Method of Speaking_2

CHAPTER III

JOURNALTHE REPORT OF ARTICLES IN TEACHING AND LEARNING

SPEAKING

Developing Classroom Speaking Activities;From Theory to Practice

Jack C Richards

The mastery of speaking skills in English is a priority for many second or foreign

language learners. Learners consequently often evaluate their success in language

learning as well as the effectiveness of their English course on the basis of how well they

feel they have improved in their spoken language proficiency. Oral skills have hardly

been neglected in EFL/ESL courses (witness the huge number of conversation and other

speaking course books in the market) though how best to approach the teaching of oral

skills has long been the focus of methodological debate. Teachers and textbooks make

use of a variety of approaches, ranging from direct approaches focusing on specific

features of oral interaction (e.g. turn-taking, topic management, questioning strategies )

to indirect approaches which create conditions for oral interaction through group work,

task work and other strategies (Richards 1990).

Advances in discourse analysis, conversational analysis, and corpus analysis in

recent years have revealed a great deal about the nature of spoken discourse and how it

differs from written discourse (McCarthy and Carter 1997). These differences reflect the

different purposes for which spoken and written language are used. Jones (1996,12)

comments:

In speaking and listening we tend to be getting something done, exploring ideas,

working out some aspect of the world, or simply being together. In writing we may

be creating a record, committing events or moments to paper.

Research has also thrown considerable light on the complexity of spoken

interaction in either a first or second language. Luoma (2004) for example, cites some of

the following features of spoken discourse:

Composed of idea units (conjoined short phrases and clauses)

May be planned (e.g. a lecture) or unplanned (e.g. a conversation)

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Employs more vague or generic words than written language

Employs fixed phrases, fillers and hesitation markers

Contains slips and errors reflecting on-line processing

Involved reciprocity (i.e. interactions are jointly constructed)

Shows variation (e.g. between formal and casual speech), reflecting

speaker roles, speaking purpose, and the context

In designing speaking activities or instructional materials for second or foreign

language teaching it is also necessary to recognize the very different functions speaking

performs in daily communication and the different purposes for which our students need

speaking skills.

Functions of speaking

Numerous attempts have been made to classify the functions of speaking in

human interaction. Brown and Yule (1983) made a useful distinction between the

interactional functions of speaking (in which it serves to establish and maintain social

relations), and the transactional functions (which focus on the exchange of information).

In workshops with teachers and in designing my own materials I use an expanded three

part version of Brown and Yule’s framework (after Jones 1996 and Burns 1998): talk as

interaction: talk as transaction: talk as performance. Each of these speech activities are

quite distinct in terms of form and function and require different teaching approaches.

1. Talk as interaction

This refers to what we normally mean by “conversation” and describes interaction

which serves a primarily social function. When people meet, they exchange greetings,

engage in small talk and chit chat, recount recent experiences and so on because they

wish to be friendly and to establish a comfortable zone of interaction with others. The

focus is more on the speakers and how they wish to present themselves to each other

than on the message. Such exchanges may be either casual or more formal depending

on the circumstances and their nature has been well described by Brown and Yule

(1983). The main features of talk as interaction can be summarized as follows:

Has a primarily social function

Reflects role relationships

Reflects speaker’s identity

May be formal or casual

Uses conversational conventions

Reflect degrees of politeness

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Employs many generic words

Uses conversational register

Is jointly constructed

Some of the skills involved in using talk as interaction are:

Opening and closing conversations

Choosing topics

Making small-talk

Recounting personal incidents and experiences

Turn-taking

Using adjacency-pairs

Interrupting

Reacting to others

Examples of these kinds of talk are:

Chatting to an adjacent passenger during a plane flight (polite conversation that does not

seek to develop the basis for future social contact)

Chatting to a school friend over coffee (casual conversation that serves to mark an

ongoing friendship).

A student chatting to his or her professor while waiting for an elevator (polite

conversation that reflects unequal power between the two participants)

Telling a friend about an amusing weekend experience, and hearing her or him recount a

similar experience he or she once had (sharing personal recounts)

Mastering the art of talk as interaction is difficult and may not be a priority for all

learners. However students who do need such skills and find them lacking report that

they sometimes feel awkward and at a loss for words when they find themselves in

situation that requires talk for interaction. They feel difficulty in presenting a good image

of themselves and sometimes avoid situations which call for this kind of talk. This can be

a disadvantage for some learners where the ability to use talk for conversation can be

important.

2. Talk as transaction

This type of talk refers to situations where the focus is on what is said or done.

The message is the central focus here and making oneself understood clearly and

accurately, rather than the participants and how they interact socially with each other. In

transactions,

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…. talk is associated with other activities. For example, students may be engaged in hand-on activities [e.g. in a science lesson] to explore concepts associated with floating and sinking. In this type of spoken language students and teachers usually focus on meaning or on talking their way to understanding. Jones 1996, 14

Burns distinguishes between two different types of talk as transaction. One is

situations where the focus is on giving and receiving information and where the

participants focus primarily on what is said or achieved (e.g. asking someone for the

time). Accuracy may not be a priority as long as information is successfully

communicated or understood.

The second type are transactions which focus on obtaining goods or services,

such as checking into a hotel.

Examples of these kinds of talk are:

Classroom group discussions and problem solving activities.

A class activity during which students design a poster.

Discussing needed repairs to a computer with a technician.

Discussing sightseeing plans with a hotel clerk or tour guide

Making a telephone call to obtain flight information .

Asking someone for directions on the street.

Buying something in a shop Ordering food from a menu in a restaurant.

The main features of talk as transaction are:

It has a primarily information focus

The main focus is the message and not the participants

Participants employ communication strategies to make themselves

understood

There may be frequent questions, repetitions, and comprehension checks

There may be negotiation and digression

Linguistic accuracy is not always important

Some of the skills involved in using talk for transactions are:

Explaining a need or intention

Describing something

Asking questioning

Confirming information

Justifying an opinion

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Making suggestions

Clarifying understanding

Making comparisons

Agreeing and disagreeing

3. Talk as performance

The third type of talk which can usefully be distinguished has been called talk as

performance. This refers to public talk, that is, talk which transmits information before an

audience such as morning talks, public announcements, and speeches.

Spoken texts of this kind according to Jones (1996,14),

…often have identifiable generic structures and the language used is more predictable.…Because of less contextual support, the speaker must include all necessary information in the text – hence the importance of topic as well as textual knowledge.And while meaning is still important, there will be more emphasis on form andaccuracy.

Talk as performance tends to be in the form of monolog rather than dialog, often

follows a recognizable format (e.g. a speech of welcome) and is closer to written

language than conversational language. Similarly it is often evaluated according to its

effectiveness or impact on the listener, something which is unlikely to happen with talk

as interaction or transaction. Examples of talk as performance are:

Giving a class report about a school trip

Conducting a class debate

Giving a speech of welcome

Making a sales presentation

Giving a lecture

The main features of talk as performance are:

There is a focus on both message and audience

It reflects organization and sequencing

Form and accuracy is important

Language is more like written language

It is often monologic

Some of the skills involved in using talk as performance are:

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Using an appropriate format

Presenting information in an appropriate sequence

Maintaining audience engagement

Using correct pronunciation and grammar

Creating an effect on the audience

Using appropriate vocabulary

Using appropriate opening and closing

Teachers sometimes describe interesting differences between how learners manage

these three different kinds of talk, as the following anecdotes illustrate.

I sometimes find with my students at a university in Hong Kong, that they are good at talk as transaction and performance but not with talk as interaction. For example the other day one of my students did an excellent class presentation in a course for computer science majors, and described very effectively a new piece of computer software. However a few days later when I met the same student going home on the subway and tried to engage her in social chat, she was at a complete loss for words.

Another teacher describes a second language user with just the opposite difficulties.

He is more comfortable with talk as interaction than as performance.

One of my colleagues in my university in China is quite comfortable using talk socially. If we have lunch together with other native speakers he is quite comfortable joking and chatting in English. However recently we did a presentation together at a conference and his performance was very different. His pronunciation became much more “Chinese” and he made quite a few grammatical and other errors that I hadn’t heard him make before.

Implications for teaching

Three core issues need to be addressed in planning speaking activities for an oral

English course. The first is to determine what kinds of speaking skills the course will focus

on. Is it all three of the genres described above or will some receive greater attention

than others. Informal needs analysis is the starting point here. Procedures for

determining needs include observation of learners carrying out different kinds of

communicative tasks, questionnaires, interviews, and diagnostic testing (e.g. Tsang and

Wong 2002). The second issues is identifying teaching strategies to “teach” (i.e. provide

opportunities for learners to acquire) each kind of talk.

Talk as interaction is perhaps the most difficult skill to teach since interactional

talk is a very complex as well as subtle phenomena that takes place under the control of

“unspoken” rules. In my experience these are best taught thought providing examples

embedded in naturalistic dialogs that can serve to model features such as opening and

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closing conversations, making small talk, recounting personal incidents and experiences,

and reacting to what others say. For example to practice reacting to what others say,

students can be given a dialog in which listener reactions such as “really”, “is that right”,

“wow”, “that’s interesting” have been omitted. Students work in pairs to add them to the

dialog, practice the dialog with the reactions, then practice a different dialog, this time

adding their own reactions. Another technique to practice using conversation starters and

personal recounts involves giving conversation starters which students have to respond

to by asking one or two follow-up questions. For example, “I didn’t sleep very well last

night”. “Look what I bought on Sunday. How do you like it?” “Did that thunderstorm last

night wake you?”.

Talk as transaction is more easily planned since current communicative materials

are a rich resource of group activities, information-gap activities and role plays that can

provide a source for practicing how to use talk for sharing and obtaining information as

well as for carrying out real-world transactions. These activities include ranking activities,

values clarification activities, brainstorming, and simulations. Group discussion activities

can be initiated by having students work in groups to prepare a short list of controversial

statements for others to think about. Groups exchange statements and discuss them. For

example: “Schools should do away with exams”. “Vegetarianism is the only healthy life

style”. “The Olympic games are a waste of money.” Role-play activities are another

familiar technique for practicing real world transactions and typically involve the

following sequence of activities:

Preparing: reviewing vocabulary, real world knowledge related to the content

and context of the role play (e.g. returning a faulty item to a store)

Modeling and eliciting: demonstrating the stages that are typically involved in

the transaction, eliciting suggestions for how each stage can be carried out, and

teaching the functional language need for each stage

Practicing and reviewing: students are assigned roles and practice a role play

using cue cards or realia to provide language and other support

Teaching talk as performance requires a different teaching strategy. Jones (1996,

17) comments:

Initially talk as performance needs to be prepared for and scaffolded in much the same way as written text, and many of the teaching strategies used to make understandings of written text accessible can be applied to the formal uses of spoken language

This involves providing examples or models of speeches, oral presentations, stories etc

through video or audio recordings or written examples. These are then analyzed or

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“deconstructed” in order to understand how such texts work and what their linguistic and

other organizational features are. Questions such as the following guide this process:

What is the speaker’s purpose?

Who is the audience?

What kind of information does the audience expect?

How does the talk begin, develop, and end? What moves or stages are involved?

Is any special language used?

Students then work jointly on planning their own texts, which are then presented to the

class.

The third issue involved in planning speaking activities is determining the

expected level of performance on a speaking task and the criteria that will be used to

assess student performance. For any activity we use in class, whether it be one that

seeks to develop proficiency in using talk as interaction, transaction, or performance, we

need to consider what successful completion of the activity involves. Is accuracy of

pronunciation and grammar important? Is each participant expected to speak for about

the same amount of time? Is it acceptable if a speaker uses many long pauses and

repetitions? If a speaker’s contribution to a discussion is off topic, does it matter?

As the above questions illustrate, the type of criteria we use to assess a speaker’s

oral performance during a classroom activity will depend on what kind of talk we are

talking about and the kind of classroom activity we are using. Green, Christopher and

Lam (2002, 228) in a report on teaching discussion skills recommend assigning one

student to serve as an observer during a discussion activity using the following

observation form:

Number of contributions

Students: A B C D E F

1. Total number of contributions made

2. Responding supportively

3. Responding aggressively

4. Introducing a new (relevant) point

5. Digressing from the topic

A speaking activity that requires talk as performance, e.g. a mini-lecture, would require

very different assessment criteria however. These might include:

Clarity of presentation: i.e. the extent to which the speaker organizes

information in an easily comprehensible order

Use of discourse markers, repetition and stress to emphasize important points

and to make the lecture structure more salient to the listeners

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Different speaking activities such as conversations, group discussions, and

speeches make different types of demands on learners. They require different kinds and

levels of preparation and support and different criteria obviously have to be used in

assessing how well students carry them out.

Conclusion

I will conclude with a set of questions I use to guide myself when preparing speaking

activities for the classroom or in textbooks and which I use with teachers in workshops

which focus on developing and reviewing classroom materials.

• What will the focus of the activity be: talk as interaction, transaction or performance?

• How will the activity be modeled?

• What stages will the activity be divided into?

• What language support will be needed?

• What resources will be needed?

• What learning arrangements will be needed?

• What level of performance is expected?

• How and when will feedback be given?

Comment:This article explains to us that according to its function, speaking is divided into three

categories, namely: talk as interaction, talk as transaction, and talk as performance. This

classification of speaking seems to be important to prepare speaking class for the

learner. As a teacher, we have to determine what kind of talk the learners are expected

to do and what criteria should be applied to assess the learners’ speaking ability. It is a

good guideline for teaching and measure the speaking class.

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HOW TO TEACH SPEAKING

www.univirtual.it/corsi/2002_2003/bertin/download/M03.pdf

Outside the context of any classroom, all children who are repeatedly exposed to language, in normal circumstances will learn it unconsciously. Most adults can learn a language without studying it. Though they may have more trouble with pronunciation and grammar than younger learners, they may still be able to communicate fluently. Children and adults who learn language successfully outside a classroom context seem to share certain similarities. First of all, they are usually exposed to language which they more or less understand even if, sometimes, they can't produce the same language spontaneously themselves. Secondly, they are motivated to learn the language in order to be able to communicate. And communication is mainly an oral business. And finally they have opportunities to use the language they are learning, thus checking their own progress and abilities.

All these features of natural language acquisition can be difficult to replicate in the classroom, but there are elements which are no doubt worth imitating. Obviously enough within the classroom environment students don't get the same kind of exposure as those who are "picking up" the language. But we should try to work on motivation, language exposure, maximized talking time and we should offer chances to use the language. This module will deal with communicative (or conversational) skills, that is those skills a speaker must possess when he or she wants to communicate something orally.

Communicative (conversational) skillsWhen we think about speaking, we mean when the students use any and all the language at their command to perform some kind of oral task. The important thing is that there should be a task to complete and that the students should want to complete it. The reasons why it is a good idea to give students speaking tasks which provoke them to use all and any language at their command are mainly three:

1) Rehearsal: when students have free discussions or conversations inside the classroom they have a chance to rehearse having discussions or conversations outside the classroom. Simply enough, when they meet a new friend from abroad the first conversation will be about introducing oneself, one's own family etc. Having them take part in a role-play at the lost property office allows them to rehearse such a real-life event in the safety of the classroom. It is a way for students to "get the feel" of what communicating in the foreign language really feels like.

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2) Feedback: engagement in a speaking task which demands for the use of all and any language at the students' command provides feedback for both teacher and students.

3) Engagement: completing a speaking task can be really motivating and give real satisfaction. Many speaking tasks (role-play, discussions, debate, problem-solving etc.) are intrinsically enjoyable in themselves and if planned carefully (by the teacher) and completed successfully (by the students) contribute to increasing their self-esteem.

What is conversation?Teachers often tend to assume that conversation in the language classroom involves nothing more than putting into practice the grammar and vocabulary skills taught elsewhere in the course. But if we want to teach conversation well, we need to know something about what native speakers do when they have conversations. We have chosen to deal with conversation here, because conversation is what normally occurs in everyday life, in the contacts students will have with foreign friends or foreign people in general. With the term "conversation" we refer to a spoken interaction between two or more people who don't follow a fixed schedule. The purposes of conversation include the exchange of information, the creation and maintenance of social relationships, the negotiation of status and social roles as well as deciding on joint actions.

The basic unit of a conversation is an exchange. An exchange consists of two moves (an initiating move and a response):A. Would you like a cup of coffee?B. Yes, please.

We can give a function to each move. In the case above we have offering (A) and accepting (B). To do so we need to take account of factors such as who the speakers are and where and when the conversation occurs.An exchange or a series of exchanges are not necessarily the same thing as a conversation:A. Excuse me?B. Yes?A. How do I get to the railway station from here?B. Go straight on, then take the first turning on the right. The railway station is at the end of the street.

.. Can you think of other examples of this kind?The one above is not a conversation because the two speakers want to finish their business as

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quickly as possible; on the other hand, conversation is open-ended and has the potential to develop in any way. It is possible that the example above could contain a conversation if B enquired about A's nationality and A told him the reason why he wanted to reach the station. The potential is always there in real life. Unfortunately, many students never have the confidence or opportunity to go beyond simple exchanges like the one above, so one of the main aim when teaching speaking skills is to propose exercises and activities which allowstudents to develop the ability to initiate and sustain conversation.

Conversation is such a natural part of our lives that many people are not conscious of what happens within it. However, conversation follows certain rules which can be described. During a conversation:- usually one person speaks at a time;- the speakers change;- the length of any contribution varies;- there are techniques for allowing the other party or parties to speak;- neither the content nor the amount of what we say is specified in advance.

The two moves in an exchange are related to each other when the second utterance can be identified as related to the first. These are called adjacency pairs. Some examples are:A. Hello!B. Hi! (greeting-greeting)A. Are you OK?B. Yes.

In some cases we can predict the second part of a pair from the first as in the first example. In other cases there might be a variety of options. .. Let's take a complaint. What are the different parts which might follow a complaint?.. Here are some adjacency pairs where the second part is missing. Can you complete them?.. What nationality are you?.. ………………………….. Would you like something to drink?.. …………………………………….. Remember to record the film on Channel 5 for me this evening... ………………………………………………………………….... My head aches... ……………….

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We need to think about ways of developing appropriate second parts to adjacency pairs from the start. For example many drills require students to reply to yes/no questions with "yes" or "no" plus a repetition of the auxiliary. We therefore get exchanges like this one:A. Has Sandra arrived?B. No, she hasn't.What students do not often get are opportunities to practise other options, such as:A. Has Sandra arrived?B. There has been an accident on the motorway. She has just called to say she's stuck up.Another reason why students usually appear flat and unresponsive in conversation is the tendency to encourage them to produce isolated sentences containing a target structure, e.g.

If I won the lottery I'd travel around the world.

We all should keep in mind that a minimal answer does nothing to drive the conversationforward.

Many students have great difficulty in getting into a conversation, in knowing when to give uptheir turn to others, and in bringing a conversation to a close. In order for conversation to work smoothly, all participants have to be alert to signals that a speaker is about to finish his or her turn and be able to come in with a contribution which fits the direction in which the conversation is moving. We need to train students to sense when someone is about to finish. Falling intonation is often a signal for this.

Besides, students often lose their turn because they hesitate in order to find the right word. Teaching them expressions like Wait, there's more or That's not all as well as fillers or hesitation devices such as Erm…, Well…, etc will help them to keep going.

As regards topics, we must keep in mind that different cultures talk about different things in their everyday lives. Native speakers are very aware of what they should and should not talk about with specific categories of people in their own language. That is why both teachers and students need to develop a sense of taboo subjects if they are to avoid offence.

.. Can you think of any taboo subject for English people?Simplification in informal speech

.. Have you ever met a person who pronounces the individual sounds and words of English beautifully but who still sounds very foreign? What's the reason, in your opinion?

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In English the sound quality of a word, particularly the vowels and certain consonants, changes depending on whether the word is said in isolation or as a part of a continuous stream of words. Some of this is a result of simplification of informal speech owing to the fact that English is a stress-timed language. This means that between two stressed syllables there is the same interval of time.Let's take two sentences:1. I caught a bus.2. It's a bus I caught.

.. Do they contain the same number of words or syllables?

.. What do they have in common?The two sentences are the same length when spoken because they contain the same number of stressed syllables (two each). This means that the unstressed syllables have to be squeezed in. The vowels belonging to unstressed syllables very often become the weak vowel represented by the symbol [.]. The weak vowel or "schwa" is the most common sound in spoken English.

Another peculiarity of spoken English is elision, that is the "missing out" of a consonant or vowel or even both.

If you give each part of a word the same value (as it normally happens in Italian), this can have a wearying effect on the native speaker listener. This was particularly true with Trinity Exams last year. Students who were very accurate and whose vocabulary was rich but who spoke, I would say, flatly, got lower marks than students who were far less accurate but were able to reproduce the stress-timed pattern typical of the English language. This shows that it is worth pointing out weak forms from the start for recognition and production.Planning communicative activitiesMany students repeatedly say that their main purpose in learning English is to be able to speak. Nevertheless, most of them don't talk readily in class and the "discussion lessons" in which the teacher does most of the talking are still too prevalent.

.. Pause and consider: when you were a student, did you take part in any lesson which dealtwith discussing a specific issue? Did you talk a lot? Who talked the most?.. As a teacher, have you ever favoured discussion in class (obviously using L2)? Were yourlessons successful or were you not satisfied with them? In either case which were theissues you discussed?

If you find that lessons where discussion took place were not successful as the teacher did most of the talking, consider if the students were prepared for the discussion or fluency

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activity. Preparation is a vital ingredient for success. Students need to be orientated to the topic. You just can't enter the classroom and say: Today we are going to talk about ethnic cleansing through the centuries (the issue may be relevant to a fifth-year class, though).

.. Empathise with your students: if you were one of them, how would you feel? Why wouldyou rather sit quietly in the back row hoping your teacher takes no notice of you thanengage in a passionate attack against ethnic cleansing?

Some simple techniques which can be used to prepare students for a particular topic are thefollowing:- the use of audio/visual aids to arouse interest;- a general orientation to the topic: a short text, questionnaire, a video extract. (This pre-speaking task must never be too long but it is recommended);- exercises focusing on key words needed for a task.

Students may need to be orientated to the task. The general rule is to formulate tasks in terms students can understand and make sure that the instructions are clear.

.. Record yourself while you are giving instructions for a speaking activity. Listen. Were theinstructions clear? How would you modify them?

One possible paradigm for instruction-giving is as follows:- Think through instructions from the point of view of the student.- Include only the essential information in simple, clear language.- Insist on silence and make sure you can be seen. Make eye-contact.- Use demonstration and gestures where possible to go with your explanation.- Make sure the students have understood what to do. Do this by asking for a demonstrationor for an answer to a question which proves understanding. A yes/no answer to a questionlike Do you understand? Are you with me? is not particularly revealing.

Gower and Walters1 state that "the way you give instructions indicates the way you exercisecontrol and your attitude to the group… Generally students (…) would not appreciate you trying to be more polite. It would be time-wasting and slow things down and would involve you in more complicated language than they can readily understand".

.. What is your view?

What has been said so far as regards instructions concerns all the other skills we are going todeal with in the following modules.Last but not least is the choice of the topic to discuss. Students are sometimes not

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motivated to talk because they lack involvement in the topic. However, even where students admit interest, they may be unwilling to talk about it in English because they lack the linguistic resources. It is a good idea to talk about things which are within the students' experience or which they think they might influence their future lives or attitudes. I am thinking of the terrorist attacks to the U.S. last year: the students were motivated and involved to speak about what had happened because they felt it was something that was linked to their hopes and fears for the future.

One idea to help students go is finding the topic to discuss but instead of discussing it under a general perspective, you could try setting a specific related problem. Let's take, for example, the new war the American President would willingly wage against Iraq. You could divide the class into two groups, one in favour of a military response to overthrow Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, the other more careful and prone to turn to diplomacy and intelligence instead. Give them some articles with different viewpoints and the results of the poll conducted among Americans and tell them they must decide (and agree) on how to cope with this crucial issue:going to war or relying on intelligence and diplomacy?

When dealing with speaking activities, it is important to ensure that the students develop a sense that they are making progress. Often students do not realise just how much more confident and fluent they are becoming. One reason may be that they may rarely get the opportunity to take a leading role in conversation; it is well worth trying, then, to programme activities and pair work in which brilliant students have to sustain a conversation with those at lower level, in order to give them the experience of being the driving force in a conversation.This is particularly important in view of the consolidation of self-esteem, which we must never forget when dealing with teenagers.

Getting students to compare their current efforts with recordings made in the earliest stages of the course is another way of boosting confidence.

In many cases students will have external objectives such as the oral examinations run by organisations such as Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate and Trinity College. It is therefore useful to show the extent to which students are making progress towards their examination objective by including an element of exam practice in the programme. This is a possible approach to how this can be set up:

make your students fully aware of what a satisfactory performance in the examination involves. For example, show them a film of a Trinity exam interview,

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commenting on the mastery of language but also on fluency and on the examiner's gestures and fillers;

an identification of areas which are critical for a good performance in the exam might then be followed by controlled practice of exam-type tasks;

you should also give your students practice in exam conditions. Feedback from these tasks is particularly valuable in that it fosters self-evaluation and improvement.

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Towards communicative competence

According to William Littlewood2 there is a continuum of classroom activities to promotecommunicative competence:

Step 1: Controlled activitiesAlthough conversational competence can only come from fluency activities or natural languageinteraction outside the classroom, there is an argument for the use of controlled activitieswhich help students develop confidence as well as the ability to participate in and maintainsimple conversations.

.. Remember your first English lessons. What kind of student were you? Were you alwaysready to raise your hand to be invited to speak in the foreign language or did you hope theteacher didn't see you?

Many students have to overcome a psychological barrier before they are prepared to speak in the foreign language. Some students feel uneasy when they have to speak in the classroom situation because there is always an audience, others contribute in the sheltered environment of the classroom but are at a loss when they have to use the language outside. A few prefer not to speak at all and are then denied opportunities for practice.

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Within the classroom a major source of threat against speaking is the individual's perception of himself/herself and the other students. Threat reduction is possible by building up personal security through the use of getting-to-know-you activities which promote trust as well as articulation activities3 which give the opportunity to use English sounds in a safeenvironment.Getting-to-know-you activitiesThey are meant to build a positive atmosphere of trust within a group.

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GUESS WHOLEVEL Elementary to intermediate (A2 to B2)

TIME 15-20 minutes

AIM Students are given statements of personal information about other students and they have to ask questions in order to establish the person's identity.

PREPARATION Have available enough small pieces of paper for the whole class.

PROCEDURE 1. Give each of your students a piece of paper and ask them to write four factsabout themselves. These can be anything they choose, e.g. I was born in February, Iown a bicycle, I like Limp Bizkit etc. as long as the statement is true.2. Tell the students to fold their pieces of paper and pass them anonymously to thefront of the class. 3. Collect them together and then redistribute them so that each student has personalinformation about another student.4. Once the students have had a chance to look at the personal information, tell themthat they will have to find out whose information they have by turning thestatements into questions, and then asking other students those questions. You canexercise control over the activity in a variety of ways:- by deciding on the form of the question which is allowable, such as Who was bornin February?;- by deciding whether to nominate students to speak or to allow them free choice;- by deciding whether or not to allow students to move about.5. Once you have decided on the rules for the activity you can set it in motion. Theactivity ends when everybody has found out

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whose personal information they have.

REMARKS If the initial statements were collected in the previous lesson, or copied out two or three times, you could distribute more than one set of information to each student. This would be needed to make a mingling activity more successful.

.. Focus on the "Guess who?" activity. What kind of practical problems may arise? How would you cope with them?

Articulation activities

When students come to speak in a foreign language they often find themselves inhibited bythe prospects of having to make what to them are strange and even comic sounds. One way totackle this problem is to give students the opportunity to experiment with sounds.

LISTEN AND RECORD

LEVEL Elementary and above (from A2)

TIME 15-20 minutes

AIM For students: making a recording after listening carefully to a taped model.

PREPARATION Select a natural model for students to imitate.

PROCEDURE Ask the students to listen to the tape and to repeat any of the utterances they have heard, until they are ready to be recorded. The activity is selfdirected, but you should be available for consultation. The finished product can be a subject of feedback and evaluation.

REMARKS The activity is self-regulatory. This is important if students are not to be

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threatened by having to repeat something they feel uncertain about. This activity also fosters the notion of rehearsing what we are about to say, something many people do in their own language, anyway.

Dialogue building

The use of cues or prompts to build up dialogues is a commonly-used technique. The cues orprompts determine the content of what is said, and dialogue building activities can range frombeing highly controlled to very free. Dialogue building is not a substitute for fluency work, butused sparingly it allows the possibility of giving weaker students a chance to say something.

.. Go through a course-book and find an activity of this kind. Send it to our forum saying whether it is a highly controlled one or a free one. Use a ranking scale where 1 stands for highly controlled, 5 very free.

GambitsIn the early stages of conversational development students can be taught to take the part ofthe person who responds to what somebody else has said, by producing an appropriateresponse or "gambit".Here's a list of what we might teach:1. Language to indicate the speaker's agreement with what has been said:- Yes, it is.- Yes, that's right.- Of course, it is.- Quite, absolutely true.- Yes, I do / Yes, he was / Yes, they were….2. Language which indicates polite disagreement:- Well, not really.- Not quite, no.- Perhaps not quite as bad/good/difficult as that.- Em, I don't know.3. Language to indicate possible doubt:- I'm not quite sure.- Really?

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- Is that right?- Is that so?- Are you sure?4. Language to provide positive and negative feedback:- Great!- That's nice.- Very nice indeed (good, clear, pretty)…- Really nice.- Sounds lovely! (informal)- Not very nice.- No at all nice/clear …- Very nasty indeed (disagreeable, bad, noisy) …- Sounds awful. (informal)5. Language to encourage confirmation and more information:- Is that right?- Really?- No kidding? (informal)- You're not!

One way of getting students used to the function of short responses is to build them into drills.Although such practice is semi-mechanical students enjoy the challenge of getting the stressand intonation of the short response right. The important thing is not to use drills tooextensively.

Step 2: Awareness activities

Students need to become aware of what native speakers do in conversation if they are themselves to achieve communicative competence in the target language. The focus of the awareness activities will be then on promoting the following issues:

the ability to "sound" English by drawing attention to critical elements which can be usefully imitated (weak forms);

development of the ability to interpret what is being said; a feeling for what is appropriate in conversation; awareness of strategies used to further conversation; awareness of the target culture.

Awareness activities can be used from the earliest stages of learning.

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Observation tasksThey are used to encourage students to become sensitive to particular features of conversation. Observation should always be directed through the use of task sheets and these can be used to focus on:

audio recordings of people talking; video recordings of people talking; conversations as they occur in real time.

The simplest observation tasks require the observer to mark the presence or absence of a particular feature.

ENCOURAGING NOISESLEVEL Elementary and above (from A2)TIME 15-20 minutesAIM Making students sensitive to expressions which

encourage the other speaker to continue.PREPARATION Select an audio or video tape that contains examples of

this type of expression. Hand out the task sheet below to the students.

TASK SHEETListen to the extract of people talking. Make a tick (v) next to each of the expressions in thelist whenever you hear one of the speakers using it.

.. Really? .. Uh huh.

.. Does He? .. Is it?

.. Is that right? .. Yes.

.. That's nice. .. I see.

.. How interesting. .. Mmmm.

PROCEDURE 1. Introduce the task so that the students get some idea of what they are looking for.

2. Give out a copy of the task sheet to each student.3. Play the tape two or three times before focusing on

the specific expressions in context.

Sensitivity to the sound system.. How often do you notice, focus on and/or correct the following in what your students say?- Phonetic confusion (pin vs. bin)- Problems with consonant clusters (str or nch)- Interference from the written form (half)- Failure to use the weak form- Incorrect word stress- Incorrect intonation

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If students are to make themselves easily comprehensible, there is a need to work on their pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and intonation from the start. Remember that lengthy but infrequent attention to stress and intonation is less effective than short tasks that are built into the overall teaching programme and often as introductory "warming up" activities, end of lesson relaxers, or simply as and when the need arises in response to errors.

Cross-cultural awarenessIf we accept the fact that language is embedded in culture, then some elements of crosscultural training are inevitable and the inclusion of some cross-cultural work in the teaching of communicative skills would seem to offer the following advantages:

cross-cultural issue can generate discussion in their own right; knowledge of why people in the English culture behave in certain ways should make

native speakers easier to interpret; a sensitivity to the ways social norms operate in other languages should make the

learning of certain areas of language (such as politeness formulae) easier; If students become aware of issues such as social taboos, they are less likely to cause

offence by breaking them. Besides, they would begin to fall into the category of foreigner that native speakers find easy to talk to.

Step 3: Fluency activitiesThe communicative needs of the average foreign student fall within a limited range of purposes, the most important of which are:

the maintenance and development of social relationships; information exchange; co-operative problem-solving in English; expressing ideas and opinions.

If students are to achieve communicative competence the practice tasks they are given must:

provide the experience of using English in real time (in real life the interlocutor does not wait for the right or appropriate answer);

offer them the chance to express their own feelings and points of view; provide the opportunity of using the language for a specific purpose.

It is also important that the tasks are culturally appropriate and perceived as relevant by thestudents.The successful introduction of fluency activities to a class which has not encountered them before usually requires an element of learner training. This is because the students may

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perceive that the burden is placed on them as it is the students who initiate and determine what they want to say (even if within a set of guidelines) and feedback can be delayed as theteacher keeps a low profile throughout the activity to allow the students to express themselves freely. Then it is important, especially with adolescent learners, that learner training covers the why and the how of what the students are being asked to do. The teacher can simply point out the ways in which fluency activities help to promote the objective of oral competence by forcing the learners to use the English they have in their heads. The how refers to the fact that students may not know what is expected of them during the activity. It is a good idea, then, that they perceive elements in common with what they have been used to doing, for example the way of giving instructions for an activity.

In class students very often revert to using L1 in the execution of fluency activities if they arenot under scrutiny by the teacher. Some of the reasons for this problem include:

social unease at using a foreign language with their peers; perceiving the task as being difficult to complete in any language; becoming affectively involved, that is perceiving a genuine need to use the easiest

way of communicating about the solution to the task... How would you cope with this problem?First you must give a reason for using English in the completion of a task, not simply telling them to do it in English, but making it purposeful. Then at an early stage tasks must be short and relatively easy. The activity should never appear stressful to the students. You should praise the students who make the effort to use English and make clear that for this particular type of exercise errors are not so important.

SharingA great deal of motivating language practice can be generated by asking students to

talk about themselves, to share their private store of experience with one another, providing they have a framework in which to do so. The framework, especially in the early stages, should limit the exchanges to quite simple factual information. Such exchanges constitute a natural information gap activity in which all students are able to participate. The activity that follows is a very simple one aimed at introducing students to fluencyactivities.

Role playsRole plays can range from highly controlled activities - in which all the content is supplied to student - to full-scale simulations in which participants determine what they will say on the basis of background information and the role they are given.

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FeedbackEvaluation of the success or failure of conversational performance is not an easy job.

In conversation a variety of factors, including the speaker's accent, control of grammar and vocabulary, as well as overall fluency, all contribute to any impression of the performance.

The objective of feedback is to give students the information they need to improve on their performance. Areas for feedback in activities aiming at the development of communicative skills include:

grammar; appropriacy of vocabulary and expressions; fluency; pronunciation; non-linguistic factors affecting communication.

Feedback needs to be staged and selective if it is to avoid demoralising the students. To achieve this teachers need to decide on the areas of communicative performance most relevant to their students. Once the decision is made, it is a question of focussing on the chosen areas in turn until the students reach the required performance level. To assist this process, teachers need to be continually aware of student performance and progress. One way of doing this might be to keep a record card for each student similar to the one below:

Name Date

Nature of task (short

talk etc.)

Grammatical correctness

Appropriacy of

vocabulary

Fluency and pronunciation

Overall performance

Another way might be to use a tape recorder during speaking activities. This way it gets easier for the teacher to identify areas of weakness which can form the basis of subsequent lessons focusing on accuracy, the presentation of new language, etc. Other advantages of using tape recordings of students at work include:

- the opportunity for students to hear again their own performance;- the opportunity to look objectively at how students develop over a period of time.

It is important for teachers to correct mistakes made during speaking activities in a different way from the mistakes made during a study exercise. When students are repeating sentences trying to get their pronunciation right, then the teacher will often correct (appropriately) every time there is a problem. But if students are involved in a passionate

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discussion about whether smoking should be banned anywhere, the effect of constant interruption from the teacher will destroy the conversational flow, thus mining the purpose of the speaking activity.

It is a good idea to watch and listen while speaking activities are taking place, noting down things that seemed to go well and times when students couldn't make themselves understood or made important mistakes. At the end of the speaking activity the teacher can write the mistakes on the board or on an OHT asking students to correct them. As with any kind of correction, it is important not to single students out for particular criticism.

M03: HOW TO TEACH SPEAKINGTASK 1Describe a group of students and then say what topics for speaking activities they might be interested in. How would you try and find out which those topics are?TASK 2Write the two moves of an exchange and then try to identify the potential it contains to develop into a conversation.

Comment:

This article talking about what a dialogue consists of, namely: An exchange consists of two moves, an initiating move and a response. In order to promote the conversation in speaking class, a teacher should have: (a) Preparation, Preparation is a vital ingredient for success, (b) instruction, the instructions must be clear, and (c) topic, choice of the topic to discuss.Three steps activities to promote communicative competence:Step 1: Controlled activities

Getting-to-know-you activities: Chain names Guess whoArticulation activities: LISTEN AND RECORDDialogue buildingGambits

Step 2: Awareness activitiesObservation tasks ENCOURAGING NOISESSensitivity to the sound systemCross-cultural awareness

Step 3: Fluency activitiesSharing, I HATED MATHS - DID YOU?Ranking activitiesRole playsFeedback

These activities are really good to apply in speaking class, from the beginners to advance learners. The article also completed with very clear step by step activities to promote the learner to speak in the class and furthermore are able to take part in English conversation outside the classroom.

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To Promote Communicative Efficiency through Speaking Activities Capital University of Economics and Business

Hao Qinhai

Capital University of Economics and Business

Introduction

With the social and economic development of our country, education at

college level is changing to reflect the needs of the learner and hence society.

Consequently, foreign language teaching is responding to society's need to prepare our

youth for an unpredictable future in which language skills will be in great demand.

However, according to the survey conducted by the College English Directive Committee,

the comprehensive skills of the college graduates, their oral and written abilities in

particular, are not satisfactory. To change the phenomenon of “dumb English” has

become a challenging task for us.

Realizing the need to maximize the learner's foreign language abilities, the

national educational administration has mandated language requirements for college

English teaching that in turn require adjustments for teaching a diverse group of students

and developing their oral communicative competence. The focus of curricula and hence

assessment have, therefore, also shifted from the knowledge of grammar to oral

proficiency and communicative competence in target language.

II. The Purpose of Our Classroom TeachingThe aims of language teaching courses are very commonly defined with reference

to four language skills. These aims, in turn, usually decide the content and the approach

of our teaching. So let’s first focus on what purpose we can achieve in our classroom

teaching.

As is known to us, the aims of language teaching are set out on the basis of linguistic

theory concerning a native speaker’s knowledge of language. The investigation into it

has been proceeding for quite a long time, and perhaps the most famous theory in this

respect is put forward by Chomsky in his paper Aspects of the Theory of Syntax in 1965.

His suggestion is that a native speaker has, somewhere in his brain, a set of grammar rules

which enable him to make sentences and with a finite number of rules, it is possible

to create an infinite number of sentences. Therefore , he made a distinction between

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“competence” and “performance”. By “competence” he meant a native speaker’s

internalized linguistic knowledge, or internalized grammar, while “performance” was

the use of language in a certain environment.

Although what Chomsky suggests may account for a native speaker’s knowledge of

grammar, it is not sufficient to explain everything a native speaker knows about his own

language. Unlike Chomsky, Hymes , in his paper On Communicative Competence in 1972,

replaced “competence” with his own concept of “communicative competence” by

arguing that besides the grammar rules, there are rules of use and competence by

itself is not enough to explain a native speaker’s knowledge. He separated the native

speaker’s knowledge into four categories: systematic potential, appropriateness,

occurrence and feasibility. Obviously, Hymes includes categories that are very different

from Chomsky’s original idea of competence and it seems clear that the native speaker

does in some way know the rules of use and try to be appropriate with the help of the

rules in their communications.

What is discussed above demonstrates that a native speaker knows about the

grammar of the language and knows especially what is appropriate in certain situations.

This is often referred to as the ability to communicate. Therefore, the learning of a

language involves not only acquiring the ability to compose correct sentences but also

acquiring an understanding of which sentences or parts of sentences are appropriate

in a particular context. However, the idea of communicative competence can not be

applied immediately to the study of a foreign language since it is based on too many

cultural assumptions. It remains a question whether we can expect to teach our students

communicative competence in a classroom. Our classroom is far from the target

language community and it is doubtful whether we can give this knowledge to our

students. So communicative competence may be an impossible goal in the classroom.

What we can expect our students to do in a language class is that they are

capable of expressing what they wish to say and their meaning is understood. So in a

language class, our purpose is not to teach our students to be model Americans or

Englishmen but to teach them how to convey their thoughts and purposes efficiently in

order that they are competent to communicate in the target language with native

speakers naturally and smoothly. So a more realistic goal might be “communicative

efficiency”, put forward by Harmer. In terms of language skills, communicative

efficiency means that students should be able to perform efficiently in oral and written

verbal communication.

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However, there are many factors now in EFL classroom that hinder the development

of communicative competence, thus resulting in the failure in achieving communicative

efficiency. The texts are too difficult to comprehend and it takes most of the class time to

explain the difficult language points, which leaves little time for the students to

internalize the language input and communicate with it. Its lack of practical

application and the difficulty of organizing communicative activities have made it

hard to meet the demand of communicative language teaching. Besides, improper

approach and test-oriented teaching are misleading in the process of developing skills

to use language. Traditional method, which focuses on linguistic phenomena rather

than on comprehension and communication, are still popular on account of various

reasons, little or no attention paid to listening and speaking. And unfavorable learning

environment in China is also an obstacle to achieve this goal in the classroom.

As a result, most students possess poor oral communicative competence and they

desire to improve their ability. We designed a questionnaire and interviewed some

students to identify students’ perception of their language needs and motivations

and to discover students’ oral

communicative competence.. The results of the analysis demonstrate that learners want more opportunities to speak English and want teachers’ help in their listening and oral practices. In the light of these findings, it is suggested that in order to achieve this goal in the classroom, priority should be placed on the following areas: improving listening and oral skills, creating English-speaking environment and shifting from test-oriented teaching to communication-oriented teaching. It is essential to design a superior way to achieve communicative efficiency.

III. Analysis of Communication and Communicative ActivitiesWe are supposed to adopt a superior approach in our teaching practice. However,

before designing a useful and efficient approach it is necessary and beneficial to analyze

the nature of communication.

Communication between humans, though rather complex and ever-changing, shares

certain characteristics which are relevant for the learning and teaching. Therefore, we

may make some generalizations. In a talk involving two people, both speaker and listener

have their particular roles for a certain reason. The three generalizations which apply to

all speakers and listeners may be

made as the following:

speaker

Listener

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want to say something; want to listen to something;

Have a communicative purpose; be interested in communicative purpose;

select from language store; process a variety of language;

This table suggests that a speaker makes a decision to address someone. Speaking

may be forced on him in some way, but we can say that he wants and intends to speak,

otherwise he could keep silent. Speaker says things because they want something to

happen as a result of what they say. He is interested in achieving his communicative

purpose, in other words being successful in what he wants to convey. The speaker also

will select the language that he thinks is appropriate to achieve his purpose. So is the

listener other way round.

Having discussed the nature of communication, we can now suggest characteristics

necessary for communicative activities. There is a considerable debate on appropriate ways

of defining communicative language teaching and no single model is universally accepted as

authoritative (Mcgroarty, 1984; Markee, 1997). However, according to Richards and

Rodgers(1986), communicative language teaching starts with a theory of language

as communication, and its goal is to develop learners’ communicative competence.

The most obvious characteristic, according to Larsen-Freeman (1986), is that

“almost everything that is done is done with communicative intent”.In our classroom

teaching, whatever activities the students are involved in, if it is genuinely

communicative and really promoting language use, the students should have a desire to

communicate and they should use language in some way to achieve an objective. Their

attention should be centred on content of what is being said not the form that is being

used. And the students will have to deal with a variety of language rather than just one

language item.

Another characteristic is that “activities in the Communicative Approach are often

carried out by students in small groups”(Larshen-Freeman, 1986, p.132) and is “its

learner-centered and

experience-based view of second language teaching”(Richards and Rodger, 1986, p.69).

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Comments:

This paper deals with the possibility of training students’ communicative

competence by promoting their speaking skill with two major purposes;

1 . To provide a theoretical background to a methodology for teaching speaking

and

2. To present a relatively reasonable suggestion of stages in teaching speaking

on the basis of the discussion of the purpose of our teaching and the unique

nature or characteristics of the speaking skill.

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THE TEACHING OF EFL SPEAKING IN THE INDONESIAN CONTEXT: THE

STATE OF THE ART

Utami WidiatiBambang Yudi Cahyono

Nowadays, along with the strengthening position of English as a language for international communication, the teaching of speaking skill has become increasingly important in the English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL) context. The teaching of speaking skill is also important due to the large number of students who want to study English in order to be able to use English for communicative purposes. This is apparent in Richards and Renandya s (2002) publication where they stated, A large percentage of the world s language learners study English in order to develop proficiency in speaking (p. 201). Moreover, students of second/foreign language education programs are considered successful if they can communicate effectively in the language (Riggenback & Lazaraton, 1991). The new parameter used to determine success in second/foreign language education programs appears to revise the previously-held conviction that students success or lack of success in ESL/EFL was judged by the accuracy of the language they produced. Thus, the great number of learners wanting to develop English speaking proficiency and the shift of criteria of learning success from accuracy to fluency and communicative effectiveness signify the teaching of ESL/EFL speaking.

This article presents a review of the teaching of EFL speaking in the Indonesian context within the broader perspective of ESL/EFL language teaching methodology. It aims to examine whether or not the teaching of EFL speaking in Indonesia has been informed by the theoretical framework of the ESL/EFL speaking pedagogy. It also provides an account on which areas of teaching EFL speaking have not been much investigated or explored in the literature. In order to achieve these purposes, the following section will firstly discuss ESL/EFL speaking within the historical perspective of the methodology of language teaching.

ESL/EFL SPEAKING AND LANGUAGE TEACHING

The modern history of language teaching started with the adoption of the approach used for teaching Latin in European countries. Under the approach, known as the Grammar Translation Method, the purpose to learn a language is primarily to read the literature published in the language (Rich- ards & Rodgers, 1986:3). As reading and writing considered to be the focus of language teaching, the ability to speak a foreign language was regarded as irrelevant (Prator, 1991:11). Speaking was then made the primary aim of language when the Direct Method came. In the era of this method oral communication became the basis of grading the language teaching programs (Richards & Rodgers, 1986:10). However, the Reading Approach that followed believed that reading was the only language skill which could really be taught within the

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available time. Thus, the essence of the teaching of speaking or oral communication in the earlier days of language teaching history depended on the approach which was in fashion during those days.

The primacy of speech was once again insisted on in the era of the Audiolingual Method (ALM). Based on the structural analysis of spoken language, this new, scientific Audio-lingual Method (Savignon, 1983) came to be known, won the day, and was popular for many years. It believed that mimicry and memorization are the most efficient route to second language use and it relied on active drill of the structural patterns of the language. This view on language learning is reflected in its conviction stating that language behavior is not a matter of solving problems but of performing habits so well learned that they are automatic (Brooks, 1961:3, cited in Savignon, 1983:19). In short, the primacy of the oral language in the ALM was unquestioned regardless of the goals of the learner. In other words, the mastery of the fundamentals of the language must be through speech.

The ALM was later criticized for not providing language learners with the spontaneous use of the target language. The mimicry, memorization, and pattern manipulation were said to have questionable values if the goal of language teaching and learning was the communication of ideas, the sharing of information. This has led to the idea of communicative competence in language teaching which was emphasized by another approach to language teaching coming later, that is, the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). Before elaborating the notion of communicative competence, the nature of communication is discussed in the following section.

THE NATURE OF COMMUNICATION

Communication is an important part of human civilization and it is a means of cultural transformation. Communication using languages can be conducted in two ways: orally and in a written form. In the context of language learning, it is commonly believed that to communicate in a written form (writing) is more difficult than orally (speaking), suggesting that writing is a more complex language skill than speaking. However, in reality, as Artini (1998) suggests, although the complexity of spoken and written languages differs, the differences do not reveal that one is easier than the other. Unlike written language, spoken language involves paralinguistic features such as Tamber (breathy, creaky), voice qualities, tempo, loudness, facial and bodily gestures, as well as prosodic features such as intonation, pitch, stress, rhythm, and pausing. Thus, spoken language which employs variability and flexibility is in fact as complex as written language, meaning that each is complex in its own way. Additionally, the two means of language communication are equally important. It is speech, not writing, which serves as the natural means of communication between members of community (Byrne,1980), both for the expression of thought and as a form of social behavior. Writing is a means of recording speech, in spite of its function as a medium of communication in its own right.

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According to Harmer (1991:46-47), there are three reasons why people communicate. First, people communicate because they want to say something (p. 46). As Harmer explained, the word want refers to intentional desire the speaker has in order to convey messages to other people. Simply stated, people speak because they just do not want to keep silent. Second, people communicate because they have some communicative purpose (p.46). By having some communicative purpose it means that the speakers want something to happen as a result of what they say. For example, they may express a request if they need a help from other people or they command if they want other people to do something. Thus, two things are important in communicating: the message they wish to convey and the effect they want it to have (Harmer, 2001:46). Finally, when people communicate, they select from their language store (p. 47). The third reason is the consequence of the desire to say something (first reason) and the purpose in conducting communicative activities (second reason). As they have language storage, they will select language expressions appropriate to get messages across to other people. Harmer used the three reasons to explain the nature of communication which can be presented graphically in Figure 1 as follows.

Figure 1. The nature of communication with a focus on the speaker (Adapted from Harmer, 2001:48)

Harmer (1991) added that when two people communicate, each of them normally has something that they need to know from the other. The interlocutor supplies information or knowledge that the speaker does not have. Thus, in natural communication, people communicate because there is an information gap between them, and they genuinely need information from other people. In the context of EFL/ESL learning, the ability to convey messages in natural communication is of paramount importance. In order to communicate naturally, EFL/ESL learners need to acquire communicative competence, an issue which is discussed in the following section.

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

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The concept of communicative competence developed under the views of language as context, language as interaction, and language as negotiation. Learning to speak English requires more than knowing its grammatical and semantic rules. Students need to know how native speakers use the language in the context of structured interpersonal exchange. In other words, effective oral communication requires the ability to use the language appropriately in social interactions (Shumin, 2002:204). Due to the importance of the notion of communicative competence, a number of language and language learning experts (e.g. Canale & Swain, 1980; Hymes, 1971) elaborated the nature of this concept. Hymes s (1971) theory of communicative competence consists of the interaction of grammatical, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, and probabilistic language components. For Canale and Swain (1980), communicative competence includes four components of competence: grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. In the context of second/foreign language learning, Canale and Swain s interpretation of communicative competence has been frequently referred to. How these four components of competence underlie speaking proficiency is graphically shown by Shumin (2002:207) as in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Speaking proficiency and the components of communicative competence (Shumin, 2002:207)

As can be seen from the figure, speaking proficiency is influenced by all four components of competence. Grammatical competence, the first component, is linguistic competence (Savignon, 1983:36), that is, the ability to perform the grammatical well-formedness. It is mastery of the linguistic code, the ability to recognize the lexical, morphological, syntactic, and phonological features of a language and to manipulate these features to form words and sentences. In the case of speaking activities, grammatical competence enables speakers to use and understand English-language structures accurately, which in turn contributes to their fluency.

Another component is sociolinguistic competence, which requires an understanding of the social context in which language is used: the roles of the participants, the

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information they share, and the function of interaction (Savignon, 1983:37). This competence helps prepare speakers for effective and appropriate use of the target language. They should employ the rules and norms governing the appropriate timing and realization of speech acts (Shumin, 2002:207). Understanding the sociolinguistic side of language enables speakers to know what comments are appropriate, how to ask questions during interaction and how to respond nonverbally according to the purpose of the speaking.

In addition, students need to develop discourse competence. This is concerned with the connection of a series of sentences or utterances, or inter-sentential relationships, to form a meaningful whole (Savignon, 1983:38). To become effective speakers, students should acquire a large repertoire of structures and discourse markers to express ideas. Using this, students can manage turn taking in communication (Shumin, 2002:207). In their review of a discourse-based approach in the teaching of EFL speaking, Luciana and Aruan (2005:15) stated that the discourse-based approach enables students to develop and utilize the basic elements of spoken discourse in English involving not only a full linguistic properties but also the knowledge of proposition, context and socio-cultural norms underlying the speech .

The fourth component of communicative competence is strategic competence, that is, the ability to employ strategies to compensate for imperfect knowledge of rules (Savignon, 1983:39), be it linguistic, sociolinguistic, or discourse rules. It is analogous to the need for coping or survival strategies. With reference to speaking activities, strategic competence refers to the ability to keep a conversation going. For example, when second/ foreign language learners encounter a communication breakdown as they forget what a particular word in the target language is to refer to a particular thing, they try to explain it by mentioning the characteristics of the thing, thus employing a type of communication strategies (Cahyono, 1989).The concept of communicative competence as explained above impliesalso the essential purposes of spoken language. Spoken language functions interactionally and transactionally. Interactionally, spoken language is in- tended to maintain social relationships, while transactionally, it is meant to convey information and ideas (Yule, 2001:6). Speaking activities involve two or more people using the language for either interactional or transactional purposes. Because much of our daily communication remains interactional (Shumin, 2002:208), interaction is the key to teaching language for communication. In addition, as believed by the interaction hypothesis in second language acquisition, learners learn faster through interacting, or active use of language (Miller, 1998). It is also important to note that interaction requires understanding of the social background of those involved in communication. In her article addressing oral proficiency from the intercultural perspective, Luciana (2005) suggested that when two parties are interacting, they need to consider some socio-cultural aspects that they bring with them, thus necessitating the importance of intercultural understanding.

To summarize, it becomes clear to us that speaking or oral communication has been considered an important language skill for second/foreign language learners even

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though, depending on the approaches and methods of language teaching, this skill was not treated as equally important to the other language skills. It is also apparent that, naturally, to speak is not only to convey a message that someone else needs or to get information which has not been known, but, more importantly, to interact with other people. The remainder of this article focuses on the discussion of the teaching of EFL speaking in the Indonesian context by using these two aspects (i.e., information gap and interaction) as the pedagogical basis in the analysis of EFL speaking instruction. The following section will first provide the background to speaking English in Indonesia before other aspects of the practice of teaching of EFL speaking such as activities, materials, and students oral proficiency, are discussed.

SPEAKING ENGLISH IN THE INDONESIAN CONTEXT

Considering the current status of English as a foreign language in Indonesia, not so many people use it in their day-to-day communication. How- ever, in certain communities in this country English has been used for various reasons (Musyahda, 2002), leading to the fact that some people use it as the second language. For example, in the academic level, some of the scholars are quite familiar with English and occasionally use it as a means for communicating. Those involved in the main level of management such as bankers and government officials also use code-mixing and code-switching in Indonesian and English. The use of English among teenagers such as in seminars for youth or among middle-level workers in the workplaces and the use of English by radio announcers or television presenters can be easily found (Azis, 2003). Moreover, the development of tourism lead to the growing number of people from this sector, such as tour guides and hotel receptionists, who use English.

In spite of the fact that more Indonesians use English in their daily life, many (e.g., Nur, 2004; Renandya, 2004) consider that English instruction is a failure in this country. One of the reasons for the failure is that there has been no unified national system of English education (Huda, 1997) and, therefore, improvements of English communicative ability are painstakingly made. In reality, as the world is changing very rapidly towards a global village, human resource development becomes a central issue and an ability to communicate internationally is an important quality of the manpower. Global market places often require the ability to use English.

The main challenge for this country thus is to develop an educational system resulting in human quality competitive at international level. This is relevant to the significant change that took place in the real needs for English in Indonesia (Huda, 1997). The need for English ability in the fifties and sixties was limited to academic purposes at the university level. Today, individuals need English in order to communicate with others at international forums. Accordingly, efforts need to be continuously made concerning quality improvements of English instruction in Indonesia. More particularly, curriculum of English education that can be effective to produce graduates who are able to communicate at international level is needed.

The challenge to compete at international level seems to have been thought of by some English language teaching researchers or specialists. Al- though an ideal curriculum may not be attempted in the near future, the challenge results in the application of some

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classroom activities in the teaching of EFL speaking. The following section examines the practice of teaching EFL speaking in the Indonesian context as the efforts of developing students oral English proficiency.

THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING EFL SPEAKING IN THE INDONESIAN CONTEXT

In the last quarter of the century, the teaching of EFL speaking in Indonesia has been closely connected to the concept of communicative competence which is emphasized within the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach. As this approach values interaction among students in the process of language learning, classroom activities have a central role in enabling the students interact and thus improve their speaking proficiency. This section presents reports, either based on research or classroom practice, on how speaking teaching has been carried out in Indonesia. The reports, mostly dealing with tertiary-level students, can be categorized into those dealing with teaching problems, classroom activities, teaching materials, and assessment. Such reports will provide a glimpse view of teaching EFL speaking in Indonesian classrooms.

Reports on Teaching Problems

An issue which has been extensively discussed in the literature concerns the level of Indonesian learners EFL speaking proficiency. A number of reports show that Indonesian learners commonly have not attained a good level of oral English proficiency. For example, Mukminatien (1999) found that students of English departments have a great number of errors when speaking. The errors include pronunciation (e.g., word stress and intonation), grammatical accuracy (e.g., tenses, preposition, and sentence construction), vocabulary (e.g., incorrect word choice), fluency (e.g., frequent repair), and interactive communication (i.e., difficulties in getting the meaning across or keeping the conversation going). Similarly, Ihsan (1999) found that students are likely to make errors which include the misuse of parts of speech, syntac- tical construction, lexical choice, and voice. Both Ihsan and Mukminatien s research studies supported earlier results of research conducted by Eviyuliwati (1997) who reported that students had difficulties in using grammar and in applying new vocabulary items in speaking class. With regards to the students frequent errors in speaking, Mukminatien (1999) suggested teachers provide their learners with more sufficient input for acquisition in the classroom and encourage them to use English either in or outside the classroom.

As the ability to speak English is a very complex task considering the nature of what is involved in speaking, not all of the students in an EFL speaking class have the courage to speak. Many of the students feel anxious in a speaking class (Padmadewi, 1998), and some are likely to keep silent (Tutyandari, 2005). Based on her research, Padmadewi (1998) found out that students attending a speaking class often felt anxious due to pressure from the speaking tasks which require them to present individually and spontaneously within limited time. Tutyandari (2005) mentioned that students keep silent because they lack self confidence, lack prior knowledge about topics, and because

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of poor teacher-learner relationship. In order to cope with students limited knowledge, she advised speaking teachers activate the students prior knowledge by asking questions related to topics under discussion. She also mentioned that students self-confidence can be enhanced and their anxiety reduced by giving them tasks in small groups. Both Padmadewi and Tutyandari emphasized the importance of tolerance on the part of the teacher. More particularly, Tutyandari recommended that the teacher act as a teacher-counselor who provides supports and supply students needs for learning, rather than as one who imposes a predetermined program, while Padmadewi suggested that there should be a close relationship between the teacher and the students.

Citraningtyas (2005) stated that a silent speaking class can be made more alive by assigning tasks which promote students critical and creative thinking skills. For example, when students discuss providing a shelter for homeless children of Aceh due to Tsunami, they may be asked whether adopting the children could be an option. Based on his classroom action research, Wasimin (2005) suggested that students interaction in English can be improved by providing them with jazz chants exercises. Jazz chants exercises refer to recorded expressions based on English used in speech situations in the American context. Although expressions in jazz chants are not spoken naturally as everyday English, they are clearly pronounced, rhythmic and mostly repetitive (see Graham, 1978). Wasimin added that jazz chantz exercises improved students accuracy in pronunciation and intonation, as well as their fluency in responding to questions addressed to them.

In short, the problems that Indonesian EFL learners face in developing their speaking performance relate not only to their linguistic and personality factors, but also the types of classroom tasks provided by the teachers. Thus, this section suggests that teachers have an important role in fostering learners ability to speak English well. For this, teachers need to help maintain good relation with EFL learners, to encourage them to use English more often, and to create classroom activities in order to enhance students interaction. The next section specifically presents reports on types of activities in EFL speaking classroom.

Report on Classroom Activities

The teaching of EFL speaking can be focused on either training the students to speak accurately (in terms of, for example, pronunciation and grammatical structures) or encouraging them to speak fluently. The former is considered to be form-based intruction while the latter is considered to be meaning-based instruction (Murdibjono, 1998). Each of these focuses of instruction has its own characteristics. Form-focused instruction aims to provide learners with language forms (e.g., phrases, sentences, or dialogues) which can be practiced and memorized so that these forms can be used whenever the learners need them. The activities, usually teacher-centered, include repetition and substitution drills which are essentially used to activate phrases or sentences that learners have understood. In contrast, meaning-focused instruction, usually student-centered, aims to make learners able to communicate and the teacher, therefore, plays a role more as a facilitator than a teacher.

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Our review of the literature on the teaching of EFL speaking in Indonesia shows that meaning-based instruction has been given more emphasis and it is conducted through various classroom activities. While many activities in the classrooms have been oriented to speaking for real communication (e.g., Rachmajanti, 1995), some activities are conducted merely for giving students opportunities to practice speaking, such as to speak through games (e.g., Murdibjono, 1998) or through repeating patterns (Hariyanto, 1997). In- terestingly, activities described in those reports are usually based on the teaching experience of the authors. Although these types of activities are not necessarily based on keen research analysis, to a certain extent they seem to have a degree of reliability as they are based on observation following learners practice.

In terms of the number of students involved, EFL speaking activities can be classified into individual and group activities. Individual activities such as story-telling, describing things, and public speech are usually transactional, while group activities such as role-plays, paper presentation, de- bates, small group/panel discussions are interactional. Unlike group activities which have been given much attention in the literature, individual activities are usually listed as activities which can be taught in EFL speaking, yet rarely explored in-depth. Therefore, in the following discussion, group activities are highlighted.

The use of role-plays in EFL speaking classroom is recommended by some authors (e.g., Danasaputra, 2003; Diani, 2005; Murdibjono, 1998). Ac- cording to Murdibjono (1998), in a role play students are asked to pretend to be someone who is involved in a speech situation in the real-life, such as a shopkeeper and a buyer, people who are involved in shopping. Danusaputra (2003) compared the effectiveness of role-play and dialogue techniques to encourage students to speak in EFL classroom. The students were divided into two classes, each was taught using the two different techniques, but given the same topics. These topics were ones which had situation (e.g., at the grocery and at the restaurant) and language functions (e.g., complaining, showing regret, and expressing uncertainty). She found that both techniques can be effectively used in EFL classrooms. However, dialogues were found to be more helpful than the role-plays to make students speak as naturally and communicatively as possible.

Diani (2005) combined role-play and dialogue techniques in the form of interviews. Four students in her class were assigned roles as interviewers who will recruit new staffs and the rest of the students were the interviewees having roles as job applicants. Prior to the interview, the interviewees were asked to prepare a job application letter and their curriculum vitae. They were also asked to ensure the interviewers that they have the skills for posi- tions offered. Diani reported that this technique encouraged her students to do their best in the competition to get a job. She stated that assigning students to have an interview in a speaking class reduces their feeling of shyness and, in turn, encourages them to speak more. Thus, the combined dialogue and and role-play techniques in the forms of interview are effective in making students speak more actively in their speaking class.

Another activity that can be assigned to EFL students is paper presentation (e.g., Purjayanti, 2003; Tomasowa, 2000). Tomasowa (2000) assigned her students to have

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group works in order to conduct a paper presentation, which she called seminar (p. 5), of topics that have been provided in the available handbook. She stated that through presentation students had opportunities to talk about a particular topic and discuss mispronunciation or wrong word choice following the presentation. She added that presentation is effective to manage students in a large class. In a similar vein, Purjayanti (2003) found presentation to be helpful to encourage students to communicate ideas in their fields of study. As she stated, presentation is a useful, interesting and favorable way of learning speaking (p. 9). She added that through presentation and its preparation students were able not only to practice speaking, but also to search for materials and deliver them in an organ- ized way.

Small group discussion is another activity that can be conducted in EFL speaking classroom. The aim of small group discussion is to enable learners to be actively involved in a discussion involving a limited number of students. Murdibjono (2001:141-142) argues that small group discussion is effective because students have more time to practice speaking and, as students practice speaking with classmates they have already known, they are not hindered by psychological barriers. In her classroom action research, Wijayanti (2005) divided her students into a number of small groups and gave them a task called Talking about Something in English (TASE). Wijayanti found that small grouping with TASE task provided the students with opportunities to perform their speaking abilities and that they felt motivated to speak more. Similarly, Karana (2005) found out that her small groups of students were enthusiastic to perform a talk show on various topics of their choices as they have been familiar with a talk show program such as the one managed by a well-known American talk-show presenter, Oprah Winfrey.

Rachmajanti (1995) advised the use of combining arrangement to teach EFL speaking. Combining arrangement refers to meaning-based activities where learners are asked to perform tasks using information that can be gained from other learners. These activities aim to provide opportunities for learners to communicate in a natural situation. Some of the recommended activities include completing incomplete pictures and the variation which is called same or different , and partly completed crossword puzzle . These speaking activities are claimed to provide learners with a natural situation as learners ask real questions to their partners or other learners, not display questions (Lightbown & Spada, 1993:78) whose aswers have already been known.

The EFL speaking activities outlined above suggest that group activities are strikingly more dominant than individual activities, implying that Indo- nesian classrooms are rich with interaction of various patterns. As Kasim s (2004) research showed, EFL speaking classroom was of five interaction patterns: teacher-class, teacher-group, teacher-student, student-student, and student-teacher. Moreover, the frequency of group over individual activities increases the teacher s role as a facilitator in the students negotiation of meaning. Kasim pointed out that the increasing motivation of the students to talk to each other in the target language as the semester progressed was partly due to the facilitation of the speaking class, which was done by focusing more on meaning rather than on form. While many of the group activities seem to increase interaction among EFL learners, only some (e.g., small group discussion and combining arrangement)

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uphold the information-gap feature of natural conversation. As a result, not all of the classroom activities have been conditioned for triggering students more spontaneous expressions.

Reports on Teaching Materials

An important aspect of speaking activities is how students are made ready to speak. This deals with the importance of materials for communicative activities in the classroom. A traditional approach is to assign the students to search for materials of their own from any sources (e.g., magazines, books, and the Internet) and use them to complete tasks in the EFL classroom. The speaking tasks can be in the forms of individual and transactional message delivery such as describing objects, reporting, and telling stories (Rachmajanti, 2005), the presentation of which may be accompanied by the use of common media such as realia, pictures and, as Risnadedi (2005) reported, puppets.

A variation of the conventional approach is to assign the students to construct materials of their own based on their own prior knowledge and searched materials and then share these materials to other students in a small group before members of this group disperse to share the materials to classmates in other groups (Purjayanti, 2005). Because the students get the materials before they attend their speaking class, there is a possibility that they practice before performing in the class, thus the type of speech can be prefabricated utterances or it may lack spontaneity.

Another approach is to provide the students with input for speaking activities right in the classroom. Unlike the traditional approach which is based on the independent effort of the students in searching materials, this approach mainly depends on the teacher s decision making. The teacher de- signs tasks for the speaking activities, chooses types of materials, and deter- mines the media for presenting the materials. As the students get the materials for speaking when they are in the classroom, they are likely to be more spontaneous, which is more natural, when expressing messages. Due to the importance of this classroom input provision approach, the remainder of this section focuses on various input providing activities to supply materials for students speaking activities.

One of the ways to provide input for the learners is through watching video (e.g., Cahyono, 1997; Rachmajanti, 1994). In her article on video input in teaching speaking, Rachmajanti (1994) stated that video is beneficial to present both linguistic and non-linguistic aspects. The materials presented in the video include short films of the documentary and narrative types. She also prepared a number of lesson plans in order to help teachers use video in their EFL speaking classrooms. Similarly, Cahyono (1997:134) stated that video, if used competently, can be a motivating means to learn English. He also outlined what teachers can do before students watch the video, when they are watching and after watching. Thus, both Rachmajanti and Cahyono agree that video is a resourceful tool for teaching EFL speaking.

Related to the use of visual materials, Rarastesa (2004:323) pointed out that students can be equipped with materials from movies. In her opinion, movies may have various topics that can be selected for classroom use. For example, the students in her classroom

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watched My Best Friend s Wedding, a movie combining topics of love, friendship, betrayal and sacrifice. Materi- als from the movie are considered advantageous as students learn not only about the topics that they could share in the classroom, but they can also express their own opinions and values with regard to cultural aspects of the movies.

Ruslan (1997) highlighted the values of reading literary works (e.g., novels or drama) in developing students communicative competence. He stated that literary works are authentic materials as they contain native speakers cultural samples and disclose social backgrounds of the characters which may resemble the real life. Thus, students can discover the life sides of the characters such as values, beliefs, attitudes, customs, and their secrets. Dukut (2004:312-313) supported Ruslan by explaining that literary works may be used to introduce cultural aspects of the native speakers. For example, she asked her students to read John Steinback s The Grapes of Wrath in order to know more about American cultural identity, especially in the era of the Great Depression.

The importance of teaching cultural aspects of the language is also emphasized by Gunawan (2005). However, according to him, cultural materials need to be taught more directly in the speaking classroom, not incidentally through movies or literary works. Such cultural materials may include issues such as punctuality, cross-cultural differences in terms of table manners, clothes, and social relationship. To teach these materials, for instance, teachers need to prepare worksheets or handouts (e.g., multiple choice questionnaire, anecdote texts, and a list of contradictory situations) containing cross- culturally different issues that can be used as materials for discussion. Gun- awan pointed out that such cultural materials will be able to increase the student s awareness when using English to interact with native speakers, thus avoiding cross-cultural misunderstanding.

To sum up, materials for speaking can be prepared either by the students based on specific tasks assigned by the teacher or provided by the teacher alone. In practice the use of these two types of materials may involve students working individually or in groups. However, materials prepared by the students may result in memorized or prefabricated utterances, while those prepared by the teacher are likely to enhance spontaneity in students speaking performance.

Reports on Speaking Assessment

In addition to the pedagogical issues, it is important to be aware of aspects related to the teaching of EFL speaking such as the availability of standards of EFL speaking proficiency that can be used as a guideline for instructional activities and the results of tests used to measure learners speaking proficiency.

Rusdi (2003) emphasized the importance of having standards for students speaking proficiency as standards will ensure their good command of English. The standards include what functions of language should be mastered by students and what type of evaluation should be used to assess students speaking proficiency. With regard to the latter in particular, Rusdi argues that students who are considered to pass a speaking proficiency test are those who acquire more than seventy percent of the

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language functions set out in a period of instruction. Mukminatien (2005) argues that the standards applied for learners who are still in elementary level of oral proficiency should be different from those who are already in the higher levels. She suggested that assessment for the former group of students may be focused on aspects of uterance such as pronunciation, intonation, and stress, whereas for the latter group of students, assessment should be focused on language function such as abilities to tell stories, to report an event, and many other communicative purposes.

Once the standards for students speaking proficiency have been deter- mined and the language functions included in the instructional materials, the next thing to do is to test the students speaking profiency. Speaking tests may be classified into two: direct approach, which aims at measuring students speaking proficiency by asking them to speak, and indirect approach, which requires them to give or choose best responses for a speech situation (Mukminatien, 1995). Our literature review shows that discussion and research results addressing students speaking proficiency (e.g., Mukminatien,1998) have been commonly based on the direct approach of testing (e.g., Sulistyo, 1998). The results of such testing are usually presented in the form of description of the level of students speaking proficiency, problems the students face, and suggested methods to improve students speaking proficiency.

An issue which may appear when applying the direct approach of testing concerns the objectivity of those in charge of testing. According to Yuli- asri (2005:3-5), to increase objectivity, or reduce subjectivity, teachers are recommended to use alternative assessment , which is the antithesis of the standardized assessment or traditional assessment. In speaking, alternative assessment refers to continuous assessment , a form of evaluation of students speaking proficiency based on day-to-day record of evaluation. An important part of this type of assessment is the criteria to judge students performance (e.g., students speech comprehensibility, organization of the spoken materials, and the way the messages are delivered) and the quality categories of the students performance (e.g., superior, advanced, intermediate, and novice). Yuliasri suggested that the clarity of these two components of alternative assessment will reduce subjectivity in assessing students speaking proficiency.

The review of reports on the practice of EFL speaking as presented above shows that developing oral English proficiency has been the concern of researchers and educators in Indonesia. The discussion of various aspects of the practice also suggests the complex nature of what is involved in developing oral proficiency in a foreign language context. The review of reports on the problems in the teaching of EFL speaking indicates that teachers are challenged to cope with various factors in language learning either linguistic or non-linguistic ones. A variety of classroom activities and teaching materials appear to have been used to deal with these problems and these efforts have contributed to the increase in the learners enthusiasm and interaction their speaking classes. However, as the results are not yet satisfactory, attention should be given to other factors that might inhibit or facilitate the production of spoken language. For example, learners need to be given more sufficient input for acquisition in the classroom through tasks reflecting the application of information gap feature of natural

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communication. Further- more, due to the status of English as a foreign language, learners need to be encouraged to use English both in and outside the classroom (see Mukminatien, 1999).

Richards & Renandya (2002) pointed out that the nature of speaking as well as the factors involved in producing fluent and appropriate speech, be it linguistic or non-linguistic, needs to be understood in developing oral proficiency. Accordingly, classroom activities should be selected on the basis of problems learners experience with different aspects of speaking and the kinds of interaction the activities provide. For example, form-based instruction (which emphasize language forms, pronunciation and memorization) is more suitable for elementary level of EFL learners, while meaning-based instruction (which focuses on speaking for communicative purposes) is given to more advanced level of learners (see Mukminatien, 2005; Murdibjono,1998). Briefly stated, promoting competent speakers of English, especially as a foreign language and in the Indonesian context, is not a simple task; it requires careful analyses of components underlying effective communication, linguistic as well as non-linguistic factors, and various aspects contributing to successful instruction.

CONCLUSION

As one of the central elements of communication, speaking needs special attention and instruction in an EFL context like the one in Indonesia. Helping learners speak English fluently and appropriately needs carefully- prepared instruction (e.g., determining learning tasks, activities and materials) and a lot of practice (i.e., either facilitated by the teachers in the classroom or independently performed by the learners outside the classroom) due to minimal exposure to the target language and contact with native speakers in the context.

We have attempted to review the teaching practice and the research of EFL speaking in the Indonesian context. The review indicates that various classroom activities and teaching materials have been created, selected, and implemented to promote Indonesian learners EFL speaking proficiency. However, a number of linguistic and non-linguistic factors need to be considered in conducting speaking classes.

Since there has been no unified national system concerning the development of oral proficiency in the English instruction, future programs and research should be directed toward providing rigorous guidance in developing competent speakers of English, involving considerations of components

Comment:

This article reviews the teaching of EFL speaking in the Indonesian context by outlining

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the recent development and highlighting the future trends. It discusses problems in the teaching of EFL speaking, activities commonly performed, materials usually used in EFL speaking classes, and assessment of oral English proficiency. Based on the review, the article also provides some recommendations on what teachers or researchers of EFL speaking can do in order to achieve a higher quality of the teaching of EFL speaking and to improve the speaking skill of Indonesian EFL learners.

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CHAPTER IV

THE REPORT OF THESIS IN TEACHING AND LEARNING SPEAKING

THESIS 1

Title : Teaching Speaking by Using Communicative ApproachAuthor : Fahmi NurhakimPublisher : STKIP SubangYear of Publication : 2009

The Communicative Approach proposed by the writer is Communicative Language

Teaching. This method is identified by five basic characteristics:

1. An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language.

2. The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.

3. The provision of opportunities for the learners to focus, not only on language but

also on the learning process itself.

4. An enhancement of the learner’s own personal experiences as important

contributing elements to classroom learning.

5. An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activities outside the

classroom.

The aims of the study is to know whether listening to the English movie can improve

students’ speaking skill. The study is oriented towards:

1. To identify the students’ problem in speaking English, and;

2. To discover whether teaching speaking by using communicative approach is effective

to overcome the students’ problems in speaking.

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In order to achieve the aim of the research, the writer used correlation method.

Correlation design is not really considered model experiments because they do not account

for extraneous variable which may have influenced the results. In this study, the writer took

the students of SD Negeri 2 Pamayonan as the population. The samples were the fifth grade

students. There were no classes and the writer took twenty students randomly from them

as the sample by lottere.

The data needed was taken from a test. The test was used to identify the students’

achievement. The test was the objective test. In the term of multiple-choice items consists

of ten items. The writer calculating the mark of t-value an at least gives the interpretation of

the calculation.

Data : The scores of pre-test and post-test

Analysis Data : The writer counted the value of t, the formula used was

The writer used two groups as the samples, each group consists of 20 and 17

students, and the degree of freedom (df) is 19 and 16 for each group. Since the two groups

were choosen as the representative subjects. The total df {(Ne-1)+Nc-1)} was 35. The t-

observation was 1.966. This t-observation was greater than t-critical (1.966>1.684).

Consequently, it was quite safe to reject the null hypothesis. It means that the two groups

have different scores on the post-test, and the difference was statistically significant. So, this

fact support the claim that students who were taught speaking by using Communicative

approach get better scores than those taught conventionally. The experimental teaching

program can improve the students’ speaking skill effectively (24,37%) from that what they

got in the pre-test, while control group can improve the students’ speaking skill more than

the experimental group (154.56%).

The conclusion of this research was that teaching by communicative approach

contributes the improvements of students’ speaking skill, makes English lesson live, make

change from the teacher and text book, helps the students feedback has been very positive

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and they were enjoying the benefit of the communicative approach, so speaking practice

becomes more effective.

THESIS 2

Title : IMPROVING THE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL BY USING ENGLISH QUARTET CARDS FOR THE FOURTH YEAR STUDENTS OF SDN TLOGOMAS II MALANG

Author : Widya Maretta LestianiPublisher : Universitas Muhammadiyah MalangYear of Publication : 2009

It is not easy to teach speaking to young learners because it needs good technique

and media to motivate them. Media is used by the teachers in teaching and learning

process. One of the appropriate media that can be functioned to improve the students’

speaking skill is English Quartet cards. This study aims at improving the students’ speaking

skill by using English Quartet Cards games. In this study, classroom action research design

was used to obtain the information related to the research problems. The sample of this

study was fourth grade students of SDN Tlogomas II Malang.

The result of this study showed that teaching speaking by using English Quartet

Cards games can improve the students’ speaking skill. Based on the result of pre-test and

post-test, it can be concluded that the fourth grade students of SDN Tlogomas II Malang

achieve better achievement in speaking after the treatment. It can be seen from the mean

of pre-test and post-test. The mean score of the pre-test was 67.93. Meanwhile, the mean

score of post-test was 87. It means that there was an improvement on the students’

speaking skill.

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THESIS 3

Title : THE IMPROVEMENT OF STUDENT’S SPEAKING SKILL THROUGH GUESSING GAMES TECHNIQUE (A Classroom Action Research at 4th Grade Elementary School)

Author : Widya Maretta LestianiPublisher : STKIP Kusuma Bangsa JakartaYear of Publication : 2009

The concepts of guessing games which applied in teaching speaking of this research

were as follows

1. Guess what is it? Is it…?

2. Guess Who I am? What is my name?

3. Guess what is there in my bag today?

4. Guess where is it?

The purpose of research is to get the new theory, especially to know teaching

speaking by using games effective at fourth grade of elementary school. Teacher hopes

them to active in practicing English speaking in class. It is expected that the students can

enjoy expressing their ideas, opinion, and feeling and can match dialogue with the real

situation and condition. Besides that, they can also get fun in learning English in school

especially for learning English speaking.

The design of the study was as follows:

1. Socializing Guessing Games

a. Teacher introduces guessing games

b. Teacher states the aims of guessing games

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c. Teacher explains the definition of guessing games

d. Teacher explains the concept of guessing games

e. Teacher has the rules of guessing games

f. Teacher checks students’ understanding

2. Individually or Grouping

a. Teacher asks students to apply this games individually or

b. Teacher asks students to apply this games in a group

3. Distributing Cards

a. Teacher distributes cards as teaching material

b. Teacher explains the use of cards

4. Asking Questions and Giving Answer

a. Teacher asks to practice the games by asking question and giving answer to

each group

b. Teacher asks each group to perform once.

Based on the research, the researcher proposed some advantages of using teaching

speaking through guessing games, as stated below:

1. Using guessing games make students more pleasure from regular activities in

class. It creates a relaxed atmosphere in the classroom.

2. Using guessing games can encourage the students to communicate in English

because the games are combinations between language practice with fun and

excitement.

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3. Guessing games can practice the students’ ability in forming many kind of

dialogues.

While the weaknesses are:

1. In applying guessing games, the teacher needs the students who are skillful

formulating question from dialogue.

2. In applying guessing games, the teacher needs the students more carefully to

make communication.

3. In applying guessing games, the teacher needs the students’ more controlling

how to make right pronunciation.

The conclusions of the research were as follows:

1. From the cycle 1, the researcher which got, almost all student unable to answer

and say truly. Even arise is each other laughing. This thing result student is less

enthusiastically even class atmosphere become clamor. And their equip the

answer showed that they had a few self confidence.

2. From the cycle 2, the researcher must make savety felling for the students. And

make the atmosphere of the class being fun. There was little increasing in their

pronounciation from the dialogue. As far the tasks were given individually. In the

cycle two the researcher find there was a will to the students to overcome their

problems in pronunciation and speaking skill. Few students showed increasing

their speaking and they could make simple dialogue with their partner.

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3. There was increasing in their speaking ability and the responses showed that

they had motivation in learning speaking. Their anthussiasme were high when

that reseacher choosed simple conversation from the dialogue that they make.

In cylcle 3 the competition was held among the groups, then the students were more

interested when did the conversation with their group. They were still to improve their

speaking ability to be more succesful and more confident. Make some group on the class

can improve the ability to speak.

The conclusion from three cycles that the process of the improvement student’s

speaking skill through guessing games, first that the researcher must make situation of the

classroom more conducive so that the students can fell more safely. The researcher has to

choose effective guessing to make involve and participant from students.

The students more encourages and more active when the researcher gives the

materials by group, they more confidence to improve their ability speaking skill and to make

conversation by their group.

Nevertheless, many factors hamper students to speak English, sometimes it comes

from lack of teacher’s technique teaching. The students need to learn more speaking of the

target language. Guessing games is one of the techniques that have a positive effect on

students speaking knowledge to make confidence and encourage.

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THESIS 4

Title : Using Strip-story to Improve Eight Graders' Speaking AbilityAuthor : Fanny Septya ChristyPublisher : Universitas Negeri MalangYear of Publication : 2008

In this globalization era in which communication takes an important role in world

information, speaking is one of the important English skills is considered important to be

taught. In fact, speaking is not an easy skill to be mastered. Most of the Junior High School

students are unable to speak English well although they have learned the language for at

least three years. This may be caused by many psychological factors, such as inhibition,

anxiety, low self-esteem, fear of making mistakes, and shyness. It is also possible that it is

caused by external factors such as the lack of speaking opportunity to practice English both

inside and outside the classroom. One alternative to help teachers to create natural

communication is using strip-story. Strip-story is a variation of jigsaw technique in which

each student is given one sentence of a story at random, and then the sentences must be re-

arranged to form a story through verbal interaction.

Teaching speaking using strip-story will help teacher to develop students' speaking

ability through real communication activity and it will also help students to improve their

speaking ability through a comfortable way of mastering English. The procedure that is used

in strip-story activity is as follows: first, the teacher decides the groups. The teacher divides

the class into several groups. Each group consist of eight students. While waiting for the

students to sit with their group, the teacher sticks the strips to the wall. Each member of the

group decides which strip that he/she likes. And then the teacher gives students time to

come to the strips and memorize the sentence. The students have to memorize it, no hand-

writing is allowed here. Then they discuss the sentences with their group and rearrange the

sentence to form a story through oral communication. Finally, they have to present their

discussion. And after each group present their work, the teacher together with the students

discuss the right answer.

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Based on the result on the study, it is found out that after being treated with the

strip-story strategy the teaching and learning process becomes much better. It also brings

good impact on increasing the learning process and they can work as a group. The result on

language function shows that in the strip-story activity they speak with occasional

hesitation, use adequate vocabulary, use comprehensible pronunciation, and use complex

sentence in asking and responding. Most of the students started to speak more bravely and

without feeling shy anymore. To conclude, the strategy of strip-story applied in this study

has succeeded in solving the students' problem in improving students' speaking ability.

THESIS 5

Title : TEACHING SPEAKING THROUGH DIALOGUE TO THE ELEVENTH YEAR STUDENT: A CASE STUDY AT SMK MUHAMMADIYAH 1 JATINOM

Author : RINI WIDIASTUTIPublisher : UNIVERSITAS MUHAMMADIYAH SURAKARTAYear of Publication : 2007

The writer conducts descriptive qualitative research which describes the process of

teaching speaking through dialogue at the eleventh year students of SMK Muhammadiyah 1

Jatinom. So, in this case the writer does not need statistic data. Here are the procedures of

analyzing the data:

1. Describing the teaching speaking components that covers:

a. The curriculum involves the goal, syllabus, and teaching material

b. Method and technique of teaching speaking

c. Media of teaching speaking

d. System of evaluation used by the teacher

2. Discussing findings of the research. Describes the process of teaching speaking

through dialogue based on teaching speaking components.

3. Drawing conclusion briefly and then giving some suggestion.

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This research paper is aimed at describing the process of teaching speaking through

dialogue focused on the curriculum, method and technique of teaching speaking, teaching

media, and system of evaluation. The source of data is teaching learning process of

dialogue technique at SMK Muhammadiyah 1 Jatinom, and documents. In this research, the

writer does the classroom observation and interview to the English teacher.

In collecting the data, the writer focuses on dialogue, the teaching learning-process,

the students activities, the teacher’s and student’s roles, the teacher and student’s problem

in teaching-learning speaking, and problem-solving by the teacher in teaching speaking.

Based on the data analysis, the writer finds that the result of teaching speaking by

using dialogue at the eleventh year students of SMK Muhammadiyah 1 Jatinom as follows:

1. The curriculum of SMK Muhammadiyah 1 Jatinom especially at the eleventh

level uses KBK. In KBK, the goal of teaching speaking is to gain the students to

be able to communicate in English on elementary level. Consequently, they

can express various feelings or senses;

2. Method and technique of teaching speaking. In teaching speaking the English

teacher uses Communicative approach and dialogue technique;

3. Media of teaching speaking. Media an very needed to successful teaching

learning process, so the English teacher of SMK Muhammadiyah 1 Jatinom

uses a blackboard and cassette (CD); and

4. System evaluation of speaking activities. To evaluate the students

performance the teacher gives comments and mark, this way is very needed

for a teacher to know the student’s capability and to make the lesson better.

Therefore, the result of teaching speaking through dialogue is satisfying.

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THESIS 6

Title : USING ROLE PLAY IN TEACHING SPEAKING

Author : Ayu Diyah Harni Susanti

Publisher : UNIVERSITAS ISLAM NEGERI SYARIF HIDAYATULLAH JAKARTA

Year of Publication : 2007

The objective of the study is to find out that using role play in teaching speaking is

quite effective. Therefore, the writer would like to prove whether the scores of speaking

taught by using role play better or not. The writer also wants to know the process of role play

activities.

The method that is used in this study is a quantitative method. The study is based on

both library and a field research. In the field research, the data collected by teaching and

observing the subjects.

This thesis is systematically divided into five chapters. The following is short

description about what each chapter contains. Chapter One: Introduction. It includes

background of study, identification, limitation and formulation of study, objective of study,

method of study, and organization of writing.

Chapter Two: Theoretical Framework. It discusses about speaking; definition of

speaking, teaching speaking, activities to promote speaking, and guidance for teachers in

teaching speaking. It also discusses about role play; definition of role play, types and

procedures in using role play, and significance of role play in teaching speaking.

Chapter Three: Research Methodology. It includes objective of study, place and time

of study, research method, population and sampling, instrumentation, procedures of data

collecting and technique of data analysis.

Chapter Four: Research Findings. It includes description of data and interpretation.

Chapter Five: Conclusion and Suggestion. It contains conclusion and suggestion from the

writer based on the previous discussion.

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This research was taken in Islamic Junior High School Soebono Mantofani at Jl.

Sumatera No. 75 Jombang . Ciputat, Tangerang, on September 20th to December 14th 2006.

Having analyzed the data of pre-test and post-test by using t-test formula, the result shows

that the coefficient is 13,420. It means that there is a significance increase in teaching

speaking by using role play.

From the result of calculation, it is obtained the value of the t observation (to) is 13,420

the degree of freedom (df) is 29 (obtained from N-1) = (30 . 1 = 29). The writer used the

degree of significance of 5% and 1%. In the table of significance, it can be seen that on the df

29 and on the degree of significance of5% and 1%, the value of degree of significance are

2,045 and 2,756. If the to compared with each value of the degrees of significance, the result

is 2,045 <13,420 > 2,756. Since to score obtained from the result of calculating, the

alternative hypothesis (Ha) is accepted and the null hypothesis (Ho) is rejected.

1. If the result of t observation is higher than t table (to > tt), the null hypothesis (Ho) is

rejected and alternative hypothesis (Ha) is accepted. It means that there is a

significance difference between variable X and variable Y.

2. If the result of t observation is lower than t table (to < tt), the null hypothesis (Ho) is

accepted and alternative hypothesis (Ha) is rejected. It means that there is no

significance difference between variable X and variable Y.

Based on the result of the data analysis, it is proven that the students. Score of speaking

taught by using role play is better. It means that the use of role play in teaching speaking is

quite effective. Another reason based on the students. responses is because most students find

that role play is enjoyable. This reason leads to better attention in learning and stimulate them

to participate in role play activities.

But the problem that they faced mostly is lack of confidence and lack of vocabulary. In

the early stages of the role play the students were uncomfortable and uncertain. This led to

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initial lapses of silence. But soon they began helping one another to decide who should speak.

Towards the end, their shyness left them and they began prompting each other with ideas.

Conclusion of the research:

1. From the result of the analysis of the research, it is proven that the students. score of

speaking taught by using role play is better. This result has answered the research

question that the use of role play in teaching speaking is quite effective.

2. The use of role play makes the speaking and learning activity more enjoyable and

interesting. It is because role play helps the shy students by providing a mask, where

students with difficulty in conversation are liberated. In addition, it is fun and most

students will agree that enjoyment leads to better learning.

3. In role play, the world of the classroom is broadened to include the outside world.

This offers a much wider range of language opportunities. So, the students can be

anyone and in any situation they wish.

4. The use of role play makes the class more active and alive. Students are willing to

participate without any forces from the teacher.

5. The use of role play makes the students more motivated in learning and easier to grasp

the lesson.

6. Problems that the students faced mostly in role play are lack of confidence and lack of

vocabulary.

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