Makalah

The teaching of English to the students has become especially important in recent years. There is no doubt that the role and importance of English has risen in many countries. English is primarily concern with the language are being taught to the students involved  English skills such as listening, speaking, reading, writing, structure etc. Many students face the problems within those skills.

On the other hand, teaching English to young learners is not easy and it faces many problems. The common problems are: students are fear to speak English in the class; the interference between first and second languages; and language that is used in the students’ society. All of them influence the process of teaching English.

Other problem is, considering in Indonesia, where English is as a foreign language not as a second language. English as a foreign language (EFL) refers to the learning of English by students in a country where English is not the native language. It means that English is just one of subjects of study. It is learnt at school but it gets less support from the environments.

Under these circumstances, we need to be careful in using teaching techniques. Many students develop some techniques in order to improve the student’s speaking skill. Those are effectively proved. But we need more techniques that can improve students’ communicative competence, a technique that facilitates the students a situation which can promote the use of English. That will place English as a habit

The writer would like to overcome the problems which often occur on to the students especially in speaking ability. Besides, the writer gives a best technique as a solution of this problem.

        Based on the background, it can be formulated as follows:

        “ How to improve students’ ability in speaking skill?”

        To know how to improve the students’ ability in speaking skill.

1.   Students won't talk or say anything

One way to tackle this problem is to find the root of the problem and start from there. If the problem is cultural, that is in your culture it is unusual for students to talk out loud in class, or if students feel really shy about talking in front of other students then one way to go about breaking this cultural barrier is to create and establish your own classroom culture where speaking out loud in English is the norm. One way to do this is to distinguish your classroom from other classrooms in your school by arranging the classroom desks differently, in groups instead of lines etc. or by decorating the walls in English language and culture posters. From day one teach your students classroom language and keep on teaching it and encourage your students to ask for things and to ask questions in English. Giving positive feedback also helps to encourage and relax shy students to speak more. Another way to get students motivated to speak more is to allocate a percentage of their final grade to speaking skills and let the students know they are being assessed continually on their speaking practice in class throughout the term.

2.      A completely different reason for student silence may simply be that the class activities are boring or are pitched at the wrong level. Very often our interesting communicative speaking activities are not quite as interesting or as communicative as we think they are and all the students are really required to do is answer 'yes' or 'no' which they do quickly and then just sit in silence or worse talking noisily in their L1. So maybe you need to take a closer look at the type of speaking activities you are using and see if they really capture student interest and create a real need for communication.

3.      The students’ motivation is low. It was a great problem faced by the students. Learning English was commonly boring as what they think of. It means they didn’t have any encouragement on themselves. They always left out the class if they didn’t like the subject at all.

4.      Lack of vocabularies. The mastery of English vocabularies was lack or even under average. In case of this problem, they won’t be able to speak in English. The way to speak is as not fluent as we think. They only know “yes” or “no”.

5.      Fear to speak. The students always are fear to speak English fluently in front of the class. It was caused by they frightened to have any mistakes when they speak to.

The communicative approach (CA) was developed by Robert Langs MD, In the early 1970's. It is a new theory or paradigm of emotional life and psychoanalysis that is centered on human adaptations to emotionally-charged events--with full appreciation that such adaptations take place both within awareness (consciously) and outside of awareness (unconsciously). The approach gives full credence to the unconscious side of emotional life and has rendered it highly sensible and incontrovertible by discovering a new, validated, and deeply meaningful way of decoding unconscious messages. This procedure-called trigger decoding--has brought forth new and highly illuminating revisions of our understanding of both emotional life and psychotherapy, and it calls for significant changes in presently accepted psychoanalytic thinking and practice.

The CA has exposed and offered correctives for much of what's wrong with our current picture of the emotional mind and today's psychotherapies-critical errors in thinking and practice that have cause untold suffering throughout the world. In essence, the approach has shown that emotional problems do not arise first and foremost from disturbing inner memories and fantasies or daydreams; nor do they arise primarily from consciously known thoughts and patterns of behavior. Instead, emotional disturbances arise primarily from failed efforts at coping with current emotionally-charged traumas. The present-day focus by mainstream psychoanalysts (MP) on the past and on inner fantasies and memories has been replaced in this CA with a focus on the present, as experienced and reacted to consciously and unconsciously-in brief, the primacy afforded by MP to fantasy and imagination has been replaced by the primacy afforded by the CA to reality, trauma, and perception (especially unconscious perception).

1. Using minimal responses

Language learners who lack confidence in their ability to participate successfully in oral interaction often listen in silence while others do the talking. One way to encourage such learners to begin to participate is to help them build up a stock of minimal responses that they can use in different types of exchanges. Such responses can be especially useful for beginners.

Minimal responses are predictable, often idiomatic phrases that conversation participants use to indicate understanding, agreement, doubt, and other responses to what another speaker is saying. Having a stock of such responses enables a learner to focus on what the other participant is saying, without having to simultaneously plan a response.

Some communication situations are associated with a predictable set of spoken exchanges -- a script. Greetings, apologies, compliments, invitations, and other functions that are influenced by social and cultural norms often follow patterns or scripts. So do the transactional exchanges involved in activities such as obtaining information and making a purchase. In these scripts, the relationship between a speaker's turn and the one that follows it can often be anticipated.

Instructors can help students develop speaking ability by making them aware of the scripts for different situations so that they can predict what they will hear and what they will need to say in response. Through interactive activities, instructors can give students practice in managing and varying the language that different scripts contain.

Language learners are often too embarrassed or shy to say anything when they do not understand another speaker or when they realize that a conversation partner has not understood them. Instructors can help students overcome this reticence by assuring them that misunderstanding and the need for clarification can occur in any type of interaction, whatever the participants' language skill levels. Instructors can also give students strategies and phrases to use for clarification and comprehension check.

By encouraging students to use clarification phrases in class when misunderstanding occurs, and by responding positively when they do, instructors can create an authentic practice environment within the classroom itself. As they develop control of various clarification strategies, students will gain confidence in their ability to manage the various communication situations that they may encounter outside the classroom

1.   There are so many problems that are often faced by the students such as : the students won’t talk or say anything, the class is boring, the students motivation is low, lack of vocabularies, and fear to speak.

2.   Based on the problems, we can overcome the problems by : giving a communicative approach and strategies for developing speaking skill to the students. It can help the students to speak in English fluently.