THE WEAKNESS OF CONVENTIONAL

METHOD IN TEACHING SPEAKING SKILL

We learn to speak by speaking. If you are shy about to speaking English,

how can you expect your students to overcome their fears about speaking
English?

Swain (1985 : 3), Task for Teacher Education. UK: Addisson

Wesley Longman. Ltd.

The frequent complaint mainly in secondary schools is that learners do not

respond, or take too long a time to respond, or speak too softly.

Yap, Kok Keong (1979 : 18), Listening and Speaking: Problems

and prospects in the Malaysian Context. Unit Bahasa-Bahasa.

Many educators have been voicing complain that educational system is too
dependent upon examination. It is often said that students study and
teachers teach not the subject, but how to pass the examination.

Katchen (1979 : 5), Language Teaching and Learning Styles.

Across Cultures ILE, Hong Kong.

Sometimes the planned curriculum is not realistic and well beyond

what can be expected to be accomplished by poor learners. There is no
real “spoken grammar” the teacher can use to guide him or her. For the
non-fluent teacher, therefore, it is far easier pretending to teach
 Strevens (1987 : 6), The Nature of Language Teaching. Newbury
House Publishers, New York.

The teacher is not teaching students higher level skills, for one reason or
another, and students are simply practising the language they use all the
time. Boredom then sets in, students lose interest, and errors become
fossilised.

Strevens (1987 : 7), The Nature of Language Teaching. Newbury

House Publishers, New York.

Teachers are sometimes unclear about what the real aims of the lesson
are. The student may then be expected to speak English, with the
teacher unaware that reading and speaking make different demands
and no teaching of spoken skills has occurred.

Strevens (1987 : 7), The Nature of Language Teaching. Newbury

House Publishers, New York.
The curriculum is centrally controlled. Teachers often complain about
the insufficient time they have for English, but cannot do much about
it because the time allocation is centrally controlled.

Strevens (1987 : 8), The Nature of Language Teaching. Newbury

House Publishers, New York.

Refers to the guarded and taciturn behavior of students who refuse to

speak, as the “shyness syndrome”.

Ian G. Malcolm (1987 : 5), UK: Addisson Wesley Longman. Ltd.

Learner-centred classrooms where learners do the talking in groups

and learners have to take responsibility for using communicative
resources to complete a task are shown to be more conducive to
language learning than teacher-centred classes.

Long M.H & Richards, J.C. (1987), Methodology in TESOL. USA:

Heinle&Heinle.

TAN KAI XIN S4