The Practice of Teaching Oral Communication in
Indonesian Schools: Expectation and Reality
Nenden
Sri Lengkanawati
Oral communication is
believed to fulfill a number of functions. In pedagogical contexts, it helps
students to retain, and strengthen critical understanding of information. Oral
communication assignments can also aid students in organizing their thoughts
and synthesizing material to communicate with others. The assignments when
appropriately tailored will provide opportunities for students to perform
cognitive skills of organization, analysis, argumentation, and critical
thinking. Learning oral communication, therefore, will equip students with a
set of skills they can use in their lives in general and in improving their
language mastery in particular. Using a survey method, this paper will
investigate common methods and techniques English teachers use in improving
students' oral communication skills. Thus, it will cover a discussion on
principles of teaching oral communication (TOC) including those relevant to TOC
in the 2004 English Curriculum; teacher perception on new methods in TOC; and
how teachers handle difficult aspects of the spoken language-clustering,
redundancy, reduced forms, performance variables, colloquial language, rate of
delivery, stress rhythm and intonation, and interaction. The data will be
collected from a sample of secondary schools in
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Lengkanawari, N. S. (2005,
April). The practice of teaching oral
communication in Indonesian schools: Expectation and reality. Paper presented at the RELC International Seminar,
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