What is Speaking?

SPEAKING

1. The Definition of Speaking

One of the language skills, which are reality important in direct communication is speaking. According to David Nunan in Language Teaching Methodology: “Speaking is the single most important aspect of learning a second or foreign language, and success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the language”. (1991:39)

Speaking is an activity which is done by human being involving his or her organs of speech. We usually learn to speak by imitating how someone masters the language that we try to learn to speak English. It is important to practice and imitate pronunciation, because it can improve the mastery of the students’ speaking skill. Asking the students to imitate word to word pronunciation can be regarded as the stimulus for them to speak.

Speaking skill should be taught and practiced in the classroom language. Because the language course truly enables the students to communicate in English, so speaking skill needs the special treatment. In the reality, in our daily life most of us speak more than we write; yet many English teachers still spend the majority of class time on reading and writing practice almost ignoring speaking and listening skills. Based on the statement above, there should be a good balance to practice in classroom. According to Hornby (1995:826) speaking is making use of words in an ordinary voice, offering words, knowing and being able to use a language expressing one-self in words, and making speech. Therefore, the researcher infers that speaking uses the word and produces the sound to express ourselves either ideas, feeling, thought and needs orally in an ordinary voice. Furthermore, success in communication is often dependent as much on the listener as on the speaker. There are three components to make fluent in producing speech, namely vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. According to Walter (1973:11) speaking is one way of learning about one self. In speaking, someone must face problems that have history and relatively to other people, groups, and the predictions we have formed for living together. While Tarigan (1990:3) stated speaking that i s gotten by the children preceded by listening skill. After getting the language input the students are able to master speaking skill. So that, speaking is the way to express our idea and feeling to one another.

2. The Component of Speaking

In speaking, it is very important for student to acquire the ability to express their ideas and opinions. Consequently, this competency should be mastered by the learners of language. The following are the elements of speaking ability according to Harmer, (2001:269-271), language features such as the connected speech, expressive devices, lexis and grammar, and negotiation language. Connected speech is the modifying in sounds production or utterances such as assimilation, omission, addition, weakened (through contraction and stress patterning). An expressive device is the alteration of the speed, volume, and stress of utterances to show the feeling. The use of this device contributes the ability to convey meaning. Then lexis and grammar are necessary for the teacher to give of supply of certain words and language function, such as agreeing or disagreeing, surprise, and so forth. Those make students can produce at various stages of an interaction. Lastly negotiation language is the benefits to clarify and to show the structure what we are saying. Therefore, those elements are completely significant a speaking ability. Furthermore, Harmer (2001: 104) stated that the other element of the speaking is mental/social processing except the language skill for the speaker, but the rapid processing skill is also necessary, such as language processing, interaction, and information processing. The language processing is the effective speaker to convey their intention to someone else and they process the words or retrieval of words or phrases from memory to communicate with people. It helps the students develop habits of rapid language processing English. Then, interaction is the student interacting with the other and they understand each other. Lastly, information processing is related to the perception of someone else concerning the response to other feeling in using the language. Consequently, the mental has important role to succeed the communication particularly in speaking ability.

Sources :

Harmer, Jeremy. 2001. The practice of English Language Teaching. England.

Tarigan, Henry Gintur. 1990. Berbicara Sebagai Suatu Ketrampilan Berbahasa. Bandung : Penerbit Angkasa Bandung.