EMPIRICAL AND PRACTICAL ANALYSIS ON THE EXPERIENCE OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT STUDENTS IN LEARNING SPEAKING SKILLS

Abstract

For many years, the teaching and learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) has been predominated by the teacher-centered approach implying behaviouristic’s paradigm. In many EFL classes in Indonesian higher education, it is common for EFL learners to be asked instead of asking questions to develop their speaking skills. Consequently, students are not adequately confident to express themselves in English. This article is aimed to investigate how the English Department (ED) students develop their speaking skills. In particular, it is to portray the ways, experiences, and challenges of the ED students regarding the progress of their spoken English. This article employed qualitative research approach while considering constructivists’ paradigm. In order to obtain in-depth information regarding the issues being investigated, this research used google form-based interviews. To reinforce the results of the interviews, face-to-face conversations were conducted along with the on-going observations of the researchers. The results of the research showed that the majority of the ED students found it difficult to speak English fluently. It further showed that many of the ED students were not able to speak due to lack of vocabularies, having lack of confidence and poor grammatical knowledge. The implication of the research is to inform lecturers and educational stakeholders in Islamic higher education to provide a well-devised curriculum that introduce the use of technology from which lecturers could develop good lesson plans along with suitable materials and media to enhance English speaking skills of the ED students.