Tuspekova, A., Mustaffa, R., & Ismail, K. (2020).

Understanding English Speaking Practice in

Public Schools in Kazakhstan: A Case Study in Almaty. 3L The Southeast Asian Journal
of English Language Studies, 26(1), 171-185. DOI:10.17576/3l-2020-2601-12

This study aims to investigate the nature of English speaking practice in a classroom in a
local public in Kazakhstan according to a teacher and the students during speaking activities. A
qualitative approach was employed in this study. To gather the data the researcher has employed
interviews, classroom observation, and document analysis. The practice of speaking of local EFL
classrooms where it is viewed as a learning process aimed at developing students’ speaking skills
in the English language. A case study was employed in this qualitative. Grade 9 classrooms in
the school were selected for the study comprising 36 students in total. Five themes from the data
analysis are presented;

1. Speaking activities lack negotiation of meaning. After the class observation, the
researcher was found that a structural approach which is the focus is primarily centered
on the manifestation of learners’ knowledge of the language, rather than the realization of
this knowledge to achieve certain communicative purposes.
2. Impromptu speaking is the most preferred activity for students. They would speak
spontaneously and preferred to share their experience, due to the importance of reacting
and responding.
3. Students practice out-of-school learning to improve speaking. It showed that most
students attended private classes because their parents encourage them to improve their
English, whereas, students with lows performers did not take any courses out site class.
This illustrates the role of external factors such as parents’ support in the learner’s foreign
language acquisition.
4. Classroom interactions are both facilitating and inhibiting. With interactions that built a
relationship between students and teachers but also there is inhibiting between both, and
that was affecting the process in learning English.
5. A mismatch between teacher’s and student’s perceptions of the speaking practice. The
interviews also found that there is irrelevant between students and teachers in the learning
process and that would affect the learning process too.
 It can be concluded that the structural approach is the most employed in practice speaking in
the classroom. Also, supported by parents was most crucial to improving students’ speaking
ability.

This article has the strength due to the topic; to investigate the reality in the classroom, and
so from that, the teacher would know how to improve their teaching in the classroom and help
students. Without empirical data, it is quite impossible to understand the existing issues in the
educational sector that can be further addressed for the successful implementation of the top-
down policies.