Wahyuni Khairunnisa

F12108038

Title: Promoting students speaking ability through Pair Work

Thesis Background

Speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of

verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts" (Chaney, 1998). It is the

productive skill. When we speak, we will communicate and interact with other

to express our thought, ideas, and feeling.

The mastery of speaking skills in English is a priority for many second-language

or foreign-language learners. Consequently, learners often evaluate their success

in language learning as well as the effectiveness of their English course on the

basis of how much they feel they have improved in their spoken language

proficiency (Richards, 2008). Furthermore, teaching speaking is not an easy skill

to teach because it requires the teacher to be able to engage their students to

speak fluently and appropriately.

In many school, it is commonly to find some students who are reluctant to speak

even when they are asked to speak in the classroom activity. Many reasons that

caused the students unwillingness to speak, one of them is students’ low self

confidence which is caused by their fears of making mistake. Moreover it is

necessary to encourage the students to get involved in the classroom activity.

Therefore, it is needed for the teacher to find out the solution of this problem to

let the students to get involve in the classroom activity. The teacher should

motivate the student to speak a lot and communicate their ideas and creating a

good learning atmosphere in order to develop their speaking ability.

Pair work can be the solution to dealing with students’ problem in speaking

class. Teacher may motivate the students to talk by keep interact with their peer.

“Talk as interaction refers to what we normally mean by “conversation” and

describes interaction that serves a primarily social function. When people meet,

they exchange greetings, engage in small talk, recount recent experiences, and

so, on because they wish to be friendly and to establish a comfortable zone of

interaction with others” (Richards, 2008).

By work in pair the students will work cooperatively with their partner. The

partner may give some feedback of their friend mistakes in the conversation, and

the low self confidence students may feel comfortable to speak in their partner.

Moreover, this activity can decrease students’ fear of making mistake because

they can have a discussion with their peer and make some correction in their

assignment before they speak in front of the class. So, Pair work activity can be

used in the classroom activity in order to motivate the students to speak up and

express their ideas, information and feeling in order to develop their speaking

ability.