Chapter 4: The Psychology of Speaking English
Assalamualaikum wr. wb.
The research reveals that students’ English speaking performance is negatively affected by psychological factor as they have good level in English grammar and vocabulary but are not confident while speaking English is concerned. English teachers should be aware of the fact that students lack confidence to speak English.
In reference to the data from the observations, the results have shown the remarks such as:
(1) When the students have to do some assignments or group discussions then to present the findings in front of the class or by using PowerPoint, they do the assignments and prepare the PowerPoint using English, but most of them do the presentation using Indonesian or mixing English with Indonesian. In one hand, if the presentation is done using Indonesian, the class is active and students ask so many questions about the topic being presented. In other hand, if the presentation is done using English, the students can understand, but none or very few of them ask questions about the topic being presented.
(2) Sometimes, most of the students who start using English to answer to questions or to ask questions to lecturer end up by using Indonesian owing to multiple hesitations. In reference to the remarks mentioned above during the classroom observations, ten of the students were found available to give their opinions about the remarks being done. All of the ten students admit the remarks to be true among them. Then they agreed that their main psychological barrier in speaking English was due to a lack of confidence. In fact, since the students do not feel able to speak English in a natural way, and since they are always thinking abouthow to pronounce correctly a word or how to use the correct grammar structures, they said that it is difficult to feel confident. The second, and somehow connected, is making mistakes, because most of them think that people may laugh at them if they mispronounce some words as in Indonesia is referred to “Takut salah”; then they prefer not to interact in English until they know for sure that they are not making any mistake.In addition, some students’ own perception of the language can be negative and can appear as a reluctance in speaking English or barrier. For example, many students expressed that speaking English outside the classroom is a style of people who just like to show off since using English makes most students feel uncomfortable while interacting with people. Another conception is that students think that language is complicated and difficult, so they already put a barrier since they don’t make any effort and they tell themselves that they do not have the ability to learn that language. All that formerly mentioned are widely observable on those English learners.
To answer the questions on what have been noticed during the classroom observations about students’ reluctance from speaking English, the students complain about problems such as being anxious, being nervous, being worried of making mistakes, feeling shy, and feeling frustrated while performing in English for the communicative purposes. Those various complaints from the interview were cross-check with the field notes from the observation from which the researcher realized that the reluctance of the students from speaking English is caused by their psychology. The data gained from the students’ perspective in terms of causes of psychological factor negatively affect their English speaking performance are the fear of making mistakes, the shyness, the hesitation, and the lack of confidence. Most of them are afraid not to be laughed and mocked by their friends in case of mispronouncing some words.
Regarding to fear of making mistakes and shyness, some students believe, not to have problem if they just have to talk to each other using English, but they said to feel shy if they make mistakes while talking to lecturers or when presenting in front of the class. This implies that the students’ fear of making mistakes is also due to the shyness they feel when they fail to produce accurate English in front of their lecturers or in front of the class. Two students confirmed that the fact their feeling shy is part of their cultural background as shy persons.
Regarding to hesitation and lack of confidence, according to the students, lack of confidence is something that happens to them when they are talking to someone who’s English speaking is more superior to theirs like lecturers or native English speakers and so on. To them, if it happens that the person does not understand something about what they are talking about, they can suddenly see themselves in a deep hesitation without being able to distinguish correct from wrong about what they have to say. Most of those students think that their English speaking is bad since they do not sound like native English speakers. As a matter of fact, they keep silent until they are convinced for sure that what they have to say is really correct and well pronounced as a native English speaker’ s English.
Waalaikumsalam wr. wb.
Komentar
Posting Komentar