The Nature of Speaking

The Nature of Speaking
Speaking as a social and situation-based activity. All these perspectives see speaking as an integral part of people’s daily lives. Together, they help assesment developers form a clear understanding of what it means to be able to speak a language and then transfer this understanding to the design of task and rating criteria. The more these concreate features of tests are geared towards the special features of speaking, the certain it is that the result will indecate what they purpose to indicate, namely the ability to speake a language.
Teaching and testing experts often talk about speaking as a technical term to refer to one of the various skills that language learners should develop and have. This type of speaking tends to be seen as something that individual do. It is legitimate, and for educational porpuses useful, to see speaking in this way too, because it is true that individuals speak, and an important part of language use in personal. Nevertheless, it is also important to remember that speaking forms a part of the shared social activity of talking.
In a typical spoken interaction, two or more people talk to each other about things that they think a mutually interesting and relevant in the situation. Their aim can be to pass the time, amuse each other, share opinions or get something done, or they can aim to do several of these and other things at once. The point in their interaction is that they do these things together. Each participant is both a speaker and a listener; they construct the event together and share the right to influence the outcomes- which can be both shared and individual.
The Types of Speaking
Ur (2005:129) also notes the types of spoken interaction, which tend to be neglected. They are interaction talk, long turn, non-classroom talk (situations, emotion and relationships).

a) Interaction Talk
This is to some extent a matter of learning convertional formulate of courtesy: how to greet, take leave, begin and end conversations, apologize, thank and so on. But even more than this it is culture-linked: how the interactional function of speech is realized in defferent language depends as much on culture convention as on knowledge of the words of the language.
b) Long Turns
The ablility to speak at length is one which adult, more advanced or academic students will perhaps need and therefore needs cultivating; for other types of classes it may be less important.
c) Varied Situation, Emotion and Relationship
It is certainly arguable that learners will need to function in a wide variety of such contexts, and it makes sense to give them opportunities to try using the target language in simulations of at least a selection of them. Conventional task-based discussions do not provide such opportunities; but, as the extract quoted here claims, role-play activities do-which is a cogent argument for including them in a language course.
Successful Speaking Activity
Students are successful in learning speaking when they can use the language in daily communication both in and out school. Ur (1996:120) has indicated some characteristics of a successful speaking activity:

a) Learners talk a lot
Teachers should give a lot of time to students to speak in the classroom. Let students speak as much as possible in the discussion. The more students talk, the more effective learning speaking is created.
b) Participation is Even
Teacher should control everyone in the classroom. Do not let the talkative students has dominant contributions in the discussion. Each student has the same chance to speak in the classroom.
c) High motivation
Teacher should support students to have high motivation in learning. Having good or interesting topic may increase students’ motivation to achieve a task objective.
d) Language is in acceptable level
Teacher should know what to be taught to their students, meaning that the lesson should be acceptable. Students can express themselves to use the language in communication to each other.
The Problem with Speaking Activities
The gain of speaking is that students can use the language as well as possible. However, in the learning process, some problems are found. Ur (1996:121) explained the problem with speaking activities. Those problems are elaborated as follow:
a) Inhibition
Learning speaking is not much different from learning writing and reading. Speaking needs some level of real-time exposure to an audience. Learners are often inhibited of making mistakes; a foreign language is a strange lesson for them, they are afraid of making mistakes and fear of criticism.
b) Nothing to say
In learning foreign language, usually learners do not have any idea in their mind because they do not think in English but in their own language. It happened because they fell that they should speak the language, which is strange for them.
c) Low participation
It happens because one student / participant only has a limited time to speak. Some students are dominant, while others speak very little or cannot express their idea optimally in the discussion.
d) Mother-tongue use
When learners are discussing some problems usually, they share with others by using their mother tongue, not the target language. It is because they feel unnatural to speak in foreign language.

Ur, Penny. 2002. A Course in Language Teaching. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Hary Kayi 2010. Teaching Speaking. (Online).(http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Kayi-Teaching Speaking.htm. Accessed on November 16th, 2010).

sources: http://creationbrain.blogspot.com/search/label/speaking