The Nature of Speaking

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a. The Nature of Speaking

Speaking is one of four English skills that people usually want to learn because they want to be able to communicate in English. Speaking is the basic language which is developed in early stages or in a childhood. Tarigan 1990 defines that speaking is a language skill that is developed in child life, is preceded by listening skill, and at that period speaking skill is learned. This statement is supported by Brown 2000 who stated that from communicative, pragmatic view of the language classroom, listening and speaking skills are closely intertwined which especially apply to conversation. Speaking is a verbal language which is used to communicate with others. Speaking consists of producing verbal utterances to convey meaning Nunan, 2003. Speaking is not merely verbal utterances that convey meaning but it is also defined as the process of expressing ideas and information to the listener. This statement is supported by Brown and Yule 1983, who state that speaking is to express the needs-request, information, service and etc. In this context, the speakers say what they have in mind as well as the information they want to convey to the listeners. There are many ways to define speaking. Hymes 1972 in Louma 2004 defines speaking by providing the framework of speaking in the form of acronym speaking. S stands for Situation; refers to the setting and the nature of event. This is the time and place where the speaking activity is done. P stands for Participant, refers to the speaker, listener, audience. In other words, it refers to the participants and what role they take. E stands for Ends, refers to the conventional outcomes of 9 the event it also includes the individual participants‟ goal. This is the expected outcomes and the personal goals of accomplishing particular occasions. A stands for Act sequence; refers to the form and the content of the speech acts. It contains the words used, how they are used and the relationship of the topic and what is said. K stands for Key; refers to the tone, manner, or spirit of act. I stands for instrumentalities or it is called as the channel or the mode and form of speech. N stands for Norms; refers to the norms of interpretation and norms of interaction. In addition, G stands for Genre, refers to categories or types of the utterance such as poems, proverbs, etc. Speaking has some important components which can influence its effectiveness. Canale and Swain 1980 in Renandya 2002 propose that communicative competence consist of the interaction of grammatical, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, and probabilistic language components. The four areas of communicative competence they identified are grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. Grammatical competence is the mastery of second language phonological and lexico grammatical rules and rules of sentence formation; that is, to be able to express and interpret literal meaning of utterances e.g., acquisition of pronunciation, vocabulary, word and sentence meaning, construction of grammatical sentences, correct spelling, etc.. Sociolinguistic competence is the mastery of sociocultural rules of appropriate use of second language; that is, how utterances are produced and understood in different sociolinguistic contexts e.g., understanding of speech act conventions, awareness of norms of stylistic PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 10 appropriateness, the use of a language to signal social relationships, etc.. Discourse competence is the mastery of rules concerning cohesion and coherence of various kinds of discourse in second language e.g., use of appropriate pronouns, synonyms, conjunctions, substitution, repetition, marking of congruity and continuity, topic-comment sequence, etc.. Strategic competence is the mastery of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies in second language used when attempting to compensate for deficiencies in the grammatical and sociolinguistic competence or to enhance the effectiveness of communication e.g., paraphrasing, how to address others when uncertain of their relative social status, slow speech for rhetorical effect, etc. to help the learners to be good at English communication.

b. Microskills of Speaking