Development of Speaking Skill throught Communicative Approach

Teaching - the activities of educating or instructing; activities that impart knowledge or skill; "he received no formal education"; "our instruction was carefully programmed"; "good classroom teaching is seldom rewarded". According to Bambang Setiyadi, teaching is the activities which include some sort of selection, some sort of gradation, some sort of presentation, and some sort of repetition while the teacher is teaching the language.
According to Sanggam Siahaan, language teaching is influenced by ideas on the nature of language in general, by ideas on the particular language being thought, and by ideas on how the language is learned. A theory of language teaching analysis must therefore begin with language may differ, on (language description), how it differs from ideas on how language is learned.
In teaching a foreign language, Mackey sees that the actual teaching must be about the language aspects, with delivery, which is based on a certain way, how a language is learned. The role of a teaching strategy is to assist the students to develop their language skills and knowledge of the language.
Language teaching in Indonesia is based on the idea that the goal of language acquisition is communicative competence: the ability to use the language correctly and appropriately to accomplish communication goals. The desired outcome of the language learning process is the ability to communicate competently, not the ability to use the language exactly as a native speaker does.
Communicative competence is made up of four competence areas: linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic.
1. Linguistic competence is knowing how to use the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of a language. Linguistic competence asks: What words do I use? How do I put them into phrases and sentences?
2. Sociolinguistic competence is knowing how to use and respond to language appropriately, given the setting, the topic, and the relationships among the people communicating. Sociolinguistic competence asks: Which words and phrases fit this setting and this topic? How can I express a specific attitude (courtesy, authority, friendliness, respect) when I need to? How do I know what attitude another person is expressing?
3. Discourse competence is knowing how to interpret the larger context and how to construct longer stretches of language so that the parts make up a coherent whole. Discourse competence asks: How are words, phrases and sentences put together to create conversations, speeches, email messages, newspaper articles?
4. Strategic competence is knowing how to recognize and repair communication breakdowns, how to work around gaps in one’s knowledge of the language, and how to learn more about the language and in the context. Strategic competence asks: How do I know when I’ve misunderstood or when someone has misunderstood me? What do I say then? How can I express my ideas if I don’t know the name of something or the right verb form to use?

In teaching the target language dialogue plays an important role. Almost any language class begins with a dialogue. The following considerations are necessary to construct a good dialogue:
• The dialogue should be short
• The dialogue should have not more than three roles.
• The dialogue should contain repetition of new grammar.
• The context should be interesting for the students.
• Previous vocabulary and grammar should be included in the dialogue.
Since the aim of the method is speaking ability, teaching through the communicative approach language teachers spend most of the time for speaking. Speaking skill is the productive skill in the oral mode. It, like the other skills, is more complicated than it seems at first and involves more than just pronouncing words. However, experimentation with the method has certain disadvantages so that some factors related to speaking have to be considered:
a. The primary aim of foreign language instruction in the schools has always been educational and cultural. The ability to speak fluently is not acquired primarily in the classroom, but through much additional practice on the outside.
b. Real conversation is difficult to achieve in the classroom because the time to develop it is difficult.
c. Conversation must not be confused with oral practice. Conversation involves a free, spontaneous discussion by two or more persons of any topic of common interest. Part of its effectiveness is due to facial expression and gestures.
d. Speaking ability is the most difficult phase of English to teach and to acquire.
e. It is difficult to teach because it requires unusual resourcefulness, skill, and energy on the part of the teacher.
f. Conversational competence depends essentially on an extensive vocabulary, memorization of numerous speech patterns, and the automatic control of stress.
Speaking is an art that few have mastered. Anyone can learn these principles and be able to master the fundamentals. If the students learn to master presentation skills Speech mastery will result. They should make it a goal to master the most wonderful gift of speech.
Students need to recognize that speaking involves three areas of knowledge:
• Mechanics (pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary): Using the right words in the right order with the correct pronunciation
• Functions (transaction and interaction): Knowing when clarity of message is essential (transaction/information exchange) and when precise understanding is not required (interaction/relationship building)
• Social and cultural rules and norms (turn-taking, rate of speech, length of pauses between speakers, relative roles of participants): Understanding how to take into account who is speaking to whom, in what circumstances, about what, and for what reason.
According to Geoffrey Leech, speaking is positioned as productive skills. His distinct the four skills of English in two compositions that it is called receptive skills and productive skills grammatical ability- as follows:
• Receptive skills (including listening and reading) are more directly under the control of inductive learning;
• Productive skills (including speaking and writing) are more likely to be aided by deductive learning.
The first of these two links is easier to make sense of than the second: if we are learning grammar from the receptive point of view, then we are doing so through exposure to, or confrontation with given textual instances. Related to teaching speaking, Richard and Rodger propose the language approach which helps the students to improve their communication, it is communicative language teaching. The final goal of language teaching which selected approach in classroom activities can be gained by interactive teaching.
Interactive speaking situations include face-to-face conversations and telephone calls, in which we are alternately listening and speaking, and in which we have a chance to ask for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from our conversation partner. Some speaking situations are partially interactive, such as when giving a speech to a live audience, where the convention is that the audience does not interrupt the speech. The speaker nevertheless can see the audience and judge from the expressions on their faces and body language whether or not he or she is being understood.

2. The Essence of Communicative Approach
The communicative approach focuses on language as a medium of communication. Recognizes that all communication has a social purpose - learner has something to say or find out. The communicative approach to language teaching became so popular because it makes a lot of sense to educators. In the communicative approach, participants use the language to accomplish some function, such as instructing, inviting or requesting. The teacher sets up a situation that students are likely to encounter in real life. Speakers choose a particular way to communicate depending on the relationship.
The communicative approach could be said to be the product of educators and linguists who had grown dissatisfied with the audio lingual and grammar-translation methods of foreign language instruction. They felt that students were not learning enough realistic, whole language. They did not know how to communicate using appropriate social language, gestures, or expressions; in brief, they were at a loss to communicate in the culture of the language studied. Interest in and development of communicative-style teaching mushroomed in the 1970s; authentic language use and classroom exchanges where students engaged in real communication with one another became quite popular.
In the intervening years, the communicative approach has been adapted to the elementary, middle, secondary, and post-secondary levels, and the underlying philosophy has spawned different teaching methods known under a variety of names, including notional-functional, teaching for proficiency, proficiency-based instruction, and communicative language teaching.
The communicative approach in language teaching starts from a theory of language as communication. The goal of language teaching is to develop as communicative competence. Communicative approach, according to Richards and Rodgers based on an interaction or transaction of some kind where one party has an intention and the other party expands or reacts to the intonations.
Communicative competence is made up of four competence areas: linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic. Communicative competence is made up of four competence areas: linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic.
a. Linguistic competence knows how to use the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of a language. Linguistic competence asks: What words do I use? How do I put them into phrases and sentences?
b. Sociolinguistic competence knows how to use and respond to language appropriately, given the setting, the topic, and the relationships among the people communicating. Sociolinguistic competence asks: Which words and phrases fit this setting and this topic? How can I express a specific attitude (courtesy, authority, friendliness, respect) when I need to? How do I know what attitude another person is expressing?
c. Discourse competence knows how to interpret the larger context and how to construct longer stretches of language so that the parts make up a coherent whole. Discourse competence asks: How are words, phrases and sentences put together to create conversations, speeches, email messages, newspaper articles?
d. Strategic competence knows how to recognize and repair communication breakdowns, how to work around gaps in one’s knowledge of the language, and how to learn more about the language and in the context. Strategic competence asks: How do I know when I’ve misunderstood or when someone has misunderstood me? What do I say then? How can I express my ideas if I don’t know the name of something or the right verb form to use?
For a reader or listener to achieve greater comprehension, precise formulation of ‘rules of thumbs’ is probably unnecessary since generalizations can be reached inductively. On the other hand, the second of the two statements proposes that to use language productively, in speaking and writing, we typically need a more ‘top down’ approach, making use of ‘rules of thumbs’ as a short cut to an ability which could only be acquired more slowly and tentatively through the inductive method.16
Students often think that the ability to speak a language is the product of language learning, but speaking is also a crucial part of the language learning process. Effective English teachers teach students speaking strategies -- using minimal responses, recognizing scripts, and using language to talk about language -- which they can use to help themselves expand their knowledge of the language and their confidence in using it. The teachers help students learn to speak so that the students can use speaking to learn.
Traditional classroom speaking practice often takes the form of drills in which one person asks a question and another gives an answer. The question and the answer are structured and predictable, and often there is only one correct, predetermined answer. The purpose of asking and answering the question is to demonstrate the ability to ask and answer the question.
In contrast, the purpose of real communication is to accomplish a task, such as conveying a telephone message, obtaining information, or expressing an opinion. In real communication, participants must manage uncertainty about what the other person will say. Authentic communication involves an information gap; each participant has information that the other does not have. In addition, to achieve their purpose, participants may have to clarify their meaning or ask for confirmation of their own understanding.
To create classroom speaking activities that will develop communicative competence, teachers need to incorporate a purpose and an information gap and allow for multiple forms of expression. However, quantity alone will not necessarily produce competent speakers. Instructors need to combine structured output activities, which allow for error correction and increased accuracy, with communicative output activities that give students opportunities to practice language use more freely.
Communicative output activities allow students to practice using all of the language they know in situations that resemble real settings. In these activities, students must work together to develop a plan, resolve a problem, or complete a task. The most common types of communicative output activity are role plays and discussions.
In role plays, students are assigned roles and put into situations that they may eventually encounter outside the classroom. Because role plays imitate life, the range of language functions that may be used expands considerably. Also, the role relationships among the students as they play their parts call for them to practice and develop their sociolinguistic competence. They have to use language that is appropriate to the situation and to the characters.
Students usually find role playing enjoyable, but students who lack self-confidence or have lower proficiency levels may find them intimidating at first. To succeed with role plays:
• Prepare carefully: Introduce the activity by describing the situation and making sure that all of the students understand it
• Set a goal or outcome: Be sure the students understand what the product of the role play should be, whether a plan, a schedule, a group opinion, or some other product
• Use role cards: Give each student a card that describes the person or role to be played. For lower-level students, the cards can include words or expressions that that person might use.
• Brainstorm: Before you start the role play, have students brainstorm as a class to predict what vocabulary, grammar, and idiomatic expressions they might use.
• Keep groups small: Less-confident students will feel more able to participate if they do not have to compete with many voices.
• Give students time to prepare: Let them work individually to outline their ideas and the language they will need to express them.
• Be present as a resource, not a monitor: Stay in communicative mode to answer students' questions. Do not correct their pronunciation or grammar unless they specifically ask you about it.
• Allow students to work at their own levels: Each student has individual language skills, an individual approach to working in groups, and a specific role to play in the activity. Do not expect all students to contribute equally to the discussion, or to use every grammar point you have taught.
The communicative approach focuses on language as a medium of communication. Recognizes that all communication has a social purpose - learner has something to say or find out.
The communicative approach to language teaching became so popular because it makes a lot of sense to educators. In the communicative approach, participants use the language to accomplish some function, such as instructing, inviting or requesting. The teacher sets up a situation that students are likely to encounter in real life. Speakers choose a particular way to communicate depending on the relationship.
"Communicative Approach" sounds perfect in theory, but it will have some problems after being put into practice. From the literal meaning, we can know that the main emphasis of "Communicative Approach" is "communication." So the main task of teachers is to teach students how to communicate in English efficiently. Under this precondition, "communication" is divided into several kinds of "functions," such as asking directions, ordering dishes at restaurants, buying airline tickets or chatting on the Internet. Each one is regarded as a function. When introducing one function, teachers give students some key words, sentences or phrases and design some activities for students to practice what they learn. The purpose is to train students to ask directions, order dishes at restaurants in English by themselves.
Moreover, another problem of "Communicative Approach" is that teachers may have difficulty in evaluating students' performance. Usually at schools, students' grades mainly come from the results of written tests. However, as long as "Communicative Approach" is put into practice, students' performance of listening, speaking, reading and writing should all be taken into consideration. Otherwise, the evaluation of students' performance will not be that fair. However, we all know that it is not quite easy for teachers to evaluate students' performance of speaking and listening. There is a method to solve this problem.
These are the steps to follow in planning a lesson using the communicative or natural approach to second-language teaching:
1. Presentation of a situation or context through a brief dialogue or several mini-dialogues, preceded by a motivational activity relating the dialogue to learners’ experiences and interest. This includes a discussion of the function and situation: People, roles, setting, topic and the level of formality or informality the function and situation demand.
2. Brainstorming or discussion to establish the vocabulary and expressions to be used to accomplish the communicative intent, including a framework or means of structuring a conversation or exchange to achieve the purpose of the speakers.
3. Questions and answers based on the dialogue topic and situation: Inverted, wh- questions, yes/no, either/or and open-ended questions.
4. Study of the basic communicative expressions in the dialogue or one of the structures that exemplifies the function, using pictures, real objects, or dramatization to clarify the meaning.
5. Learner discovery of generalizations or rules underlying the functional expression or structure, with model examples on the chalkboard, underlining the important features, using arrows or referents where feasible.
Oral recognition and interpretative activities including oral production proceeding from guided to freer communication activities. The way to solve this problem is to rearrange the orders of language functions according to the local environment. For example, how can you do when a foreigner ask you directions? How to chat with foreigners at pubs? How to ask your superior for a raise of salary in a foreign company? In other words, teachers should teach students the functions that they can use immediately after learning in native environment. Besides, teachers can also make good use of classroom environment to provide students with communicative learning activities. For instance, teachers can use "paired practice", "group work", "problem-solving and information-gap activities", "role-playing and dramatization". "playing games" "singing songs" and so on. There are so many activities for teachers to choose from. If those activities can be really exercised in classrooms, students surely will like learning English. They also practice pronunciation for the first.
Another problem is how to correct students' mistakes in pronunciation, grammar and so on. Many students are too concerned about their mistakes in pronunciation and grammar when speaking English. In order to break this mental barrier of many students and encourage them to speak English, many teachers encourage students to put grammar and pronunciation aside first and speak English. Then teachers would gradually correct students' mistakes.
This kind of encouragement is also one of the basic points of "Communicative Approach". The spirit of encouragement sounds ideal, but it may result in some problems. The toughest one is how and when to correct students' mistakes. How long can teachers allow students to speak incorrect English? What mistakes should be corrected? When to correct students' pronunciation and grammar? How to solve all these problems depends upon teachers' judgments and choices. To sum up, a well-trained and experienced teacher plays an important role in "Communicative Approach." When students play activities like "paired practice", "group work" or "role-playing", a good teacher knows how and when to move around, provide immediate help and collect students' mistakes to discuss late after the activities are over.
Based on the description above, the writer concludes that communicative approach is learning English which stresses communication as a medium of interaction through practicing spoken English in the daily activities.

B. Paradigm

The students have found some troubles to improve their speaking skills. Different approaches of teaching-learning English are different in the ways to prepare their English to master the speaking skills, just not in the classroom but in the real life. The obstacles of mastery of speaking English language depend on the difficulties of language application, so that wanted the suitable method in learning English.
Speaking skill needs the instruments that stress the students to act their language in communications or conversations with the classmates. The inability of speaking skill of the students of English Program at SMK Jakarta I put on the learning-teaching method of English. The teacher should be a main player to motivate themselves to master speaking skill in the way consultant-client relationships. Without prior pretensions, the teacher has to suggest his students to brave opening their mind, what is to be done with my self. Raising the new motivation of the students is the best approach in learning-teaching processes.
The reason why the students couldn’t speak English fluently is less to practice English every day. If the students are given the questions from this problem, they will answer ‘we are afraid to express our English. So, the teacher has to implement the method which motivates their communications.
If the teacher teaches speaking skill through communicative approach, the students will be easy practice English as a set of communication. Vice versa, if the teacher doesn’t teach speaking skill through communicative approach, they will find the difficulties to express their ideas by communicating English.