The Concept of Speaking Performance
a. The Concept of Speaking
Speaking is a spoken productive language skill. It is about how the students produce the language orally. Furthermore, according to Harmer, Speaking refers to the students produce pieces of language and sees how its turns out that information are feed back into the acquisition process. Therefore, speaking focused on output where the learner’s attention is on conveying ideas and messages to another person. As Jones comments that in speaking and listening we tend to be getting something done, exploring ideas, working out some aspect of the world, or simply being together. In writing, we may be creating a record, committing events or moments to paper.
Based on quotation above, it can be inferred that speaking is a spoken language productive skill that focused on the students’ capability to produce pieces of the language orally. It is about how the students express their selves such as; exploring ideas, express feeling, etc.
b. The Elements of Speaking
The basic assumption in any oral interaction is that the speaker wants to communicate ideas, feelings, attitudes and information to the hearer or wants to employ speech that relates to the situation. Therefore, the ability to speak fluently presupposes not only knowledge the language features, but also the ability to process the information and language ‘on the spot’. The elements of speaking as follows:
a. Language Features
1) Connected Speech
Connected speech is the sounds modifying such as; assimilation, omission, addition or weakened. The effective English speakers need to be able not only to produce the individual phonemes but also to use connected speech fluently. Therefore, the learning activity should involve students in the activities designed specifically to improve their ability.
2) Expressive device
To express the feeling, the native speaker often change pitch and stress of particular part of utterances, vary volume and speed, and show by other physical and non-verbal to convey the meaning.
3) Lexis and Grammar
There are differences between written and spoken grammatical. Spoken grammar has minimal planning opportunities. Thus, the teacher should supply a variety of different language functions. The students are involved in specific speaking context in order they can produce of various stage of an interaction.
4) Negotiation Language
The negotiatiors language is used to seek clarification and to show the structure of the speakers saying.
b. Mental/ social Processing
Speaking skill is productive language skill. It involves the knowledge of language skill such discussed above and also dependent on the rapid processing skill.
1) Language Processing
Language processing involves the retrieval of words and phrase from memory and their assembly into syntactically and propositionally appropriate sequences. The speaking activities aimed to help the students develop habits of rapid language processing English.
2) Interaction With Others
Most of speaking takes the form face-to-face dialogue and therefore involves interaction. The speaking activities involve the students’ interaction with the others and understanding each others.
3) (on-the-spot) information processing
The speaker needs to be able to process the information and response to the others’ feeling in using the language.
c. The Function of Speaking
In designing speaking activities is necessary to recognize the differences functions of speaking. Brown and Yule’s frame work state three-part version of the function of speaking: talk as interaction, talk as transaction and talk as performance. It is described as follows:
1) Talk as Interaction
Talk as interaction refers to what we normally mean by “conversation” and describes interaction refers to what server a primarily social function. It is very difficult for the teacher to teach the students in this case. The teacher should be able o invite the students give feedback even in small conversation.
2) Talk as Transaction
Talk as transaction refers to situations where the focus is on what is said or done. The message and making oneself understood clearly and accurately is the central focus, rather that the participants and how they interact socially with each other, such; offering something, asking for directions, classroom discussion, etc.
3) Talk as performance
Talk as performance tends to be in the form of monolog rather that dialog, often follows a recognizable format (e.g., a speech of welcome), and is closer to written language than conversational language. It focused both on message and audience, and more predictable organization.
Based on explanation above, the teaching process are different in each function. The teachers have to analyze first what the focus of the speaking class. Then, the teachers identify the appropriate strategy to teach each kind of the function of speaking