Micro-skills of Speaking The Nature of Speaking

From the statements above, it can be interpreted that drilling is still important for teaching speaking, mainly pronunciation and intonation as long as it is not overused and students know why they are doing it. 2 Intensive In this type of performance, students deal with their linguistic difficulties- either phonological or grammatical aspect of language. Brown 2001: 273 states that intensive speaking goes one step beyond imitative to include any speaking performance that is designed to practice some phonological or grammatical aspect of language. Intensive speaking can be self-initiated or it can even form part of some pair work activity, where learners are “going over” certain forms of language. 3 Responsive In this type of performance, students may give short replies to teacher or even students have an initiative for asking questions or comments. Student’s responses usually sufficient and do not extend into dialogues. However, such speech can be meaningful and authentic. 4 Transactional dialogue In this type of performance, students are involved in exchanging specific information with their conversational partners. This activity is carried out for the purpose of conveying or exchanging specific information. In this case, Brown 2001: 273 says that transactional language is an extended form of responsive language. Conversations may have more of a negotiative nature to them than does responsive speech. 5 Interpersonal dialogue In this type of performance, students actively participate in the authentic give and take of communicative interchange. This type of activity is carried out more for purpose of maintaining social relationships than for the transmission of fact and information. These conversations are a little trickier for learners because they can involve some or all the following factors: a casual register, colloquial language, emotionally charged language, slang, ellipsis, sarcasm, and a covert “agenda”. 6 Extensive monologue In this type of performance, students are called on to give extended monologues in the form of oral reports, summaries, or perhaps short speeches. This performance is to develop students’ global oral ability of producing spoken language which is more formal and deliberate. These monologues can be planned or impromptu.

d. Principles for Designing Speaking Techniques

According to Brown 2001: 275, there are some principles in designing teaching speaking techniques. 1 Techniques should cover the spectrum of learner needs, from language based focus on accuracy to message-based focus on interaction, meaning, and fluency. It is suggested that when the teacher does a jigsaw group technique, play games or discuss solutions to the environment crisis, he has to be sure that his task include techniques designed to help students to perceive and use the building blocks of language. So, it is obvious that in speaking class, teacher should not only teach students “what to say” but also “how to say’ which mainly includes grammatical knowledge, vocabulary building and proper pronunciation. It is also stated that at the same time the teacher should not bore the students to deal with lifeless, repetitious drills. It means that if the teacher wants to focus on fluency and he needs to drill students, he should be able to make any drilling he does as meaningful as possible. 2 Techniques should be intrinsically motivating What happens in the field, often students do not know or understand why their teacher asks them to do certain activities. They merely do whatever their teacher asks them to without knowing the benefits they can get from the activities they have done. Consequently, many students become passive and unmotivated. Good teachers should motivate students by helping them to see how the activities will benefit them. 3 Techniques should encourage the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts It is stated that it is not easy to keep coming up with meaningful interaction. The teacher succumbs to the temptation to do, says, disconnected little grammar exercises where he goes around the room calling on student one by one to pick the right answer. It takes energy and creativity to device authentic context and meaningful interaction, but with the help of quite a store house of teacher resource material, it can be done, even drills can be structured to provide a sense of authenticity.