1. Principles of Teaching Speaking

                 Principles of teaching speaking are as follows (Harmer, 2001: 102)

a. Help students overcome their initial reluctance to speak. Be encouraging; provide

opportunity; start from something simple;

b. Ask students to talk about what they want to talk about.

c. Ask students to talk about what they are able to talk about.

d. Provide appropriate feedback.

e. Combine speaking with listening and reading.

f. Incorporate the teaching of speech acts in teaching speaking.

2. Method of Teaching Speaking

The method of teaching speaking as suggested by Harmer (1998:95) is Engage Activate-Study. Engage means that the teacher gives warming to the students. For instance: the topic of the discussion is about fruits. Then, activate the teacher give an opportunity to the students to express their ideas and opinions. Afterwards, study means that it concerns with the material of the discussion. Therefore, the students can get the learning experience. The other method of teaching speaking skill is through information gap activities that are suggested by Raptou (2001: 211). Information gap is useful activity in which one person has information that the other lacks. They must use the target language to share that information. For instance, one student has the directions to a party and must give them to a classmate. One type of speaking activity involves the so-called “information gap” where two speakers have different parts of information making up a whole. Because they have different information, there is a gap between them.

3. The Activities in Speaking Class

The activities of speaking class are as follows (Harmer, 2001:271-274).

a.    Acting from a script.

In this section the teacher asks the students to perform the play based on the     dialogue in the script. Thus, the teacher as the director and the students perform the dialogue.

b. Communication Games

A game is one of activities that can help students relaxed in learning the language. This technique is particularly suitable for the children in mastering the language. It is designed to make communication between students, so that the students have to talk to  a partner in order to solve a puzzle, draw a picture, puts the things in right order, and differences between picture.

c.   Discussion

The problem in conducting the discussion is the students reluctance to give opinion in front of their friends. Particularly when the students are not mastering the topic of discussion. Therefore, to encourage the students is to provide activities which force the students in expressing the ideas through the topic which is familiar with student’s world. For instance, are: their daily activity, the situation of their class, and describing.

d.   Problem solving

The material is used in this technique giving the students to work in pairs or groups. They share their problem, opinion and feeling. In this case the teacher as the bridge to communicate among the participants. Then, the students give a question and answer each other. This communication will help the students practicing and expressing their ideas in spoken language.

e. Information Gap

Information gap activities can also reinforce vocabulary and a variety of grammatical structures taught in class. They allow students to use linguistic forms and functions in a communicative way. These activities bring the language to life for students. Grammar is no longer a concept they have difficulty applying to their speaking. Students have the opportunity to use the building blocks of language we teach them to speak in the target language.

Source :

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

Teaching Speaking

Teaching is one of many components to the success the leaning process of the students. According to Jarolimek and Foster (1976: 51)

“Teaching one aspect of education is interaction between a teacher, a person who can induce intelligent behaving and a learner, a person acquiring intelligent behavior. Teaching will be treated as a subcategory of instruction which is one subcategory of education.

From the statement above, it means that teaching is the interaction of two people or more people, generally which result in a greater degree of self development in the learners. To make the speaking class run well, there are several steps that should be taken by the teacher:

a.      Decide the Material

         The teacher should know the students need and characteristic of each student. It will be easier for the teacher to present the materials. The material here must be meaningful and interesting, because it will make the students more motivated to joint the speaking class. According Jarolimek and D. Foster (1976: 59) “Good management will reflect itself in a room which is comfortable intellectually, emotionally, and socially”. Based on the statement, the writer can say that an interesting class will make the student feel comfortable during teaching learning process.

b.      Choosing the Suitable Technique of Teaching

         Choosing the suitable technique is very important. Because it will determine the success of teaching learning process. The teacher’s technique must be suitable with the student’s ability and the student’s age. It is a job of the teacher to use technique during teaching learning activity.

            In other words, teaching speaking can be rephrased as training students to be able to express their thought (feeling, opinion) or fact. However, the effort of making the students to be able to communicate naturally is very important. The understanding of this concept needs to be emphasized since the classroom practice of teaching speaking so far do not seem to reflect to what conventionally happen outside the language class. But the reality many students cannot to express what they think and it is needs interactive teacher in the class. That most of students’ in the class cannot express their idea. In many such classes, the teacher accompanies the students’ interactive practice and students withdraw, hesitant, and cautious.

            Classroom activities that develop students’ ability to express themselves through speech seem an important component of a language course. It is difficult to design and administer such activities; more so, in many ways and to make successful in teaching speaking, the teacher must know the characteristics successful speaking activities.

Sources :                    

Jarolimek, John and Clifford. 1969. Teaching and Learning in the Elementary School. America: Macmillan Publishing. Co. Inc.

a.      Problems with Speaking Activities

Ur (1996: 121) says that students get problem when they were speak in second language. The problems that may arise are:

i)        Inhibitions

Unlike reading, listening, and writing activities, speaking requires some degrees of real time exposure to an audience. Learners are often inhibited about trying to say things in foreign language in the classroom, worried about making mistakes, fearful or critics or losing face, or simply shy of the attention that their speech attracts.

ii)      Nothing to Say

Even if they are not inhibited, you hear learners complain that they cannot think of anything to say, they have no motive to express themselves beyond the guilty feeling that they should be speaking.

iii)    Low or Uneven Participation

Only one participant can talk at the time if he or she is to be heard and in a large group this means that each one will have little talking only, this problem is compounded by the tendency of some learners to dominate, while others speak very little or not at all.

iv)    Mother Tongue Use

In classes where all, or a number of the learners share the same mother tongue, they may tend to use it because it is easier and it feels unnatural to speak to one another in foreign language. If they talk in small groups, it can be quite difficult to get some classes particularly the less disciplined or motivated ones to keep to the second language.

b.      The Solution of The Problem

Ur (1996: 121) says that there are four solutions can help the teacher to solve the problems. They are:

i)        Use group work

Some learners get difficult to speak when they have to speak individually. It is because they are not confident and speechless. But for the beginner, group work will be very useful. It will stimulate another t speak even sometimes they still use the native language.

ii)      Use the easy language

In general, the level of language needed for a discussion should be lower and use an easy language; it should be easily recalled and produced by the participants, so they can speak fluently.

iii)    Make the topic interesting

The teacher should make interesting topic. So, the students ca be motivated to follow the lesson.

iv)    Give some instruction in discussion skills

If the task is based on group discussion, tell the learners to make sure that everyone in the group contributes to the discussion, appoint a chairperson to each group who will regulate participation.

v)      Keep students speaking in the target language

It is impossible that the students do not use the target language. So, the teacher might appoint one of the groups as monitor. It can remind students to use the target language.

Source :

Ur, Penny, 1996 . A Course in Language Teaching . London : Cambridge University Press

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.