Investigating An Experienced EFL Teacher’s Strategies on The Teaching of Speaking at A Senior High School

Abstract

Speaking is one of the important skills that must be mastered by the students in learning English as a foreign language. If students can improve their speaking skills, they can have the ability to express their emotions, ideas, and stories, as well as make requests, engage in discussions, and demonstrate the various functions of language (Leong and Ahmadi, 2017). Moreover, students have not only the ability to express their ideas, emotions, or thoughts in a learning context but also social contexts outside the classroom. This is because speaking skills outside the classroom are needed for language learners as it offers more opportunities to practice English in real-life situations. Thus, teachers have an important role to help students improve their speaking skills by using some teaching speaking strategies during the learning process. Melendez, et al. (2014) point out that during the learning process, strategies play an important role; each individual selects the one that is best suited to him or her. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to select some strategies in their teaching and learning process to help the students develop their speaking skills. This study aimed to investigate teacher’s strategies on the teaching of speaking. I conducted this study at one of the senior high schools located in Situbondo by employing case study inquiry which aimed to investigate teacher’s teaching strategies in teaching speaking skills. The participant of this research was an English teacher. Then, I collected the data by conducting semi-structured interview and observation. The interview was audio-recorded, and I also wrote some field notes during the observation. The interview and observation results were transcribed afterward. To analyze the data, I used thematic qualitative data analysis adapted from Braun and Clarke (2006) through inductive coding, there were two emergent themes and six sub-themes. The first theme is the teaching speaking strategies. I identified the themes from the sub-themes of discussion strategy, presentation strategy, and storytelling strategy. The second theme is the implementation of those strategies used by the experienced EFL teacher. I identified the themes from the sub-themes of how the teacher implemented the discussion strategy, presentation strategy, and storytelling strategy in the learning process. In the findings, I portrayed the teaching speaking strategies used by the experienced EFL teacher and how the teacher implemented those strategies in the learning process. This research is expected to provide the source of information and useful for other English teacher about the strategies used to teach speaking skill and the implementation of it, since the result of this study was expected to investigate anexperienced EFL teacher’s strategies on teaching speaking skills. This research is also expected to contribute to the future researchers who wants to conduct and broader further studies as a reference related to the topic of the strategies used to teach speaking skill and its implementation. Moreover, it will be better if the future researchers investigate not only experienced teacher, but also they can investigate the novice teacher in order to explore various teaching speaking strategies and its implementation. Also, it will be better if the future researchers not only focus on the strategies used by the teacher and its implementation but also on its influence to the students’ speaking skills improvement and their perceptions towards it in order to broader the investigation about teaching speaking strategies