The Nature of Speaking

3. The Nature of Speaking

a. The Definition of Speaking Speaking is “the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts.” Chaney and Burke: 1998: 113. While another expert, Huebner 1998: 53 says that “Language is essentially speech, and speech is basically communication by sounds”. And according to him, speaking is a skill used by someone in daily life communication whether at school or outside. The skill is acquired by much repetition; it primarily a neuromuscular and not an intellectual process. It consists of competence in sending and receiving messages. From the above definition, it can be inferred that speaking is expressing ideas, opinions, or feelings to others by using words or sounds of articulation in order to inform, to persuade, and to entertain that can be learnt by using some teaching-learning methodologies. b. Micro Skills of Speaking Talking about components in speaking, Brown 2001: 271-272 proposes a list of micro skills for oral communication which focus on both the form of language and the function of language. They are mentioned as follows: a. Produce chunks of language of different lengths. b. Orally produce differences among the English phonemes and allophonic variants. c. Produce English stress patterns, words in stressed and unstressed positions, rhythmic structure, and intonational contours. d. Produce reduced forms of words and phrases. e. Use an adequate number of lexical units words in order to accomplish pragmatic purposes. f. Produce fluent speech at different rates of delivery. g. Monitor your own oral production and use various strategic devices-pauses, fillers, self-corrections, backtracking-to enhance the clarity of the message. h. Use grammatical word phrases nouns, verbs, etc., systems e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization, word order, patterns, rules, and elliptical forms. i. Produce speech in natural constituents-in appropriate phrases, pause groups, breath groups, and sentences. j. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms. k. Use cohesive devices in spoken discourse. l. Accomplish appropriately communicative functions according to situations, participants, and goals. m. Use appropriate registers, implicature, pragmatic conventions, and other sociolinguistic features in face-to-face conversations. n. Convey links and connections between events and communicate such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification. o. Use facial features, kinesics, body language, and other nonverbal cues along with verbal language to convey meanings. p. Develop and use a battery of speaking strategies, such as emphasizing key words, rephrasing, providing a context for interpreting the meaning of words, appealing for help, and accurately assessing how well your interlocutor is understanding you. c. What makes speaking difficult? Brown 2001:270-271 claims eight elements that make speaking difficult such as: a. Clustering b. Redundancy c. Reduced forms d. Performances variables e. Colloquial language f. Rate of delivery g. Stress, rhythm, and intonation, and h. Interaction Moreover Rivers 1981: 187 adds, such features as pitch, intonation, stress and duration, assimilation, juncture, elisions, liaisons at word boundaries, and expensive features like tone of voice and gesture’ are often all but ignored. Those features are constrains dealing with the language. However, teachers may find more problems in teaching speaking which are related to the technical problems. They are mentioned as follows: • Students’ motivation, • Students’ reluctance to involve themselves, • Grouping the students, • Teaching media, • Classroom management, • Assessment techniques, etc.

4. Teaching Speaking