Monday, May 11, 2015

Using Task-Based Language Teaching in Developing Students’ Speaking Ability

            Teaching method is something which officially important for you as the teacher if you want your student successfully facing the real world in the future. Further, teaching speaking is a challenging responsibility as there are many problems related to everyday practice (Sinatra, 2010). More, teacher should be creative in developing students’ speaking ability. Thus, a task-based activity becomes a solution for speaking problem, underlining the use of language is a medium to improve students’ vocabularies and the way they perform by their own way. Knowing the effects of this approach is not less significant to consider.
Firstly, students tend to be active and participate with great motivation towards tasks and activities in a TBL environment. It offers a platform for students to display their skills through their efforts and develops them further. By that reason, my opponent said that task-based learning requires a high level of creativity and initiative on the part of the teacher. If the teachers are limited to more traditional roles or do not have time and resources to implement task-based teaching; this type of teaching may be impossible to apply in speaking class. Moreover, students will be bored by the same method that thaught more and over. However, as the teacher is a must for the them having a high level of creativity, especially in this type. In addition, we live on globalization area nowadays which all the things served through internet. There are a lot of sources can take by the teacher to cover their creativity problem. More, the one thing which is really important in speaking class is students’ willingness to speak more. Furthermore, TBLT is more student-centred. This allows them to use all the language forms they know and to learn them (Willis, 2006). Hence, in this type of learning, the creativity of teacher can still be defeated by the desire of students to speak and explore their knowledge and also improve their vocabularies. From this situation, teacher can also take the advantages from students by what they want to to explore in real-life situation.
Secondly, the interaction is believed to facilitate language aqcuisition as students have to try to understand each other and to express their own meaning. On the other hand, some people might think that the classroom situation in the teaching and learninng is not conductive. Learners often feel afraid to say things in a foreign language classroom by the reasons that they worried in making mistakes, simply shy of the attention that their speech attracts. However, this condition becomes the duty for teachers to discover the problem. Surely, teacher here is expected to give the same turn to the students to express their opinion about the material or object which is discussing. Here are four steps that suggested by Ur in his book (1999:120); First, much of the time should be used for the activity involving learners to talk. So, in this situation precisely teacher should apply the student-center method. Second, classroom activity should not be dominated by talkative participants. Teacher here should take control for those students and give a chance for others to speak evenly. Third, learners are eager to speak because they are interested in topic. From the topic, learners have something to say about it, they want to contribute their own meaning with regard to target or objective. Last, learners express themselves in utterance that interdependent, easily comprehensible to each other, and of an acceptable level of language accuracy.
Thirdly, it is enjoyable and motivating. I strongly believed that the learners can enjoy the task because it can accomodate any level of students and provide them with interesting activities focusing on the meaning rather than form. Teacher may provide the students with key vocabulary or grammatical constructs, these will be presented as suggestions and the students will be encouraged to use what they are comfortable with in order to complete the task. Then, while the learners enjoying that media, they will attract to explore and increase their language capability. Murni (2008) stated that task-based learning adopted all thinking concepts that the learners should be the first position. In addition, the goals may refer to a range of general outcomes (communicative, affective, and cognitive). Goals are not always explicitely stated, and also a task does not always have a single goal. A complex task may involve a range of activities that move the learners towards several goals (Nunan, 1989:48-49).The task may also completed by using pictures, audio recordings, or video materials, and demonstrating the task. In addition, communicative goals include following categories: Establishing and mantaining interpersonal relationships, and through these to exchange information, ideas, opinions, attitudes, and feeling, and to get things done; acquiring information from more or less public sources in the target language. In other word, in this task, students or learners are free exploring and express their idea based on their own language.
In conclusion, task-based learning and teaching or TBLT is very potential to apply in speaking classroom. Therefore, good comunication and cooperation between teacher and students is needed in this method; the teacher should be able to design the task which are suiteble to the students’ needs and curriculum, and the design of task should consider students’ interest in the classroom. In addition, based on the advantages that stated before, I believe that task-based learning is method that compatible to apply in speaking class.
References
Cahyono, B.Y. 2010. The Teaching of English language Skills and English Language Component. Malang: State University of Malang Press.
Nunan, D. 2001. Aspect of Task-based Syllabus Design. Retrieved form     http://www.nunan.info
Nunan, D. 1989. Designing Task for The Communicative Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sinatra, A.F. 2009. Optimizing Task-Based Activity to Improve Students’ Speaking Ability. Surakarta: Sebelas Maret University.
Ur, P. 1999. A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Willis, J. 2006. Task Based Language Learning. Retrieved from http: //www.wikipedia.org

By: Agung Bimo Baskoro
Persuasive Academic





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