mursyidah

TEACHING SPEAKING
USING COOPERATIVE LEARNING MODELS

A. What is Speaking ?
Speaking is “An interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information” (Brown, 1994 : Burns & Joyce, 1997).
Speaking is “The process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non verbal symbols, n a variety of contexts” (Chaney, 1998 : Page 13).

• What Is “Teaching Speaking” ?
Teaching speaking is to learn ESL learners to :
1. Produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns
2. Use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the second language.
3. Select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social setting, audience, situation and subject matter.
4. Organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence.
5. Use language as a means of expressing values and judgments.
6. Use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses, which is called as fluency. (Nunan, (2003).

• How To Teach Speaking
Now many linguistics and ESL teachers agree on that students learns to speak in the second language by “interacting”. Communicative language teaching and collaborative learning serve best for this aim. Communicative language teaching is based on real life situations that require communications. By using this method is ESL classes, students will have the opportunity of communicating with
each other in the target language. In brief ESL teachers should create a classroom environment where students have real life communication, authentic activities, and meaningful tasks that promote oral language. This can occur when students collaborative in groups to achieve a goal or to complete a task.
Speaking is a crucial part of second language learning and teaching. Despite its importance, for many years, teaching speaking has been undervalued and English language teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or communication of dialogues.
Speaking requires that learners not only know how to produce specific points of language such as grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary (linguistic competence), but also that they understand when, why, and in what says to produce language (sociolinguistic competence). Finally, speech has its own skills, structures, and conventions different written language (Burns & Joyce, 1997 : Carter & McCarthy, 1995)
However, in addition to being an important skills, speaking is also e very great challenges for foreign language learners. Students in certain ways must master several difficult macro skills, including the pronunciation or grammar phonemes, the correct placement of stress and intonation, and the appropriate use of formal and informal expressions. To complicate matters, as well as so many obstackes arise, students in an English as a foreign language (EFL) like Indonesian’s students. We have a very limited opportunities to speak English outside of the classroom, the only places we use and practice our target language is in the classrooms. Some experts wonder and poster questions whether teachers, lecturers, and students use the target language in the classroom while teaching.
Besides that, a problem again for students who study English as a foreign language or second language is lack of effective interaction strategies, for example : there are two parts to the speaking component, an individual presentation (Task A) and group discussion (Task B). Task A requires candidates to convey facts, to explain, express preferences and to make decisions. Task B tests the ability of the candidates to interact and take turns to negotiate meaning, to manage discussion and to close discussion, most of learners, throygh observation are able to communicate their ideas and thoughts fairly well in the individual task (Task A). However, they are not able to participate effectively in group discussion or do cooperative learning models (Task B). it is found that the inability to play an effectively in group discussion is due not only to a lack of vocabulary but also lack of effective interaction strategies, in order to play an active role in group discussion or do cooperative learning, students first of all need to know how to interact and this requires interactive strategy learning.