SPEAK
ENGLISH? “YES, WE CAN”
Dian
Ariana Junaedi (AG.1)
Is it difficult to speak English?
English is international language. Indonesia as one of
the developing country deeply understand the importance of English in life. With
that thing, the education curriculum in 2006 is expected that the students are
able to communicate in English by mastering the whole skills. Actually, English
has four skills. They are listening, reading, writing, and speaking skill.
However, it is not an easy thing to master all skills. For the student the most
difficult skill to be learned is speaking skill considering that English as a
foreign language. That is a difficult thing to communicate or interact with the
foreigner as native speaker grammatically through English. However, to improve
the speaking skill in English for students is really needed the effective ways
such as practice with join in group discussion, memorizing vocabularies and
listen the western song frequently.
To develop the speaking skill is really needed practice
especially with join in group discussion. The ability in speaking can not be
seen if never practice to speak english. There are so many various group discussion
in English that student can find out in school even outside of school such as English
community or English course. Group discussion itself will increase the
student’s willingness to speak. The research by Ningtyas Orilina Argawati from UNISRI Surakarta has proven that group
discussion in school really provides the students more opportunities to speak English.
Her research at Wijaya Kusuma Senior High School Surakarta revealed that
group discussion makes the students find their own words to build sentences
representing their idea, could cooperate better and also be more creative in
creating their own statements. Through the pre-test, the researcher obtained
the student’s score. It was only 3.7 since they did not have any willingness to
speak. Then, it increased by 5.6667 in the post test 1 and continued to
increase up to 7.6667 in post test 2. With that research, really shows that the
students will have an urge to speak through the group discussion and it will
lead to develop their ability in speaking English.
Another method to improve the speaking skill in English
is memorizing vocabularies. There are three main points to know english
properly, they are pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. The student’s problem
to develop their ability in speaking is because they do not have many
vocabulary to speak. It becomes an obstacle if they want to speak but do not
have enough vocabulary to represent their ideas. According to Smith (2011)
stated that lack of vocabulary knowledge could lead to student’s difficulties
in language reception and production and becomes an obstacle for them to
express their ideas in English. There are so many simple ways to memorize
vocabularies quickly. According to Albert Wolfe who is English teacher at the
Peizheng College in Guangzhou China explained that effective way to memorize
vocabulary is putting the words where you will see them as often as possible,
on a wall, in a notebook you carry around, or on your computer dekstop. From
that research, actually, it is based on the individual way itself to find the
way that can make them memorize the vocabulary easily.
The last way is listening the
western song frequently. Exactly, listening and speaking are related each
other. Listening as a receptive skill is really important in speaking as a productive
skill due to through ‘listen’ will lead us to imitate the words and practice it
by speaking. The study that was done by Setiawan (2013) concluded that song can
be used to improve student’s listening ability in identifying the specific
information from the song lyrics for Senior High School students. It makes the
students aware of their purpose of listening and can motivate them to identify
the specific information in the song lyric and also makes them enjoy the
listening activity. This study really prove that song can become one way to
invite the students to speak up. The students through listen the song
frequently will automatically and easily to speak about the description or
message of the song.
In conclusion, English is
international language which is very important to be mastered by students. Especially,
for speaking skill, the way they understand English will be seen directly when
they speak up. Actually, the students find out many problems to develop their
ability in speaking but, from all of that problems can be solved with practice
with join in group discussion, memorizing vocabularies and listen the western song
frequently. However, considering how important English, really needs a great
effort to be able for master it properly. Because, when you have mastered it,
the world’s control is in your hands.
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