Speaking Problems Faced by the Second Year Students of English

Language Education, Universitas Brawijaya

Dzulfikar Davito1, Moh Alim Musonnafa2

1
English Language Education, Universitas Brawijaya, Indonesia
E-mail address: a02.moh.alimmuson@gmail.com

2
English Language Education, Universitas Brawijaya, Indonesia
E-mail address: testing@mail.go.id

Abstract
As one of the importance skills in foreign language acquisition, speaking plays several
roles in communication. It helps the speakers to deliver some information, ideas, feelings, and
thought to the interlocutor. Yet, many learners still have some difficulties in speaking although
they have been learning English for several years. Considering the importance of speaking, this
study was conducted to find out the speaking problems faced by the second year students of
English Language Education Program, Universitas Brawijaya academic year 2017/2018. The
subjects were taken based on the consideration of the status of the subjects as pre-service
English teachers which should possess good proficiency in speaking.
Using survey design to achieve the objectives of the study, 103 questionnaires were
administered to the subjects in the Intensive Speaking class. It was found that the subjects still
faced some problems in speaking such as inhibition (38.44%), mother-tongue use (25.47%),
nothing to say (20.05%), and low or uneven participation (16.04%). Based on the finding, some
suggestions are made by the researcher. In order to solve the speaking problems, the teacher
should be able to strengthen the students’ confidence, maintain the use of the target language,
consider the topic of speaking activity and encourage the students to use communicative
strategies. The researcher also suggests to raise the issue related to the effective way to teach
communication strategies to students for the further study.

Keywords: speaking; speaking problems; communication strategies

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