 |
| (Written by: Erny S.N Hambandima) |
Abstract
This
research is entitled An Analysis of Factors Affecting Poor Speaking Skills of
the Students of the English Department of ArthaWacana Christian University in
the Academic Year 2013/2014. The main purpose of this research is to find out
the factors that affect students’ poor speaking skill of semester four studentsat
the English Department, Faculty of Teachers Training, Artha Wacana Christian
University. The research is conducted to the fourth semester students who have
passed the lectures of Speaking One, Speaking Two and Speaking Three. The
participants of the research are the students with the low marks ranked from
the lowest level where twenty students are taken as the research subjects. The
research result shows that there are twelve factors affecting poor speaking
skills of the students of the English Department of Artha Wacana Christian
University namely first, psychological factors; second, poor vocabulary-related
factor; third, peer-related factors; fourth, pronunciation related factors;
fifth, grammar related factor; sixth, personality factor; seventh, L1
interference related-factor; eighth, teacher-related factor; ninth, teacher’s
poor teaching method; tenth, Environmental Factor; Eleventh, Motivation factor;
and the twelfth is cross-cultural factor. Those are the main factors that have
contributed to the speaking skills.
Key words: analysis, factors, affecting, poor speaking
skill
Abstrak
Penelitian
ini diberi judul Sebuah Analisis Tentang Faktor-Faktor yang mempengaruhi
Rendahnya Kecakapan Berbicara dari Mahasiswa Program Studi Bahasa Inggris,
Fakultas Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan, Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana Kupang
Tahun Akademik 2013/2014. Tujuan utama penelitian ini adalah untuk mencari tahu
faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi rendahnya kecakapan berbicara dari mahasiswa
Program Studi Bahasa Inggris, Fakultas Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan,
Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana Kupang Tahun Akademik 2013/2014. Penelitian
ini dilaksanakan bagi mahasiswa semester IV yang sudah lulus mata kuliah
Speaking Satu, Speaking Dua dan Speaking Tiga. Sebagai responden adalah dua
puluh orang mahasiswa/i yang dipilih berdasarkan rentangan nilai kelulusan
terendah keatas. Hasil penelitian ini
menunjukkan bahwa ada dua belas factor yang berpengaruh terhadap rendahnya
kecakapan berbicara dari mahasiswa Program Studi Bahasa Inggris, Fakultas
Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan, Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana Kupang Tahun
Akademik 2013/2014. Kedua belas faktor itu adalah pertama psikologi; kedua
faktor rendahnya perbendaharaan kata; ketiga adalah faktor tidak adanya teman
berbicara Bahasa Inggris; faktor yang keempat berkaitan dengan tekanan dalam
Bahasa Inggris; ke lima adalah faktor lemahnya penguasaan tata Bahasa Inggris;
keenam adalah faktor kepribadian mahasiswa/i; faktor ketujuh adalah pengaruh
bahasa ibu; kedelapan adalah faktor penampilan dosen / guru; faktor kesembilan
adalah metode mengajar para dosen / guru; kesepuluh adalah faktor lingkungan;
faktor kesebelas berkaitan dengan motivasi belajar dan yang kedua belas
berhubungan dengan silang budaya Bahasa Indonesia dengan Bahasa Inggris.
INTRODUCTION
It is a fact that English is a world-wide language
used for international means of communication which has been taught as a
foreign language in our country, Indonesia, from the level of junior high
school, even elementary school up to tertiary level. As a means of
communication, the role of English is quite important that it has become our
national concern.
The important role of English to our nation is
obviously through the changes of one curriculum to another, English teaching
methodology has become the main issue of strengthening the teaching strategies
with the core purpose of enabling Indonesian school graduates to master and use
English once they finish school, providing English will help them open up their
communication to the world. Brown (2001:268-269) suggests that good fluency
represents the main characteristic of natural communication, thus, it should be
given more weight in the teaching of speaking.
The government of Indonesia, through the Department of education, has
been so far trying hard to raise Indonesian high school graduates’ English competence,
but in fact most of our graduates cannot compete in job-seeking and
job-creating providing they do not have strong English competence.
As it is understood this situation must have been
resulted by poor English competence the students have acquired after finishing
their study at university varies from one person to another. This attracts the
writer’s intention that makes the writer interested in finding out what factors
that may have influenced the Indonesian English learners have poor speaking
skill after being graduated from university level. This condition might have
been influenced by the English teaching method or English language learners do
not realize the important role of English for their future or learners of English
only learn English to obtain a degree where they might be good at writing but
poor in speaking or learners have lack of vocabulary so that they can hardly
express themselves in terms of verbal communication.
The writer feels interested in finding out the factors
which must have influenced students’ English competence when they are graduated
from senior high school or even from the tertiary level. In the last three
years (2010 – 2012), being a lecturer at Kupang Artha Wacana Christian
University, the writer has carried out a kind of entrance tests to new comers
who chose English language as their major with the total numbers of test takers
ranged from 35 to 40. The result showed that only few students were able to do
the test fairly good while most of them failed to express themselves in English
even at the very basic level. Most students came to university with very
limited vocabulary that barred them from being able to basically express
themselves in English.
It
is true that being a human we can say something in a language because we know
the meaning of the words we use in expressing ourselves. In fact if words are
learnt and used individually they will be leading us to lexical meaning which
most of the times create ambiguous
meanings or even worse have no meaning at all. Words make meanings in their
context so they must come in phrases or chunks. Each phrase or chunk consists
of more than one word and they are inseparable. When the words in a phrase or a
chunk are separated then the individual word will change its meaning. It is a
fact that students tend to translate word by word according to what exists in
the dictionary instead of understanding words in terms of phrases or chunks. “To catch a cold” could be translated as menangkap dingin” instead of “sakit demam or pilek, flu” to the
contrary students would say “I enter
wind” when he / she means to say Saya
masuk angin ( to catch a cold ).
To the writer’s first-hand experience many of our
graduates have difficulties in expressing themselves where the writer
sometimes faces and answers questions
being asked by a great number of employees (bankers, government officers,
business people etc) such as I can
understand what people say “in English” but I can hardly answer them, why? I
can read and understand simple English articles but I find it very difficult
for me to write, why? From the two queries raised we can see that our
graduates have some basic listening and reading (receptive language skills) but
unfortunately they have poor speaking and writing (productive language skill).
Ellis (198:84) emphasizes the statement above as follows:
Reading and listening
are NOT enough. Reading, listening and speaking are the most important aspects
of any language. The same is true for English. However, speaking is the only
requirement to be fluent. It is normal for babies and children to learn
speaking first, and to become fluent before starting to read and write. So its
natural order is listening, speaking, reading then writing.
The statement above leads to language in
speech. It is undeniable that reading, writing and listening are parts / skills
of language but speaking has greater role or function in our daily life. Like a
child, babies or children firstly listen to parents or friends talking then they
pick up words. They then automatically make them meaningful by which in the
future when they grow up all words they have picked up will be used in their
speaking. Once they are grown up reading and writing get to be introduced when
they are at school. Langacker (1968 : 13) in his book “ Language and Its
Structure” states that children display an amazing ability to become fluent
speakers of any language consistently spoken around them. Every normal human
child who is not reared in virtual isolation from language use soon comes to
speak one or more languages natively.
In some informal occasions the writer,
on one hand, was involved in some dialogues and conversations with students
where she found out that to some students English is an interesting and enjoyable
subject. That is why the students feel interested in learning it. They have a
good understanding of the function of English as a tool of international
communication. They are encouraged to have a good competence of English for
their lives. On the other hand the writer also finds out that most students
have no clear idea why they study English, some believe that English is not an
interesting subject to study, they do not see the real function of English in
their lives. These types of learners (students) have very low motivation to
achieve their goal of studying English. They come to university with a hope to
become English teachers one day, their parents do not have idea what their
children are going to be. So it is true
that the natural order of language skills are undeniably listening, speaking,
reading and writing with speaking plays a great role in oral communication.
METHOD
In
this study, the researcher purposively listed out students of fourth semester
who have passed the lectures of Speaking One, Two and Three but with low marks
ranged from the poorest level. From the list there are twenty students taken as
the research subjects.
The
instruments used in this research are interviews and observations. Interviews
were carried out between two to three times for each respondent where the
interview situation was set or conditioned to be friendly and open.
Observations had been informally being carried out, while students at campus,
since they took Speaking One, Speaking Two and Speaking Three lectures. At
times, the writer by design informally observed the students by means of
talking to them in English to find out what motivations they had got and what
problems (if any) they had got while studying at the English Department. Some
home visits to their dormitories or boarding houses were carried out to find
out whether their living conditions supported their studies or not in terms of
books, dictionaries, reading sources such as novels, articles availabilities.
ANALYSIS
AND DISCUSSION
All data consist
of observations and interviews. Interviews were carried out between two to
three times for each respondent where the interview situation was set or
conditioned to be friendly and open. Observations had been informally being
carried out, while students at campus, since they took Speaking One, Speaking
Two and Speaking Three lectures. The researchers concluded that the data
collected here is descriptively analyzed and interpreted, based on Harmer
(2007) as a process and it is meant to answer the components in this data
analysis.
In this part, the writer analyzes
the data from interviews results. There are four items that the writer is going
to present here. It starts with the
leading question “Do you like to speak English?” The expected responses from
the students are ‘Yes or No’ where each of the questions is expected to be
completed with students’ own descriptions for their reasons. From the interview
carried out in the second and the third week of June 2014 the writer found out
that there were nineteen out of twenty students who liked to speak English but
they had various problems that barred their intentions to speak in English.
Each of them had different comments and ideas on what problem they encountered
in speaking in English. There was only one student who did not like to speak
English because she did not want to be an English teacher but she would rather
find another job than being a teacher.
Those
who like English state the following reasons: (1) nine students said that they
liked to speak English because they wanted to be English teachers and or tour
guides as well; (2) Two students stated that being an international language
English helped to open the chance for them to communicate internationally; (3)
Three students really liked English and were very interested in seeing other
friends talking in English; (4) One student enjoyed speaking in English and he
was also jealous of seeing another people speaking in English; (5) One student
did not have any description when questioned; (6) Two students also used
English and liked to use it in daily communication; and (7) One student stated that she enjoyed speaking
English to smoothen her speaking fluency.
Despite
those positive reasons, their English speaking skill is generally poor as shown
by their Speaking One, Speaking Two and Speaking Three scores. Such a poor
speaking skill has been influenced by the following factors:
4.1 Psychological
Factor
As English is taught as a foreign
language in our country it is uncommon to most of our students to use English
in their lives. Students are shy to use English in their daily communication.
Psychologically they are discouraged if someone laughs at the mistakes they are
making when they are talking to their friend/s in English. Five students said that they never used
English in speaking as they got embarrassed with people listening and seeing
them speaking English. One student talked with friends when at home (in their
dormitory only) and never spoke out of home because she was afraid of
surrounding listeners listening and laughing at her. Six students uttered they
were not confident to speak in English as they were afraid of making mistakes
and being laughed at. Two students found themselves having mental problem that
is they were not brave to speak English. Two students said that they felt
embarrassed to speak in English
4.2 Poor Vocabulary-Related Factor
The second problem encountered by
students is vocabulary. Students often search for an appropriate word to speak.
This case happens to a student who said it was quite difficult for herself to
determine proper word/s to be correctly used in an English speaking
conversation. Furthermore she stated that English had different words diction and
speakers had to selectively choose the words to construct a meaningful, understandable
utterance in a conversation. She emphasized that each word had its own
contextual meaning which had to be used in different context for different
situation. She found it hard for her to use words correctly in their precise
context. There were also fifteen respondents
stated that they were lacked of vocabulary which made them hard communicate
verbally in English. They got stuck when they tried to speak to their speaking
partners for they only had a very limited stock of vocabulary
4.3 Peer-Related Factor
It is hard for students to find peer speakers to practice their speaking with. Seven students admitted that they rarely practiced speaking for they did not have speaking partners. They found their friends were too shy to use English at home (out of English classes). One respondent stated she rarely communicated in English since she did not have friends to talk to. Another student also rarely used English for daily communication because her talking partner tended to respond in Indonesian language rather than English. Two students sometimes practiced English speaking at campus but instead of responding to them in English their friends turned up to discourage them by saying that they were showing off. Given language is speech and speech needs practice the rareness of friends to practice English with both at the university and at home has become a barrier for students to increase their speaking competence.
4.4 Pronunciation-Related Factor
In
order to convey meaning, students must have the knowledge of words and
sentences. They must understand how words are segmented into various sounds,
how sentences are stressed in particular ways. This was the case the
interviewed students had been facing so far. They said that they had
difficulties in producing sounds of English as well as the words stress. Nine
students uttered that they were afraid to speak English as they realized they
had bad pronunciation. Two students had similar difficulty in speaking English
where they said they always made errors in word stressing.
4.5 Grammar-Related Factor
Even
though some learners have learnt the language at high school they are still unable
to construct sentences without grammatical errors. One respondent admitted that
her speaking was bad due to grammatically she made a lot of mistakes when she
talked in English. Two students realized they were not confident to speak and
or to write as they understood they had broken grammar of English. Being poor
in grammar mastery drives students away from using English to communicate
verbally in their daily lives. It is a fact that grammatical competence enables
speakers to use and to understand the structure of English-language accurately
and unhesitatingly, which contributes to their fluency but English has been
taught to pass the written final examination.
4.6
Personality
Factor
A
prominent problem encountered by the learners in language acquisition process
is learner inhibition. This must have made the students worried about making
mistakes in using English to converse, being criticized or losing faces in
front of the rest of a class or in public. Twelve students are recorded to have
had such kind of personality in this research. Four students were afraid of
being laughed at when knowing that they were making mistakes in talking in
English. This results in their speaking performance where they make a lot of
mistakes even though they have a very good knowledge where sometimes such
situation makes them totally keep silent. To the writer’s first-hand experience
most students with low speaking competence are afraid or probably shy of making
mistakes in speaking, and the result was that four students said that they were
shy. They were not confident enough to express themselves in English. Another
reason according to students interviewed is that the point of learning English
is to pass the examination not to use it in daily communication. Eight students
stated that they studdied English to get mark instead of using it for speaking.
One student said she was focusing on getting passing marks so that she could
pass the examination.
4.7 L1 Interference-Related Factor
Students
generally tend to make an excessive use of their mother-tongue when it comes to
the activities in productive skills namely- speaking and writing. When they
were facing the interview questions, they immediately started thinking about
the topic of conversation in their mother tongue, framing what they wanted to
say in their mother-tongue and then translated it into English, which often
results in mistakes. During the interview process the writer found out that there
were eighteen students who directly translated from Indonesian into English.
Thus, the students often tended to make use of their mother-tongue which
results in losing the motive of learning the language and lack of practice.
The writer also discovered that when
students were asked to write a short discourse or perform a conversation in
English, they tended to write it firstly in their mother tongue and of course
using lexical translation, using dictionary to convert their writing into
English which ended up to meaningless writing providing word by word
translation does not make meaningful discourse. For example; when using
dictionary one will tend to lexically translate the Indonesian utterance of “Saya masuk angin” into English translation
of “I enter wind” instead of “I catch a cold”. In relation to
speaking competence two students found problems with the local dialect
interference. When they were asked to answer the interview questions they could
hardly response to it since they had to translate each word from their mother
tongue into English.
4.8 Teacher-Related factor
Fifteen students said that they had
problem facing their lecturer/s. The fifteen students answers indicate that
there are students who are not brave or confident enough coping with unfamiliar
teachers / lecturers performances. They tended to keep silent instead of saying
something wrong in front of an unfriendly lecturer. This situation makes them
scared to use English for daily communication (in terms of speaking. built a
good rapport with them). Such situation can be easily created by starting with
simple and easy tasks. When it is created it will help to encourage the slow
students to participate in the activity and boost their morale. The next
important aspect is to build confidence in the learners. Once the teacher
establishes a good rapport with the learners, it will build up the students’
confidence. Gradually increasing the difficulty level will sharpen their
knowledge thereby improving the learners. Minimizing teacher talk time and
maximizing learners talk time will also encourage the learners. The writer
found out that the students got suggested or motivated by the lecturers when
the lecturers kept asking them to practice speaking in their daily lives even
make mistake, said two students. Instead of correcting the mistakes, the
lecturers could go for peer correction which would encourage them to come out
of inhibition. Lecturers/teachers are hoped to be a guide, a mentor and a
facilitator.
4.9 Factor Related to Teacher’s Poor Teaching Method
Lecturers play important roles in the
class. They must function as leaders of the class, motivators of the class who
are able to create a friendly teaching and learning atmosphere to give learners
self–confidence building. Eighteen students realized that various kinds of
teaching methods such as individual work, group work, games, describing
pictures, telling stories of daily activities, debating, reading text orally would make them interested in
using English to speak. One
student said he was asked to search words in the dictionary after which the
selected words were put into sentences and then the formulated sentences sent
to friends via short messages services. Such kinds of teaching varieties would
raise students motivation to speak in English said the eighteen students. Two
students said that only a couple of lecturers varied their teaching method
while most lecturers just monotonously sticked themselves to what had been
prepared before coming to class which made them bored in the speaking class and
they were lazy to practice speaking in English.
4.10
Environmental
Factor
Building rapport and good relation
within the learners and the lecturers is essential to create a friendly
learning atmosphere. Fifteen students said that when lecturers were friendly
teaching them speaking they felt happy and free to express themselves. When the
teaching and learning environment is harmonious where lecturers give
opportunity to students to practice speaking without being discouraged whenever
they make mistakes will give a very positive impact on increasing students’
speaking competence. Making students feel at home whenever they are at school
or university campus will put aside students’ shyness so that they are brave
enough to express themselves both in class and outside the class using English
as a medium of interaction. In addition five students said some
teachers / lecturers did not seem familiar to students. Such condition makes
students felt uneasy, shy and even scared to talk while at campus. The five
students uttered that a few lecturers looked scary that made them scared to
talk.
4.11
Motivation
Factor
This lack of confidence prevents
students from learning the speaking skills. The writer found out that students
failed to master the English speaking skill since they feel it is impossible
for them to do it. They easily give in and do not want to continue learning
whenever they fail in expressing their ideas even in a very simple statement.
They seem impatient and have very little confidence and motivation in coping
with some barriers that they come across in learning. Out of the twenty respondents the writer
found out that when interviewed students said they felt embarrassed or lack of
inner motivation to speak English as the consequence of being afraid of making
mistakes. In this case eleven students
were listed as being too nervous to speak. The feeling of making mistakes
becomes a nightmare in speaking. It has to be erased from their mind and they
must be motivated to become brave students to learn from mistakes.
Following are
students’ comment about the lecturers’ motivation to the students; (1)
four students were suggested to keep
practicing speaking in their daily lives without worrying about what mistakes
they would make. (2) Three students were suggested to build up vocabulary by
means of memorizing new vocabularies to enrich his stock of vocabulary (3) Ten
students were encouraged to keep reading to open up their minds as well as to
build up their vocabulary stock (4) Three students were encouraged to spend
more time to read a lot and to listen to music to enlarge their vocabulary.
4.12
Cross-Cultural Factor
Oral communication involves a very
powerful non-verbal communication system, which sometimes contradicts the
messages provided through the verbal listening channel. Lack of knowledge of
the nonverbal communication system of a target language usually results in the
inability to pick up non verbal cues by L2 learners, which often
results in misunderstanding. One thing to be noted that some body movements are
different from one language to another, that is why learners of English
language are required to learn the English speaking culture as well. A student said she never used gestures as she
was afraid that her instruction in gestures gave wrong meaning providing
English had different gestures compared to Indonesian. She was not certain to
use gestures whenever she came across difficult words/phrases/chunks.Thirteen students realized that when they did
not know what words/phrases/ chunks to use in verbal communication they used
gestures or non-verbal communication in expressing their feeling or to
emphasize the meaning of their expression. Whenever a creative speaker comes
across a deadlock where he / she cannot express his / her idea in verbal
communication he / she can make use of body language, kinemes (facial
expressions, etc). Such alternative is a great way out to get away when one is
lack of certain vocabulary in verbal communication.
Conclusion
Based on the result of the analysis and
discussion, the writer found that In general, the fourth semester students who
have finished their Speaking One, Two and Three classes really like to speak
English but they have difficulties in speaking. Data analysis shows that nine
students have got the same dream that they want to become English teachers as
well as a tour guides. Most of the students said that they found difficulties
in communicating using speaking English as a means of communication affected by
the following factors:
The
first is psychological factor; students
find themselves shy to speak when they are in campus because they are afraid of
being laughed by listeners or whoever nearby them when the conversation takes
place. The second is poor
vocabulary-related factor; lack of vocabularies, in fact, makes the students
not confident to use English for communication since they do not know a lot of
English words, Peer-related factor
is the third hindrance; students do
not use English for their daily communication since they do not have friends to
talk to in English while out of campus. The fourth is pronunciation-related
factor; students have difficulties
with pronunciation. They have
difficulties in producing sounds of English as well as the words stress.
Students realize they have bad pronunciation especially in word stressing. The fifth is grammar-related factor; making a lot of grammatical mistakes
when students speaking in English makes
not confident to speak and or to write as they understand they have
broken grammar of English.
The
sixth is personality factor; students study English with an intention to get
marks to pass the examinations and they do not care much about whether they can
speak English or not. Students are also afraid of making mistakes in speaking
in English at home or in the community for their friends or colleagues
sometimes laugh at the mistakes they make when they are talking in English. L1 interference-related is
the seventh factor; students tend to
use direct translation where every word from Indonesian language is directly
translated into English. They conceptualize the word/s in their mother tongue
then transfer it into English. The
eighth is teacher-related factor; students
are noted to have problem facing their lecturer/s. Students answers indicate
that they are not brave or confident enough coping with unfamiliar teachers /
lecturers performances inside or outside the class. The ninth point is factor related to teacher’s poor teaching
method; students admitted that various kinds of teaching methods such
as individual work, group work, games, describing pictures, telling stories of
daily activities, debating, reading text
orally would make them interested in using English to speak. Varying the
teaching method makes students attracted in using English in daily speaking
where it will raise students’ motivation to speak in English. Only a couple of
lecturers vary their teaching method while most lecturers just monotonously
base themselves on what have been prepared before coming to class. Such
situation makes students bored with the speaking class and they were lazy to
practice speaking in English. Environmental
factor is the tenth point; good
relation within the learners and the lecturers is essential to create a
friendly learning atmosphere. Students said that when lecturers were friendly
teaching them speaking they felt happy and free to express themselves. When the
teaching and learning environment is harmonious where lecturers give
opportunity to students to practice speaking without being discouraged whenever
they make mistakes will give a very positive impact on increasing students’
speaking competence.
The
eleventh factor is related to motivation;
students feel embarrassed or lack of inner motivation to speak English as
the consequence of being afraid of making mistakes. Students get too nervous to speak for they
have the feeling of making mistakes that becomes a nightmare in speaking and
the last is cross-cultural factor, students
use gestures to communicate whenever they do not certain words to say when they
are talking in English. Whenever they get stuck in expressing themselves using
English words they quickly shift the conversation from verbal communication to
using gestures.
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Brown,
H.D. 2000. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. Pearson Education Ltd.
Devine, T.G. 1986. Teaching Reading
Comprehension: from theory to practice. Allyn and Bacon
Ellis, R.
(1986). Understanding Second Language
Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University
Press
Harmer,
J. 2007. The Practice of English Language
Teaching. Pearson Education Ltd.
