16
students that making errors is normal in lea rning. This way will raise students’
confidence to try to speak English. The second solution is for the students themselves. They can have an English
conversation club that consists of their own classmates. They can share and talk about anything in English during that time. They can learn together and correct each other
without feeling embarrassed. English will become students’ routine by doing that activity Hetrakul, 1995.
7. Teaching Speaking
Rivers 1968 states that teaching speaking skill is more demanding on the teacher rather than teaching other language skills. A teacher needs to give many
opportunities for students to practice their speaking skill. When a teacher provides more complicated matter of foreign speech to be answered, the student
s’ speaking ability will be more developed too. Some people feel afraid or nervous to speak in
front of many people or large group, for example, in front of a class. Davies 2002 states some strategies for teaching speaking. First, teacher can create relaxed
atmosphere in the class, so the students will not be frightened to speak in front of the class. At the beginning, by doing speaking activities as many as possible in pairs or in
groups, it can build up the students’ confidence before speaking in front of the whole class. Second, teacher can speak in natural pronunciation and add some pronunciation
work into the lesson. Third, teacher can guide the students to combine listening and speaking in natural interaction.
17
According to Tarigan 1990, p.13, there are three major stages when teachers are teaching speaking. Those are introducing new language, practice and
communicative activities. When introducing new language, the teacher should find out genres or texts, which are meaningful. In this stage, teachers can ask students to
pronounce unfamiliar words, find out the meaning of expressions used in the text. Other techniques used for teaching speaking are information gap by using pictures,
using photographs, using songs, using mysterious things, educational drama which covers miming, role play, the empty chair, and simulation.
There is a previous study related to this research. The study is about problem faced by Thai students in speaking English. Khamkhien 2010 states that English
performance of Thai students in teaching and learning speaking is very limited because of some reasons, namely:
First, for Thai students, English speaking or oral communication in English is deemed to be difficult since English is not their native language. second, most
of Thai learners need their English to sound as native-like as possible which is a prestige norm of spoken English even though English is widely used in
region of South East Asia, creating a great diversity of English e.g., Malaysian English, Singaporean English, etc. this scenario seems to limit their choice of
their exposure to English. Next, since English in Thailand is a foreign language, the exposure of English to authentic language input of learners of
English in Thailand is limited. Lastly, another dimension which should be taken into account lies into English pronunciation of Thai teachers of English.
These serious problems are exclusively important, leading to a large volume of studies focusing on speaking ability of Thai learners.
Another problem is that the method used by English teacher in Thailand is teacher-centered which is signed by translating, copying from the book, and teaching
