spoken Language. London: Cambridge University Press.

    

 Activities of Teaching Speaking

According to Harmer (2001: 271) ther some activities to teach speaking, they are as follows:

i)        Acting from script

Students act out scenes from plays or their course books, sometimes filming the result. Student will often act out dialogues they have written themselves. This frequency involve them in coming out to the front of the class. 

ii)      Communication games

Game which are designed to provoke communication between students frequently depend on an information gap, so that one students has to talk to a partner in order to solve puzzle, draw a picture (describe and draw), put things in the right order (describe and arrange, or find similarities and differences between pictures)

iii)    Discussion

Students are reluctant to give an opinion in front of the class, particularly if they cannot think of anything to say and or not; anyway, confident of the language they might use to say it. Many students feel extremely exposed in discussion situation.

iv)    Prepared Talks

Student makes a presentation on a topic of their choices. If possible, students should speak from notes rather than from script.

v)      Questionnaires

Students can design questionnaires on any topic that is appropriate. The result obtained from questionnaires can

then the basis for written work, discussion, or prepared talks.

Sources :

                Jeremy, Harmer. (2001). How to Teach English. London: Longman

a.      The Components of Speaking

In the process of teaching learning speaking, both teacher and students have to know the components of speaking. Harris in Mukminatien (1991) cited that the short description as follows:

i)        Pronunciation

Pronunciation refers to the ability to stress words in sentences and to produces correct intonation. She describes that pronunciation has a big influence to English learners who has good pronunciation mean they master English purely.

ii)      Grammar

Grammatical deals with the accurate use of the structure or how the learner gets his or her utterance correct. It shows that grammatical cannot be under estimated. Even the speaker does not care with grammar when she or he is peaking but to get the point of the speaker says, they have to use it correctly.

iii)    Vocabulary

Vocabulary deals with the ability of choosing appropriate words. There are many vocabularies that have same meaning, so to identify it the speakers have to select them. It is because wrong selecting means wrong meaning.

iv)    Fluency

Fluency refers to the ability to express ideas smoothly, without hesitation, repetition or in appropriate pause. Someone who is good n grammatical and vocabulary does not mean she or he can speak fluently. So, there should be balancing between grammatical and vocabulary to support fluency in speaking.

v)      Comprehension

Comprehension refers to the ability to get the meaning across the learners and the ability to keep the conversation going. Most of the learners get difficult to get the point of the speaker say, because they do not really understand the point.

a.      Type of Teaching Speaking

According to Brown (2001: 271) there some type of classroom speaking performance, they are:

i)        Imitative

Learners practice an intonation contour ot try to pinpoint a certain vowel sound. Imitation of this kind is carried out not for the purpose of meaningful interaction, but for focusing on some particular element of language form.

ii)      Intensive

Intensive speaking goes one step beyond imitative to include any speaking performance that is designed to practice some phonological or grammatical aspect of language.

iii)    Responsive

Short replies to teacher or students initiated question or comment.

iv)    Transactional (Dialog)

Transactional language carried out for the purpose of conveying or exchanging specific information is an extended form of responsive language

v)      Interpersonal (Dialog)

Interpersonal dialog carried out more for the purpose of maintaining social relationship than for transmission of facts and information.

vi)    Extensive (Monolog)

Students at intermediate to advance levels are called on to give extended monologues in the form of oral report, summaries, or perhaps short speeches.

From the statement above, I can conclude that there are some types of classroom speaking performance can be used by the students. The first is imitative. In this performance, the students just imitate how to say in correct intonation not meaningful interaction. The second is intensive. The students practice some phonological/grammatical aspect of language. The third is responsive. The student should have question or command for their teacher. The fourth is transactional. In this activity, the students will try to speak to get the purpose of getting information. The fifth is interpersonal. The students will get the purpose of maintaining social relationship to get the fact and information. The last is extensive. The students will try to perform oral monologues such as report, summary or short speak. 

source : 

      Brown, Douglas, H. (2001). Language Assessment Principles and Classroom Practices. London:Longman.