SPEAKING IN ESP/EAP/ESL CLASSROOM

SPEAKING IN ESP/EAP/ESL CLASSROOM

Most of the language learners will strive for a good and fluence speaking skill after they learn the target language for a certain period. For ESP/EAP/ESL classroom, classroom interaction and presentation in English dominate the learning process thus this explains why the speaking skill is extremely important in language learning classroom. In an interactive classroom, learners need to be able to engage in small talks, group discussions or pair works as speaking skill plays important role in these kinds of interactive activities. However, speaking skill has not been the main focuses in conscious learning as the teachers give all the input to the learners and do not encourage learners to give output as well, especially for conventional teaching and learning approach. In fact, speaking or communication skill has become an essential competence in society. Speaking skill is one of the most challenging skill to develop as it is a productive skill and the learners need to have sufficient input information in order to produce product, which is verbal speech. Thus, development of speaking competence among the learners need to be emphasized by executing effective strategies in developing learners’ confidence and fluency in speaking English. This paper will also discuss about the conflicts and the solution that can be done to solve speaking competence problem.

Speaking skill is not a part of examination but it needs a lot of attention and practice to be well adopted. The main purpose of communication output is to deliver information so, the strategy to deliver accurate information by using the language as the medium is very important. Strategy in speaking skill can be said as an attempt to develop learners’ linguistic and sociolinguistic features in target language (M Lessard, 1997). Anne Burns (2012) presented an effective speaking strategy can refer to Teaching-Speaking Cycle that emphasized on few key concepts that the teachers can use to facilitate their students. The Teaching-Speaking Cycle has seven stages in total to focus on learners’ speaking skill in target language. In this cycle, teachers need to attract the learners to let them focus on speaking and provide input element. For the third stage, teachers can start to conduct the speaking task either by dividing them to groups or pairs. Next, teachers need to focus on language skills or strategies that they can use. For the example, if the teachers want to focus on develop learners’ speaking skill, they can conduct a task-based communicative approach classroom, whereby the learners need to solve the problem by interacting in target language in the classroom. For the fifth stage, teachers need repeat the speaking task but the teachers may change the questions, as long as the speaking practice is being carried out. For the last two stages, it is more to learners’ responsible whereby they need to reflect on their learning and let the teachers give feedback on their learning. This cycle is a very good classroom strategy to promote speaking skill in target language and to increase the applicability of speaking skill in the classroom.

In promoting speaking skill, there are three roles that need to be focused on. Speaking can be applied as interaction, transaction and performance (Jack and Richard, 2008). The learners are familiar with the applicability of speaking as a part of interaction. Speaking serves for interaction purpose when oral speech has become a natural phenomenon for small talk or formal meeting, recount experiences and express feeling as well as give feedback to others verbally. In a language classroom, speaking is not only for interaction purpose but also for transaction purpose. Transaction talk is more to student-centered interaction whereby the learners need to work in groups and exchange information among themselves. The activities that can be done in the classroom for transaction talk included brainstorming and stimulation activities, role plays and impromptu conversation. Lastly, speaking also serve for performance talk. Strategy for teaching performance talk is quite different as it need to prepare a written text first then the understanding of the text need to be discover before applying the text to spoken language (Jones, 1996). The learners involved in the process of text construction and analysis on how the texts work in the form of linguistic features before converting the texts to spoken language. 

In addition, the theory behind the speaking skill is an important dimension to be considered. Different styles of speaking reflected by the characteristic of age, gender, level of education and social status. Every group may have the different choice of word or different pronunciation and this produce variety ways of speaking. In common sense, people will switch between formal or casual speech styles depend on the formality of the event. According to Brown and Yule (1983), they summarized speaking as interaction that has social function, reflects speaker’s identity and status, can be formal or casual, has degree of politeness and reflect on relationships between the audience. In the other words, effective talk depends on where we are, who we are dealing with and what is the purpose of the talk.

Some research has been carried out by socialists about the investigation of the relationship between language and social. Krashen’s idea on input hypothesis explained how the learners acquire second or foreign language. Krashen gave idea to design the speaking lesson based on natural communicative input so that learners who have the different linguistic proficiency level can acquire comprehensible input (Ricarda Schiitz, 2007). After having a systematic speaking lesson plan, teachers need to develop learners’ competence in target language. Hymes (1972) sees the necessity in implement two kinds of competence which are linguistic competence, produce and understand grammatically correct sentences, and communicative competence, produce and understand appropriate and acceptable sentences. Thus, various of key concepts and strategies need to be taken into account in creating an effective speaking environment that can be meaningful to the learners.

Indeed, English speaking skill is very important in ESP/ EAP/ ESL classroom. Based on Richard Schiitz’s reflection on Krashen’s hypotheses, he claimed that the learners can acquire their second language just like how they acquired their mother tongue. At first, the learners undergo a silent period where they just observe how the other speakers use the language. In this process, they may receive some knowledge about vocabularies and sentence structure of target language. After that, through observation about surrounding conversation and comprehension activities, learners can internalize more vocabulary and grammatical structures and know how to communicate in a simple way as they acquired enough basic blocks of language to communicate (Marriam B, Muhammad Azeem and Dr. Ashiq Hussain D., 2011). Thus, because of the complex features of spoken discourse, they are many conflicts that the teachers and the students need to face in order to make sure speaking learning classroom can achieve its learning objectives. However, various of solution to the problems can be done to overcome the challenges and encourage the students to love English learning and develop their oral skill. 

There are some psychological factors such as anxiety, lack of confidence and afraid of making mistakes have become learners’ obstacles in practicing their speaking skill. Anxiety and afraid of making mistakes are the main factors of learners’ reluctant in speaking English in the classroom. Their anxiety may come from negative evaluation or negative feedback they received from previous mistakes. Thus, they become afraid to make any mistake when they are participating in classroom speaking activities. They also afraid that their friends will laugh at their ideas or criticize them. Thus, they will choose to be silent member in the class. Silence in speaking class totally is a worst idea so in terms of suggestion to the possible solution for this problem, the teachers need to encourage the learners to speak more and convince them that making mistakes is one of the learning process and they should learn from it not avoid it. Next, the relationship between the teacher and the students must be in comfortable zone so that the students can talk comfortably with the teacher and believe the teacher will correct them, not criticize them. Teacher needs to play important room in creating harmonious learning environment so it will reduce students’ anxiousness. 

Next, English speaking activities in English classroom is not highly executed because of the use of mother tongue language. If most of the learners share the same mother tongue, they tend to communicate in their native language as they feel more easier and friendly. By using their mother tongue, they also feel that they can express themselves more confidence as they grow up all along by living in that language environment. That is the common problem that can be observed in the classroom even for university learners. However, in order to develop their speaking skill in foreign or second language, learners need to have motivation to speak in target language even though their audience share the same mother tongue with the speaker. In order to prevent the learners speak in their mother tongue when they are delivering messages, teachers need to keep reminding their learners to speak in target language. Teachers also can make language rules in the classroom. For the example, if a learner speaks in other language, not the target language, English, he /she needs to construct three sentences by using new vocabularies from teacher and paste it on the notice board. This approach will help the learners to learn English in speaking and writing skill conscious and unconsciously.

 Furthermore, inadequate frequency of speaking opportunities in the classroom also become the issue when it comes to language learning classroom. According to Jack and Richard (2008), oral skills have been neglected in EFL/ESL classroom. In a usual classroom, teacher often teach by using conventional method, which is teaching how to speak but do not give much opportunities to the learners to do the speaking. Syllabus provided in school is too packed so the teacher pays more attention to writing, reading and listening skills rather than speaking skill. However, to make sure learners get enough input in language class, their best practice is through oral skill. Teachers need to know if their learners are able to apply their knowledge and deliver the knowledge verbally in public, their knowledge in that language is developed. So, the teachers need to have systematic and creative plan to teach speaking.  Teaching speaking is not an easy task as the teachers need to estimate time for every learner to talk and give feedback or evaluation. With speaking practice in the classroom, second language acquirement among learners in ESP/EAP/ESL classroom can be developed in general.

For speaking practices in ESP/EAP/ESL classroom, teachers also face problem in choosing the appropriate types of communicative tasks. Because of a big number of learners and limited lesson time, teachers need to use target language to plan an organized content and the structure of the lesson. Teachers often have this conflict so at the end, they choose to teach based on the text provided in the textbook. Thus, to have a systematic speaking classroom, teachers can plan the lesson based on two basic types of interactions which is teacher-student interaction and student-student interaction. For speaking class, executing pair work or group interacting is not a doubt. If the teachers are planning to have a speaking class and focus on student-centered learning, teachers can conduct speaking class with student-student interaction by dividing the students into groups and distribute speaking tasks. However, teachers need to monitor the whole learning process and make sure the learners generate their ideas in target language. Teacher-student interaction also can promote speaking classroom but the teachers need to be the anchor to attract all the learners to participate in the classroom speaking activities. Teachers also need to be wise in choosing meaningful learning materials for the learners so that learners can feel the relatedness of the lesson. 

In conclusion, learners have to be given more time in conducting speaking activities as practice makes perfect. Oral lesson may be hard to conduct but it has to be carried out in English classroom. Even though some learners may have difficulties in participating speaking activities due to some reasons, but as they get more familiar with ho the lesson is conducted, they will be more active in producing or sharing their ideas verbally. Last but not least, Stern (1981) emphasized on the importance of teacher coping techniques when the learners find themselves alone in the new language environment. Thus, teachers need to guide and facilitate learners in their way of speaking in target language and correct them in the most proper way. 

References:

Bashir, M., Azeem, M., & Dogar, A. H. (2011). Factor affecting students’ English speaking skills. British journal of arts and social sciences, 2(1), 34-50.

Burns, A. (2012). A Holistic Approach to Teaching Speaking in the language classroom. In Symposium (pp. 165-178).

Brown, Gilian and George Yule (1983). Teaching the Spoken Language. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence. sociolinguistics, 269293, 269-293.

Jack, R., & Richards, M. (2008). Teaching listening and speaking from theory to practice. Cambridge University. Printed in The United States of America.

Lessard-Clouston, M. (1997). Language learning strategies: An overview for L2 teachers. The internet TESL journal, 3(12), 69-80.

Schütz, R. (2007). Stephen Krashen's theory of second language acquisition. English made in Brazil.

Stern, H. H. (1981). Communicative language teaching and learning: Toward a synthesis. JE Alatis, HB.