SEMINAR On ELT

Teaching of EFL speaking in Indonesian context:
The state of the art

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. There are some point of report that will provide a glimpse view of teaching EFL speaking in Indonesian classroom: teaching problem, classroom activities, teaching materials,and assesment. Primary of oral language was unquestioned regardless of the goal of the learner. The mastery of  fundamental of the language must be through speech.

The teaching of speaking skill is important due to the large number of students who want to study English in order to be able to use English for communicative puprposes. Nowadays along with the strengthening position of English as a language for international communication, the teaching of speaking skill has increasingly important in the English as a second or foreign language.

The learners want to develop their English speaking proficiency and the shift of the criteria of learning success from accuracy to fluency and communicative effectiveness signify the teaching of English as a second Language or English as a Foreign Language.

The ability to speak fluently in English presupposes not only a knowledge of language features, but also the ability to process information and language “on the spot” (Harmer 2000). There are some elements necessary for spoken production that harmer proposes:

Connected Speech. Effective speakers of English need to be able not only to produce the individual phonemes of English but also connected speech sounds like modified, omitted, added or weakened.

Expressive Devices. Native speakers of English change the pitch and stress of particular parts of utterances, vary volume and speed, and show by other physical and non-verbal means how they are feeling. The use of this device contributes to the ability to convey meanings.

Lexis and Grammar. Spontaneous speech is marked by the use of a number of common lexical phrases, especially in the performance of certain language function.

The elements above should be mastered by students of English so that they can produce an oral production in such a natural and good way. The idea of paying attention these three elemets of speaking is on the relatedness between grammar and meaning. This means that only statements or utterances with a good grammar can produce an easier way of understanding them.

According to Harmer (1991:46-47), there are three reason why people communicate:

1. People communicate because they want to say something.

2. People communicate because they have some communicative purpose.

3. The consequences of the desire to say something.

            Indonesian learners use English in their daily life conside that English instruction is a failure in this country. One of the reason for the failure is that there has beeen no unified national system of English educatuion therefore, improvement of English communicative ability are painstakingly make. In reality as the world is changing very rapidly towards a global village.

            Based on the writer’s experience in practice teaching in a school, some students feel enjoy when learning English, they have spirit in learning, not only in speaking skill but also in reading, listening, and also writing. When learning about speaking, the writer ask the students to make a group, work in a group and make a dialog or short conversation about the material that they are studying. For example today they are studying about Menu. So the writer ask the students to make a dialog as they are in the restaurant. There are a customer, a waiter, etc. The writer saw that the students do their best, the are happy in act the dialog that they had made. They are good in practice their dialog although they still have some mistake in prononce some words. But they are good students. They are enjoying studying English and speaking, but when they are practing their dialog they still feel nervous. For them English as a second language or English as a Foreign language is important because it’s not only need in writing but also in speaking in order able to speak with others from foreign.

            Every students have different feel how they can easy to understand the material that given by the teacher. A student feel enjoy or easy to understand the material from the teacher is based on the teacher’s explanation, how the teacher explain the material to the students, if the teacher has an interest way to explain the material the students will not feel bored and enjoy when study. For some students English is easy to understand if the material is not too difficult. They enjoy speaking if it is uses daily language or in other words yhe laguage that use is not difficult for them, or a simple words.

            When they are learning about speaking they feel confused to choose the right words or tenses, they have difficult in tenses and grammar. For them speaking is important. For some students learning speaking is enough difficult, because if they speak directly they doesn’t understand the tenses yet. So it need a concept first. Like make a concept of dialog and they can perform it.

            When study English need the condition that not too serious, not only give the theory with some explanation but also do some action, some practice, and do some games, quiz or other ways which make the teaching learning process will not feel bored.

(Dari berbagai sumber)