Low or uneven participation
                                                                                17
According to Tarigan 1990, p.13, there are three major stages when teachers are  teaching  speaking.  Those  are  introducing  new  language,  practice  and
communicative  activities.  When  introducing  new  language,  the  teacher  should  find out genres or texts, which are meaningful. In this stage, teachers can ask students to
pronounce  unfamiliar  words,  find  out  the  meaning  of  expressions  used  in  the  text. Other  techniques  used  for  teaching  speaking  are  information  gap  by  using  pictures,
using  photographs,  using  songs,  using  mysterious  things,  educational  drama  which covers miming, role play, the empty chair, and simulation.
There is a previous study related to this research. The study is about problem faced  by  Thai  students  in  speaking  English.  Khamkhien  2010  states  that  English
performance  of  Thai  students  in  teaching  and  learning  speaking  is  very  limited because of some reasons, namely:
First, for Thai students, English speaking or oral communication in English is deemed to be difficult since English is not their native language. second, most
of Thai learners need their English to sound as native-like as possible which is a  prestige  norm  of  spoken  English  even  though  English  is  widely  used  in
region of South East Asia, creating a great diversity of English e.g., Malaysian English, Singaporean English, etc. this scenario seems to limit their choice of
their  exposure  to  English.  Next,  since  English  in  Thailand  is  a  foreign language,  the  exposure  of  English  to  authentic  language  input  of  learners  of
English  in  Thailand  is  limited.  Lastly,  another  dimension  which  should  be taken into account lies into English pronunciation of Thai teachers of English.
These serious problems are exclusively important, leading to a large volume of studies focusing on speaking ability of Thai learners.
Another  problem  is  that  the  method  used  by  English  teacher  in  Thailand  is teacher-centered which is signed by translating, copying from the book, and teaching
18
grammar  through  lecturing.  It  makes  the  students  lack  of  practicing  oral  language. They  do  not  have  any  chances  to  speak  in  the  target  language,  so  that  they  easily
forget what they learnt. The study helps the researcher to take another angle based on the topic, so that the researcher focuses more
on the students’ problems of speaking based on
the practice teachers’ experiences during the PPL in junior high schools.
                