Microskills and Macroskills of Speaking

speaking, someone has to know what to speak and understand the ideas of what he she is talking about. Harmer 2003: 87 states that through speaking, the students will understand ideas, opinions and information from other people. Moreover, Brown and Yule 1983 in Richard, 2008 made a useful distinction between the interactional functions of speaking, in which it serves to establish and maintain social relations, and the transactional functions, which focus on the exchange of information. Richards 2008: 21 says, “In workshops with teachers and in designing my own materials, I use an expanded three- part version of Brown and Yule’s framework after Jones, 1996, and Burns, 1998: talks as interaction; talk as transaction; talk as performance. Each of these speech activities is quite distinct in term of function and requires different teaching approac hes.” 1 Talk as interaction Talk as interaction refers to what we normally mean by “conversation” and describes interaction that serves a primarily social function. When people meet, they exchange greetings, engage in small talk, recount recent experiences, and so, on because they wish to be friendly and to establish a comfortable zone of interaction with others. The focus is more on the speakers and how they wish to present themselves to each other than on the message. 2 Talk as transaction Talk as transaction refers to situations where the focus is on what is said or done. The message and making oneself understood clearly and accurately is the central focus, rather than participants and how they interact socially with each other. Burns 1998 distinguishes between two different types of talk as transaction. The first type involves situations where the focus is on giving and receiving information and where the participants focus primarily on what is said or achieved. The second type is transactions that focus on obtaining goods or services, such as checking into hotel or ordering food in a restaurant. 3 Talk as performance The third type of talk that can usefully be distinguished has been called talk as performance. This refers to public talk, that is, talk that transmits information before an audience, such as classroom presentations, public announcements, and speeches. The focuses are on both message and audience. Speaking has its functions which cover talk as interaction, transaction and performance which have been mentioned above. The functions of speaking show that speaking is not only about producing the language, but it also functions for some different purposes in daily communication.

3. Teaching Speaking

After talking about the definition, micro and macro skills, and functions of speaking, this thesis will discuss about teaching speaking which includes principles in teaching second language, principles of designing speaking techniques, problems in speaking, types of classroom speaking performance, types of classroom speaking performance, and the importance of teaching speaking. Teaching speaking to ESL learners is to: 1 Produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns. 2 Use word and sentences stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the second language. 3 Select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social setting, audience, situation and subject matter. 4 Organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence. 5 Use language as a means of expressing values and judgments. 6 Use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses, which are called as fluency. Nunan, 2003

a. Teaching Teens

The “terrible teens” are an age of transition, confusion, self-consciousness, growing, and changing bodies and minds. Teens are in between childhood and adulthood, and therefore a very special set of considerations applies to teaching them. Perhaps because of the enigma of teaching teenagers, little is specifically said in the language-teaching field about teaching at this level. Nevertheless, some thoughts are worth verbalizing, even if in the form of simple reminders. 1 Intellectual capacity adds abstract operational thought around the age of twelve. Therefore, some sophisticated intellectual processing is increasingly possible.