ENHANCING SPEAKING SKILLS OF ENGLISH
DEPARTEMENT STUDENTS THROUGH THE USE OF
FULL ENGLISH IN THE CLASSROOM
1
Luthfiyah Anggraeni Devika , 2Zahra Fitriana Qolby
1
luthfiyahanggraenidevika@gmail.com,
2
zahrafitria329@gmail.com
1,2English
Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and
Education, University, Magelang City, Indonesia
Abstract
Speaking is one of the skills that have to be mastered by
students in learning English. Moreover, students of English
education need the ability to speak. Speaking is an essential
tool for communicating. In the classroom, enhancing the
speaking English abilities of students has always been a
concern. Because the ability to speak English for students as
prospective teachers are essential or essential. It is vital to
communicate and prepare to become a teacher who is required
to use English well and fluently. Thus, this study aims to
determine how English's full use during class can improve
students' speaking ability. The method used in this study is a
qualitative research method supported by distributing
questionnaires specifically for English language education
students at Tidar University. Researchers took a sample of 52
respondents. The results obtained in this study found that
69,2% of 52 respondents stated that the use of full English in
the classroom effectively improved the speaking ability of
English education students.
Keywords: Learning L2, Speaking skill, Communication.
Abstrak
Berbicara merupakan salah satu keterampilan yang harus
dikuasai oleh siswa dalam belajar bahasa Inggris. Apalagi siswa
pendidikan bahasa Inggris membutuhkan kemampuan
berbicara. Berbicara adalah alat penting untuk berkomunikasi.
Di kelas, meningkatkan kemampuan berbicara bahasa Inggris
siswa selalu menjadi perhatian. Karena kemampuan berbahasa
Inggris bagi siswa sebagai calon guru merupakan hal yang
esensial atau esensial. Sangat penting untuk berkomunikasi dan
mempersiapkan diri menjadi seorang guru yang dituntut untuk
menggunakan bahasa Inggris dengan baik dan lancar. Oleh
karena itu, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui
bagaimana penggunaan penuh bahasa Inggris selama kelas
dapat meningkatkan kemampuan berbicara siswa. Metode yang
digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode penelitian
kualitatif didukung dengan penyebaran kuesioner khusus
untuk mahasiswa pendidikan bahasa Inggris di Universitas
Tidar. Peneliti mengambil sampel sebanyak 60 responden.
Hasil yang diperoleh dalam penelitian ini menemukan bahwa
89% dari 60 responden menyatakan bahwa penggunaan bahasa
Inggris penuh di dalam kelas efektif meningkatkan kemampuan
berbicara siswa pendidikan bahasa Inggris.
Kata Kunci: Pembelajaran L2, Keterampilan Berbicara,
Komunikasi.
INTRODUCTION
In learning English, the key to all four language skills, speaking, is
deemed the most important in learning a second or foreign language. As stated
by Harmer (2005:123), speaking activities provide rehearsal opportunities – a
chance to practice real-life speaking in the safety of the classroom; Speaking
tasks in which students try to use any or all of the language they know
feedback for both teacher and students. So everyone can see how well they are
doing: both how successful they are. And also what language problems they are
experiencing; The more students have opportunities to activate the various
elements of the language they have stored in their brains, the more automatic
their use of these elements becomes. As a result, students gradually become
autonomous language users. This means that they will be able to use words
and phrases fluently without very much conscious thought. Speaking is "the
process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-
verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts" (Chaney, 1998). Speaking is a vital
aspect of second-language education it's an art of communications and skills
that must be mastered in learning a foreign language. Good speaking skills are
the act of generating words that listeners can understand. The ability to speak
is considered chiefly a key determiner of L2 learners' success in L2 learning
(Yuliati, 2010). Having well able to convey thoughts and feelings through oral
language will provide the learner sample benefits, now and in the future.
The second language can be mastered after the first language after the
mother tongue. The second language itself will be used predominantly to
support the knowledge and survive in the environment with the selected
foreign language. The second language applied in most countries is English
because it is considered an international language. With the recognition of
English as a global language, inevitably to survive more generally, English is
designated as a second language to aim that speakers and listeners have
different mother tongues. Can know and understand each other's words.
Acquisition of a second language can be obtained from non-formal education,
such as application in the family when there is a mixture of cultures of
different languages, acquired independently because of the environment he is
in, or primarily obtained from formal education similar to school. At school,
various materials relating to the second language are taught, which begins from
the lowest stage taught by teachers and other educators.
As a teacher, it is a duty and even an obligation to ensure that students
are capable of and mastering a foreign language as a second language. These
students are ready to use the foreign language outside the classroom in real life
so that the foreign language they learn is not only a learning requirement. The
development of students' abilities also needs to be considered. This
development can be carried out gradually, starting from the classroom
environment where they are learning then progressing to a broader stage
periodically. This environment with the full use of English as a foreign
language can quickly affect their learning development. They inevitably will
have more initiative to learn the language to survive in class well and have the
confidence to use English predominantly in learning. This will indirectly
continue to become a habit that will positively impact using English as a daily
language in the classroom.
Despite its importance, over the years, teaching speaking has been
underestimated. English teachers are more dominant in speaking in their
mother tongue and teaching speaking skills only as exercises or memorizing
dialogue and mentioning some commonly understood vocabulary. However,
today's world demands that the goal of teaching speaking in language should
be to improve students' communicative skills, because only in this way can
students express themselves and learn how to follow appropriate social and
cultural rules in every communicative situation that applies to their
environment. Then whether the dominant role of using foreign languages in
the classroom can improve students' communicative abilities as the application
of foreign languages as a second language, and whether the method that is
usually applied has been able to develop their communicative skills, and how
should a teacher use speaking skills in their foreign language class.
On the contrary, the incompetence to express thoughts and feeling
through speech will lead to misunderstanding between interlocutors and, even
worse, triggers a dispute. According to Brown and Yule (1983), speaking is the
skill that the students will be judged upon most in real-life situations. The first
imprint of a human is based on his ability to speak fluently and fully. It is an
integral component of daily contact.
So, teachers have a responsibility to prepare the students as much as
possible to speak in English in the real world outside the classroom. Improving
speaking skills within the scope of English language education students can be
started from the classroom. It is very influential in the most negligible content
provides intense learning that requires students to follow this learning course.
They inevitably will have more initiative to learn so that they can attend classes
well and have the confidence to use foreign languages in education. This will
continue to become a habit that will give a positive side to using English as a
daily language in the classroom. Notwithstanding its relevance, language
teaching has been underestimated for many years and English teachers tended
to teach speaking only like they repeated their exercises or memorized
dialogues. Today, though, the world needs to develop the communication
abilities of students to communicate. Only in that way can students express
themselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in
each communicative circumstance.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. How important is speaking skill in English?
2. How important is English in the English Department classroom?
3. How effective is it in improving speaking skills by applying full English
in the classroom?
LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Learning L2
The second language is the dominant language used after the first
language or mother tongue. Acquisition of a second language is carried out
after mastering the first language in various ways and through several stages
from primary to high proficiency, which is almost equivalent to the first
language ability. As stated (Chaer A. and Agusitina, 2004.) Acquisition of a
second language or bilingualism is a gradual range from mastering the first
language (B1) plus knowing a little bit of the second language (B2). Mastery of
B2 increases gradually, until finally getting B2 is as good as B1. That way,
good learning is needed to produce good foreign language skills. Learning
foreign languages is best done from an early age to achieve maximum results
because of children and adults' catching power in receiving different lessons.
This is confirmed by an opinion (Santrock, 2007: 313) which states that
children learn foreign languages faster than adults.
B. Language Skill
Language skills themselves have four primary abilities as stated by Y
Regina (2019), Language has an important role to reveal an intention to
someone else. People will be able to express their thought and feeling by
using language., and the most prioritized in learning a foreign language itself
is speaking ability. Speaking is a productive language skill (Siahaan, 2008:95)
it can conclude that ability to speak is crucial in learning a foreign language as
a second language. Speaking alone is the most basic means of communication
for mastering a foreign language. A speaking skill standard can be called a
good standard if what the speaker says can be clearly understood. This is
supported by the quote The ability to speak is considered chiefly a key
determiner of L2 learners' success in learning L2 (Yuliati, 2010 ). The benefits
of mastering language skills and communicating orally on your own can be
felt from one time you understand them to the future provision. Suppose the
ability to speak and communicate verbally is not appropriately mastered. In
that case, many problems will arise when applied to a foreign language as a
second language, including messages received by listeners from the speaker
will be misunderstood. Even these misunderstandings can lead to disputes.
According to Parupalli (2019), speaking is the most important skill among all
four language skills to communicate well in this global world. How the person
he meets talks, then a good way of speaking will be an excellent primary
impression too.
C. Communication
Communication is a language expression that is very important for
channeling language skills at the speaking stage. Communication is also an
experimental stage for applying the results of learning a foreign language as a
second language. Communication methods can also be the most effective
teaching material for mastering a foreign language as a second language. This
is also agreed by Spratt, et.al. (2005) speaking involves the speaker using
speech to express meanings to other people. another opinion also stated
Nunan (2003:48) says that speaking is a productive oral skill. It involves
the production of verbal utterances to comprehend the meaning. Here it can
be concluded that communication has big effects on speaking skills.
METHOD
The purpose of this study was to measure or aim at how effective a class
full of English in students' enhancing speaking skills. This study targets
speaking as a common skills that must be dikuasai oleh setiap mahasiswa
jurusan bahasa inggris. To collect the required data, the researcher chose a
design using a questionnaire. This questionnaire was distributed to English
Department students at Tidar University. In this questionnaire, there are
several questions about using English in the classroom that will help students
enhance their speaking skills. How that things affect their English ability,
confidence, fluency, also how influential the use of full English in the
classroom makes them think fast when asked to speak in English.
A.
Type of Research
This research focuses on qualitative. Shank (2002) defines qualitative
research as a systematic empirical investigation activity. Frequent is regular,
planned, and general. Qualitative research studies things that tend to have a
natural context understand something, interpret a phenomenon in terms of
someone's opinion, Denzin and Lincoln (2000). Therefore, investigations
with qualitative methods are based more on experience. Respondents are
required to have various available applications to determine answers and
provide answers in the form of comparisons (Cam & Tran, 2017). So that
researchers will understand how students apply their experiences by filling out
the questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of several questions about the
use of applications to improve vocabulary skills.
B.
Research Subjects
In this research, the researchers collected data from 60 respondents who
were all English Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, the
University of Tidar Magelang in Indonesia. Students of the Department of
English were selected as respondents. The aim was to find out how effective it
would be if the English in their class were used more than 75% of the
language's use, whether this could increase the level of students' ability in
communicative speaking skills.
C.
Research Procedure
The data collected in this research used the questionnaire method, a
collection of questions asked by the researcher to the respondent to obtain
information about the topic under study. The questionnaire method has been
widely used and is considered practical and straightforward for collecting data
or surveys. This method is very suitable for collecting various respondents
with many answers; asking several questions in a sequence and correctly will
produce a good quality and specific data result.
RESULT AND ANALYSIS
This study concerns with analyzing of the quantitative data from the
answer of the research questions and qualitative data from the whole
observation of implementing the use of full english in the class room and the
result of questionnaires. The research questions in this study were concerned
about the effect of the use of full english in the classroom to students
speaking ability and to know how important is speaking skill. In order to
provide a plausible answer to the research questions the use of full english in
the classroom to enhanching speaking ability. In addition, the students’
responses towards the use of full english in the classroom were investigated by
distributing questionnaires.
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