Reasons of Teaching Speaking Classroom Speaking Activities

3. Reasons of Teaching Speaking

Teaching speaking seems so difficult and challenging for English teacher, many activities are implemented in order to increase student ability in spoken English language. The question now is, why does English teacher has to teach speaking in the classroom? For this question, actually there are some reasons, they are; firstly, speaking activities provide rehearsal opportunity – chance to practice real life speaking in the safety of classroom. 13 Furthermore, getting students to have a free discussion gives them a chance to rehearse having discussion outside the classroom. As the result, students will feel as if talk in a real situation. Secondly, speaking activities provide feedback for both teacher and learner. It is known that giving feedback to students not only motivates them to do their best in their classroom and to help the teacher to know how well the students get the lesson , but also to know the students’ problem during the learning process. Thirdly, speaking activities help students to activate the various language elements they have learned and stored up to their brain. The more students practice the target language, the autonomous learner they will be. As the result, students will be able to speak without very much thought. Finally, the use of good activities is intrinsically enjoyable that it will stimulate students to do the task in the classroom.

4. Classroom Speaking Activities

For many years English teachers have been faced toward crucial problem that their students cannot speak English in the classroom. Several endeavors are accomplished by the teachers in order to encourage students to perform their English. Commonly English teachers utilize traditional techniques in teaching English, such as drilling in which the teacher reads a dialogue, and then students altogether repeat after the teacher. By using drilling students are supposed to speak English well by memorizing the given sentences. It may work for some students, but for the others it may be unsuitable. Therefore, it is necessary to make 13 Jeremy Harmer, How to teach English, Harlow: Pearson education limited, 2007, p. 123 students understand that provokes students to use the target language as in real communication. The aim of teaching English at present is to develop students’ ability to communicate freely and spontaneously in English. It means, when students speak, they do not have to think what they wish to say, because are spontaneously understand the use of words and expressions. While, the listener will automatically catch what the speaker is saying. Moreover, communication will not be achieved, unless both speaker and listener have similar senses and understanding of what they are talking about. Here is the process of encoding and decoding for communication. Figure 2.2 Communication process 14 To have such purposes mentioned above, communication activities such as games may become a good solution to help students achieving the target language. The utilization of the games may be proper to engage students to be active in teaching and learning process. Here are activities suggested by Doff: a. Guessing Games in which involves; i. Guess the picture: here teacher has a set of flashcard with simple pictures. The teacher chooses one card, but does not show to the class, students’ role is guessing it is in the picture by asking questions. ii. Guess the sentence: it similar with the guess the picture game, something that differs in is the material or the resource if the first game utilizes pictures, in this game teacher uses sentences. iii. Mime: in this game, teacher calls a student to come forward and secretly the teacher gives her a sentence written on pieces of paper 14 http:www.aber.ac.ukediaDocumentstranshtml which describe a simple activity. The students then mime the activity and the other try to guess the situation mimed. 15 b. Information-gap: an activity in which students have different information. They have to ask questions to each other for the information to obtain their partners information by using the target language fully. c. Information personal exchanging: this activity refers to real communication in which students talk to their friends and ask about the other personalities such as their friends identity, their daily activities; for instance, what time do you usually wake up in the morning?, how do you go to school? 16 , and etc. Those are speaking activities proposed by Doff. From those activities mentioned above, the writer infers that games are effective to be used in teaching English to provoke students to be more communicative people.

B. Communication Games Activitiy