18 4
Plan speaking tasks that involve negotiation for meaning. In communicating, students do an interaction which involves trying to
understand and make you understood. The process is called negotiating for meaning. Teacher can give a task which includes clarification, repetition, or
explanation during conversations. 5
Design classroom activities that involve guidance and practice in both transactional and interactional.
Interactional speech is communicating with someone for special purposes which include both establishing and maintaining social relationships.
Transactional speech involves communicating to get something done, including the exchange of goods or services. The students need to learn to speak in both
interactional and transactional purposes.
c. Types of Speaking Activities
In order to make the effective learning process, the teacher should consider the activities used in the classroom. Many researchers have provided activities
that can be perform in speaking class. Harmer 2001: 269 provided six examples of speaking activities. The speaking activities will be described as follow:
1 Acting from a script
In this activity, the students may act out scenes from their course books or the dialogues they have written themselves. Before the students perform the final
performance, it will be better if the students are given opportunities to practice
19 producing the language in small group or in pair. It will make the students more
confident when they present the final performance in front of the class. 2
Communication games In this activity, the students have to talk to their partner or group in order
to finish the task from the teacher. The task may be various, for example finishing a puzzle and drawing a picture.
3 Discussion
In this activity, the students work in groups and they given a topic to be discussed. They have to share information and ideas about the topic. In the end of
the activity, some students will present the result of the discussion. 4
Prepared talks In prepared talks, the students should make script of their speech. By
preparing the talks, the students can make the more organized speech. The students should not read the script of their speech when they perform their speech
in front of the class, but they can use their outline to assist the speech. 5
Questionnaires In this activity, the students design questionnaires on any topic. The
students, then, can discuss the results of the questionnaires in groups. 6
Simulation and role-play The students simulate the real life situations such as the working world
situations as if they were doing so in the real world. Simulation and role-play can be used to encourage oral fluency and to train students for specific situation.
20 Other types of activities or tasks which can be applied in speaking class
were stated by Richard 2001: 162 as cited by Nunan 2004: 58-59. The activities are:
1 Jigsaw
In this activity, the students are involved to combine the different piece of information in order to form the whole information.
2 Information-Gap
In this activity, the students can work in group. One student has a piece of information and another student in the group also has another piece of
information. Then, they have to discuss and find out what the other part’s information in order to complete the activity.
3 Problem-solving
In problem-solving, students are given a problem and a set of information. They should discuss the problem in order to find the solutions of the problem.
4 Decision-making
In decision-making, students can work in group and they will be given a problem and some possible solutions. Here, the students must choose one
solutions through negotiation and discussion. 5
Opinion exchange In opinion exchange activity, students discuss about a topic given by the
teacher and they exchange ideas and opinions. In this activity, the students do not need to reach agreement.
