1. 1 The Definition of Speaking

patterns of stress and the intonation which are quite different with the students’ first language. Learning pronunciation probably will be a very hard activity for the students especially when they learn English pronunciation. It happens because the English spelling system often fails to represent the sounds of English in direct manner. It means that often the sounds that we hear and the letters that we see on a page are quite different. However, with more practice especially in the classroom, it is hoped that the students will get used to hear the native sound like. Grammar is one of the elements which is quite important to learn. Grammar is a study of rules to combine the words into sentences. Although some people think that grammar is not quite important to learn for speaking ability, it gives a lot of differences when we speak in grammatically correct or not. A student who learns English at school definitely will have more knowledge about grammar than a person who learns English autodidactic maybe from the movies, books, or songs. Even though it does not guarantee that the student who learns English at school will be more fluent in speaking English than a person who learns English autodidactic. However, a person who speaks English in grammatically correct definitely shows more knowledge in English rather than those who do not. Vocabulary is the basic knowledge that the students have to master before they can develop their speaking skill. Vocabulary is a thing that we need to create the utterances and it is usually ruled by certain pattern to make the words are meaningful easy to understand. Since vocabulary is really important to learn, then there will be no development in speaking skill if the students do not improve their vocabulary. Vocabulary has a strong connection with speaking skill in which the more the students know about the words then the more they can improve their speaking skill. Improving vocabulary in thousand ways, will give a lot of benefits to the students. Fluency is considered very important in speaking skill because whenever the students want to learn a new language, what they seek in the end of the course is the fluency of the language. Even when a person is looking for a job which involve the mastering of certain language, what the company needs is the people who can speak the language fluently. Burns and Goh 2012 state that fluency is speech where the message is communicated or delivered coherently with only few pauses and little hesitations. Therefore, the listeners will get the idea easily without causing any difficulties or confusion while they are grasping the speake r’s words. Fluency is more focus on meaning. A student who can deliver his idea smoothly without thinking too much, without giving many pauses on his words by using mmm, errr, or aaa, may consider fluent in English. The speed of the speech can also be a measure whether a student is fluent in English or not. Comprehension is certainly being the most important element of speaking skill. Comprehension is the power of the mind to grasp something. This is the reason why comprehension is considered very important because the conversation between two or some people will never be happened when there is no understanding between them. Understanding in here means that those people who are talking to each other, understand what each other say or mean. In that way, those people can ask and give some answers which is connected to the questions. When a student has a lack of comprehension in understanding the other speaker’s say, then the miscommunication will likely be happened.

2. 1. 3 Teaching Speaking

The main purpose of learning English as a foreign language is to master the language and to be able to apply it in the real world. However, this idea has been so long gone in the ideal world of grammar, structure, reading, and writing. Especially, when the students meet the final test in the end of the semester, the test that they have to go through is reading and writing. As a result, many English teachers at school give more focus on the learning of grammar and reading rather than give more focus on students’ speaking and listening ability. Another result is the students are created to be the passive ones rather than the active ones. This condition can be seen from the eighth grade students of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika Junior High School. If they have learnt English for one year in the previous level, seventh grade, then why they cannot even speak the simplest words of English such as introduction? Giving more focus on grammar and reading are not the wrong things to do. However, as a teacher, we need to teach the English skills in balance, means how much you teach written skill in the classroom will be as much as you teach oral skills to the students. One point that the teacher must remember, when the students graduate from the school and start to face the real world by looking for some jobs to survive their futures and lives, the person who can speak English fluently will have more chance to survive especially in the 21st of century when the government has opened the free trade with many countries. Many foreign investors will come to Indonesia and how can we work together with them if we cannot even understand their language? The poor assumption of teaching English in Indonesia is that many teachers think that their students will not understand the words that they are spoken if they PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI