a No speaking task is capable of isolating the single skill of oral production.
b Eliciting can be tricky because beyond the word level, spoken language offers a
number of productive options to test takers. c
It is important to carefully specify scoring procedures. According to these issues, teachers should be careful in designing speaking
tasks. Speaking tasks cannot be isolated from listening activities as the input.
e. Components Underlying Speaking Effectiveness
According to Canale and Swain in Richards Renandya 2002: 206, there are four abilities underlying speaking effectiveness.
1 Grammatical competence
In order to convey meaning, a speaker must have the knowledge of words and sentences. Heshe must understand how words are segmented into various
sounds, and how sentences are stressed in particular ways. Thus, grammatical competence enables speaker to use and understand English language structure
accurately and unhesitatingly, which contributes to their fluency. 2
Discourse competence In addition to grammar competence, a speaker must also develop hisher
discourse competence. Heshe must concern with the discourse relationships such as formal or informal utterance and the rules of cohesion and coherence in
sentences. This relationships help to communicate in a meaningful way. Heshe must also concern with the relationships of time, indicator, contrast, and emphasis.
This relationships help to manage the turn taking in conversation. 3
Sociolinguistic competence A speaker must also have Sociolinguistic competence, which involves
knowing what users of the target language expect socially and culturally. The
speaker must acquire the rules and norms for effective and appropriate use of the target language.
4 Strategic competence
A speaker must have perhaps the most important of all communicative competences, Strategic competence. With reference to speaking, Strategic
competence refers to the ability to know: how and when to take a floor, how to keep a conversation going, how to terminate the conversation and how to clear up
communication.
f. Difficulties of Speaking
Many people regard that speaking skill is difficult. The following eight characteristics of spoken language are proposed by Brown 2001: 270-271 which
can make oral performance easy as well as, in some cases, difficult. 1
Clustering. Fluent speech is phrasal not word by word. Learners can organize their output both cognitively and physically through clustering.
2 Redundancy. The speaker has an opportunity to make meaning clearer through
the redundancy of language. 3
Reduced forms. Contractions, elisions, reduced vowels etc. are special problems in teaching spoken English. Learners who never learn colloquial contractions
sometimes speak too formal in casual context. They become bookish and stilted. 4
Performance variables. In spoken language there is a process called thinking time. During this thinking time, learners can employ certain number of
performance hesitations, pauses, backtracking, and correction. Some examples of thinking time in English such as inserting fillers like uh, um, well, you know,
I mean, etc. hesitation phenomena are the most salient difference between native and non-native speakers of language.
5 Colloquial language. Students should be familiar with words, idioms, and
phrases and they practice to produce these forms. 6
Rate of delivery. It is one of the characteristics of fluency. Teachers should help learners achieve an acceptable speed along with other attributes of fluency.
7 Stress, rhythm, and intonation. The stress-timed rhythm of spoken language and
its intonation patterns convey important message in any communication forms. 8
Interaction. Having no interlocutor can rob the speaking skill components. One of them is the creativity of conversational negotiation.
2. Teaching Speaking
Speaking should be taught and then be practiced in the language classroom, because the language course truly requires the students to communicate in English.
Teaching speaking needs a special treatment. In reality, people speak more than they write. However, many English teachers still spend the majority of class time
on reading and writing practice and almost ignore speaking and listening skills. Based on the statement above, there should be a good balance to practice in the
classroom. Nunan 2003: 48 has clarified it. He suggests English learners: a
to produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns; b
to use words and sentence stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the second language;
c to select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social settings
situation and subject matter; d
to organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence; e
to use language as a means of expressing values and judgments, and f
to use the language quickly and confidently.
a. Principles of Teaching Speaking
The following are some principles for designing teaching speaking proposed
by Brown 2001.
1 Teacher needs to use technique that covers the spectrum of learner needs. From
language-based focus on accuracy to message-based focus on interaction, meaning and fluency
2 Teacher should provide intrinsically technique which motivates students. The
students should realize that the activity would benefit them. 3
Teacher should encourage the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts. It is important to consider that learning context must be meaningful towards the
students. 4
Teacher needs to provide appropriate feedback and correction, given in appropriate way.
5 The learning should be capitalized on the natural link between speaking and
listening, because many interactive techniques that involve speaking will also of course include listening.
6 The students should be given opportunities to initiate oral communication such
as by asking questions and providing information.
7 The development of speaking strategies should be encouraged such as how to
ask clarification What? or how to ask someone to repeat something Excuse me.
b. The Teacher’s Roles
