of business”.
3
Speaking indicates that as one of the language skills, it should get attention from teachers and learners because it plays the important role in our
society. Meanwhile, according to
Donough and Shaw state, “There are some reasons for speaking involved expressing ideas and opinions: expressing a wish or a desire
to do something; negotiating or solving particular problem; or establishing and maintaining social relationships and friendships. Besides, fluency, accuracy, and
confidence are important goal in speak ing”.
4
Therefore, as a language skill, speaking becomes an important component to be mastered by the students as the
main tool of verbal communication because it is a way to express ideas and opinion directly what we have in our minds.
Based on the previous definitions above, it can be concluded that speaking is the process of using the desire of speech to pronounce vocal symbols in order to
share the information, knowledge, idea, and opinion to the other person. Moreover, speaking cannot be dissociated from listening aspect, because speaking
involves speaker and listener.
2. Types of Speaking
Spoken communications are essentially „transactional or „interactional’.
Transactional language is said to be that which contains factual or propositional information. Jerry G. Gebhard states the focus is primarily on the meaning of the
message when speaking and when the purpose is transactional. For example, imagine explaining how to find your home to a new friend or describing your
aches and pains to a doctor.
5
Interactional is also used to establish and maintain social roles.
3
Martyn Bygate, Language Teaching: A Scheme for Teacher Education: Speaking, Oxford: Oxford University Press,1997, P.8
4
JO Mc Donough and Christopher Shaw, Op.Cit.,p.134
5
Jerry G. Gebhard, Teaching English as A Foreign or Second Language Second Edition, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2009, p. 170.
According to Penny Ur, the main types of interaction are: a. Interactional talk
This is to some extent a matter of learning conventional formulae of courtesy: how to greet, take leave, start and conversations, apologize,
thank and so on.
b. Long turns The ability to speak at length is one which adult, more advanced or
academic students will perhaps need and therefore needs cultivating; for other types of classes it perhaps less important.
c. Varied situations, feelings, relationships It is certainly arguable that learners will need function in a wide variety
of such contexts, and it makes sense to give them opportunities to try using the target language in simulations of at least a selection of them.
6
More detail about the type of speaking, Brown and Yule also stated in Jo McDonough and Christopher Shawn’s book examine the various forms and
language which are most frequently used by speakers of language. These are: a. Incomplete sentences.
b. Very little subordination subordinate clauses, etc. c. Very few passives.
d. Not many explicit logical connectors moreover, however.
e. Topic comment structure as in „the sun – oh look it’s going down’. The syntax of the written language would probably have a subject-verb-
predicate structure.
f. Replacingrefining expressions e.g. „this fellowthis chap she was supposed to meet’.
g. Frequent reference to things outside the „text’, such as the weather for example. This kind of referencing is called
„exophoric’. h. The use generalized vocabulary thing, nice stuff, place, a lot of.
i. Repetition of the same syntactic form. j. The use of pauses and „fillers’ „erm’, „well’, „uhuh’, „if you see what I
mean’, and so on.
7
3. The Elements of Speaking
Speaking is a complex skill requiring the simultaneous use of a number of different abilities, which often develop at the different rates. Either four or five
components are generally recognized in analyzing the speech processes are
6
Penny Ur, A Course in Language Teaching, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 129.
7
Jo McDonough and Christopher Shawn, Op.Cit, P. 155-156.
pronunciation, grammar, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary
8
. Those components are:
a. Pronunciation
Pronunciation Including the segmental features: vowels and consonants and the stress and intonation patterns. As stated by
harmer, if students want to be able to speak fluently in English, they need to be able pronounce phonemes correctly, use appropriate stress
and intonation patterns and speak in connected speech.
9
The speaker must be able to articulate the words, and create the physical sounds
that carry meaning. At the level of word pronunciation, second language learners regularly have problems distinguishing between
sounds in the new language that do not exist in languages they already know.
b. Grammar
It is obvious that in order be able to speak foreign language, it is necessary to know a certain amount of grammar because grammar is a
system of language to make new sentences.
10
Therefore, grammar is very important in speaking because if the speaker does not master
grammar structure, he cannot speak English well. c.
Vocabulary Vocabulary is a basic element in language. Vocabulary is single
word, set phrases, variable phrases, phrasal verbs and idioms.
11
It is clear that limited vocabulary mastery makes conversation virtually
impossible.
8
H. Douglas Brown, Language Assesment Principles and Classroom Practices, New York: Longman,p.157
9
Jeremy Harmer, The practice of English Language Teaching: Fourth edition, Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2007, p.21
10
Ibid.
11
Jeremy Harmer, Op.Cit.p.23
