Teaching speaking through video

In the teaching of speaking to use university students, the teacher has to realize that most of the students are not capable of communicating their ideas in English. To overcome this problem, the teacher should create interesting techniques that encourage the students to achieve the objectives of teaching speaking. However, there are lots of constraints to achieve the objectives. First, the time allotted is too little. Second, there are so many students in the class that not all students can practice speaking. Third, the students are reluctant to participate in the speaking class since many students feel uncomfortable when they practice speaking English. They are afraid of failure, being laughed at, and being ridiculed by their friends. Looking at the constraints above, the students need encouragement, motivation and chances, since they will easily get bored, lose their motivation and are reluctant to participate in classroom activities if they are not encouraged to express their thoughts, ideas and feelings in the language they are learning. Teaching speaking through video is designed with the expectation of being a useful help for teachers to overcome the students' problem in developing their speaking ability. The advantages of using video with students can be summarized as follows (1) Students enjoy language learning with video. (2) Video communicates meaning better than other media. (3) Video is an effective way to study body language. (4) Students gain confidence through repetition and imitation. (5) Video leads to an awareness of the culture of English speaking countries. (6) Video represents a positive exploitation of technology. (7) Video serves as a take off point for varied activities. Using video most effectively in a conversation class, there are four steps to make the teaching successful. They are preparation, presentation, discussion and evaluation. In preparation, the teacher should choose a good topic for students to learn and arrange the discussion groups. (It depends on the film for example if the people in the film consists of 3 or 4 people in each group). In presentation, the teacher asks the students to sit quietly and watch the video program carefully because at the first time, there is no sound of the video program just the picture and the students give comments. The second time teacher asks students to see and listen carefully to the video program and sometimes the teacher pauses the video program and asks them to predict the next episode in form of the dialogue to check students’ comprehension. The teacher arranges the groups for discussion, gives explanation and discusses the results. In discussion, the teacher asks students to give the title of the video program and express their ideas either individually or groups. In evaluation, the teacher can give extra credit for interesting questions and ideas or who can speak naturally and lively. Finally, the writer hopes that this thesis may contribute some ideas to the English teachers, especially in their efforts of developing and encouraging the students’ speaking skill