Introduction
English is one of the most powerful important languages in the world which is used as the first language in many countries. Even in countries where English is not native language, they use for business and tourism. English is known as the international language as well as business language. Knowing English increases people’s professional value of getting good jobs in either home country or foreign country. Speaking English gives access to a world entertainment. World top Movies, books, music are published in English language. If you speak English you do not want to approach subtitle or translation anymore and you can enjoy your favorite movies, books, music on your own.
English consists of 4 skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. Vocabulary, structure, pronunciation and spellings are taught in order to stimulate above 4 skills which are essential to approach the English language. The skill speaking has same value as the rest of the skills. Speaking is an act of making vocal sounds. We can say that talking intends to speak, or communicating one's contemplations and emotions in communicated in language. Nunan (2005:48) agrees that speaking is more difficult than other skills because it occurs in real time and the speaker cannot revise or change what the speaker says at that time.
Understudies are relied upon to learn four English aptitudes similarly and furthermore the English instructor is required to show each ability similarly. In fact, there were some problems found by the researcher for grade 11 students of Mahmud Ladies College, Kalmunai. Speaking was hardly carried out equally and neglected by the English teacher and the value that students’ speaking skills were below average. As well the time they spend in communicating with other learners were very less. That influenced the reduction of allocated time to learn speaking. Grade 11 students tended to be passive in the classroom because the English teacher used monotonous learning activities and students had different background knowledge of English. That influenced their motivations and self confidence to learn speaking.
Background of the study
English is taught in Sri Lanka for many purposes. It is considered as an important subject for each student who are learning in primary and secondary schools. English is consisting of four major skills, they are reading, writing, speaking and listening. Speaking is practiced in Mahmud Ladies College, Kalmunai which is maintaining monolingual and bilingual education parallelly. This school is in Kalmunai Education Zone. In this school 12 English Trained Teachers available for teaching 2500 students from grade six to GCE (A/L) classes.
There are 11 parallel classes in grade 11 in which two classes maintain bilingual education system. The students of this school came from high class family and normal family. As well, some students came from out of the district and province. Although, 70% of students in grade 11 class are came from poor family background which face more difficulties each day financially and unable to attend any extra classes. So, they find difficulties in speaking. Therefore, the researcher wishes to find the solution to the speaking difficulties of grade 11 students.
Thesis statement
For this research, the researcher selected grade 11 class students of Mahmud Ladies College, Kalmunai. When the researcher tested their speaking skill by interviewing them, the most of the students were failed to communicate without mistakes. The students futile to understand the questions we connect to them as well they face difficult to answer properly and also, they couldn’t understand the proper meaning for some vocabularies. According to this problem the researcher decided to motivate the students to get improvement in speaking skill who are having problem in communicating fluently. This motivation will help them to get more practice in conversation for their future purposes and studies.
Objectives
- To find out the aspects affecting the achievement of students in the subject of English and improving speaking skill in grade 11 class.
- To analyze how communicating activities influence in improving speaking skill.
- To evaluate the benefits of communicating activities for speaking.
- Increasing communicating activities with peer groups, teachers, co-learners and others
Research questions
- What tactics can be used to improve the speaking skills of students?
- What are the likely ways to solve the communicating problems faced by grade 11 students?
- How to make them catch the vocabularies and its meaning quickly?
- What are the techniques can be applied to motivate them to form correct sentences with suitable vocabularies?
Significance of the study
This study will help the students to motivate and encourage themselves to indulge in communicating activities with peer groups, teachers, and others as well as inside and outside of the schools. It also engages teachers to allocate bit more time to practice speaking through providing more communicating activities in the classroom for the students and make them to form correct sentences from the mistakes they leave. Moreover, this study will ease the researchers to conduct further study in their topic as well.
Research methodology
All the grade 11 students of Mahmud Ladies College, Kalmunai are the population of this study while 20 students selected from grade 11 using simple random sampling method. Further the primary data were collected in the form of linking questions and interviewing the students and teachers and secondary data were collected from the statistical analysis report of oral test. In this study, a mixed methodology of research design which use both quantitative methodologies and qualitative methodologies are used for the purpose of collecting information.
Further, the researcher used mathematical method in order to assess the validity and reliability of the collected data and explained clearly with the use of tables and diagrams.
Limitations
The questionnaire is given by the researcher to the particular samples from the population in the classroom and teachers in order to collect the correct information. Pupils do not want to leave negative feedbacks about their teachers. Further teachers would not show interests in answering the questions given in the questionnaire. Therefore, this problem being tough challenges for collecting correct information from the people those who involve in this test.
In the 11th grade classroom there may be several students. So, the sample should be balanced the population in the classroom. If there are equal numbers of girls in each classroom the sample should be taken equally if it is different the sample should be taken percentage wise. So, the quantity of the sample must be maintained according to the numbers of the students in the classroom.
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