The Importance Of Teaching Speaking For Young Learners

Teaching Speaking for Young Learners According to Nunan (2003 : 3), teaching speaking is to teach students to produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns, use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the second language, select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social setting, audience, situation and subject matter, organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence, use language as a means of expressing values and judgments, use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses, which is called as fluency. Then, Jeremy Harmer (2007: 123) in his book “How to Teach English” said that there are three main reasons for getting students to speak in the classroom. First, speaking activities provide rehearsal opportunities (chances to practice real life speaking in the safety of the classroom). Second, speaking tasks in which students try to use any or all of the languages they know provide feedback for both teacher and students. Third, students have opportunities to activate the various elements of the language they have stored in their brains, the more automatic their use of these elements becomes. Thus, teachers should have the ability in designing various teaching-learning activities/tasks that can make students speak/talk in the classroom.

Good speaking activities can and should be extremely engaging for the students. If all students are participating fully and if the teacher has set up the activity