Nature of Speaking Teaching Speaking

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CHAPTER II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

A. Teaching Speaking

Speaking skill is an important skill needs to be taught in language class. However, it does not mean the other skills such as listening, reading, and writing are less important rather than speaking skill. Those skills are sustaining each other, for instance; speaking skill preceded by listening. Through listening people know vocabulary they do not know before. Nevertheless, in fact some English language classes only emphasize on the importance of mastering writing and reading rather than speaking, that it brings inadequate time to practice to speak about students. A s the result, students’ poor in spoken language knowledge neither formally nor informally. Before discussing more about teaching speaking, firstly it is better to know what speaking is?, which will be discussed in following point.

1. Nature of Speaking

Speaking in linguistics term has various definitions. In Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, speak means saying something to express ideas and opinions. Kushartanti defines speaking as set of voices uttered by one and understood by someone else. 1 It means to deliver thought or opinion. While 1 Kushartanti, et all, Pesona Bahasa; Langkah Awal Memahami Linguistics, Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka utama, 2005, p.32 Florez defines speaking as an interactive process of constructing meaning involves producing, receiving, and processing information. 2 In other definitions, Harmer defines speaking as a form of communication, so a speaker must convey what heshe is saying effectively. 3 In line with these definitions, Carter defines it as “one of the types of composing language, the type that is swift, complicated, frequent and primary, because the language itself is symbolic used by communicators to construct and to convey information ”. 4 From those definitions, the writer infers speaking as activities by which human beings try to express thought, feeling, opinion, and to exchange information by using utterances in the form of communication. Therefore, as a tool of communication, it is necessary for people to have a good speaking skill. Speaking skill is the ability to produce sound ’s articulation and to produce words, to express, to state, and to deliver thought, ideas and feeling. In this case, speaker not only has to know what to be delivered but also knows how to deliver it. 5 Speaking skill is not an instant skill to be acquired. It needs a long process. Furthermore, language is a complex system, and each system is different and requires reorganization of students thinking with lots of exposure 6 , so it needs tremendous amount of practice to be more successful language learner. In short, it can be said that, speaking skill is the ability to produce utterance or utterances to express though and to convey meaning.

1. Element of Speaking