Impact of Communicative Activities on Improving Students’ Speaking Skills in English as Second Language

This research is conducted to see the impact of communicative activities in students speaking skills in English as second language. And it is reached to a conclusion that communicative activities cause longer student speaking time in class. Moreover, the students mostly state that they learn better through communicative activities. Using language as a tool for communication rather than an aspect to learn will serve better. Language isn’t learnt but acquired such as the mother tongue. That’s why it should be done naturally just like a baby making baby steps to start uttering first words. Expectedly, singing a memorized song is found extremely effective by 40% of the students. This is a strong proof that students feel like they are really learning English when they use this knowledge in their daily lives. Memorizing new vocabulary follows it with a 35%. This would show us the importance of meaningful input until the students are competent enough to utter a language. Communicative activities are in third place with 33.3%. As well as researchers, students have the awareness about how effective using the language through communicative activities. Reading comprehension is found extremely effective by 32.50%. Here, one point is essential. A reading comprehension activity can be made communicative by the teacher or just a dull answer the questions activity. If the teacher does pre-reading activities such guessing what the text is about looking at the first sentence or post-reading activities such as writing an alternative ending to the text together with their peers in groups. Roleplays are another way to make a reading activity more communicative. At this stage, the teacher\u27s role is rather critical. Brainstorming is found extremely effective by 28.95%. Students enjoy while they are sharing their opinions but it should be a controlled activity as there is the risk of getting lost about what is requested by the teacher. This way, more students might feel brainstorming activities are helping them well. Filling in the blanks activity is found extremely effective by 22.50%. This shows us that the students find communicative activities more effective than the ones that are not. It is strange that picture storytelling is found extremely effective by 17.50 while 40% find it effective even though it is a communicative activity but if we take into consideration the percentage of effective option, it is still appreciated by students in terms of teaching success. Another unexpected point is that students find roleplay only 20% extremely effective while the percentage of effective is 27.5%. The perception of students’ roleplay activities can be another subject to be researched as well as picture storytelling. It is obvious that the SST increased drastically during communicative activities. What we, as educators, expect from the students in ESL classes is just speaking the target language. Because language is a living mechanism and as long as you speak it you can keep up with it. Just like the first language learning, learners first save and then start uttering English. It doesn’t matter how grammatically correct a baby can speak. As long as he/she can communicate, we count that they speak the language. According to Sirbu, 2015, ‘’Language is essentially a means of communication among the members of a society.’’ (p.1) That’s why we should focus on increasing students\u27 speaking time. As the saying goes; ‘’Practice makes perfection.’’ The more the learners speak the language, no matter correctly or false, the more they will learn it