A Study on Speaking Difficulties Encountered by Third Semester of English Department Students of University of Islam Malang

Abstract

Speaking is the action of conveying information or expressing thoughts and feelings in spoken language, to be specific in English language. Speaking fluently will help us to deliver what message we want to say, without speaking, the student will have difficulty in learning process and have difficulty to communicate well. Yet, some difficulties faced by the students in learning speaking English. To overcome these difficulties, the students must know what kinds of their difficulties they faced in learning speaking English. Therefore, the writer is interested in conducting this study dealing with the students’ difficulties they faced in learning English. The design of this research is using descriptive mixed method which focuses on the difficulties owned by the students. The purpose of this study is to investigate the students’ difficulties in learning speaking English. Participants of this study are the third semester students of English Department at University of Islam Malang from Class A, Class B, and Class C who took speaking subject. The instruments used are questionnaire and interview. There are 10 questions in questionnaire and 2 questions in interview that asking about the students’ difficulties. The source of the questionnaire was taken from the previous study. The data is analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. The finding of the study showed that the majority of the students have difficulties in anxiety, lack of focus, and hard to maintain focus while they are speaking in English which related to psychological aspects difficulties. Other difficulties are lack of vocabulary, mispronunciation, and poor grammar knowledge which related to linguistic aspects difficulties. In conclusion, the third semester students of English Department at University of Islam Malang have their own difficulties in learning Speaking English. However, the majority of the students face anxiety and lack of vocabulary as their difficulties both in linguistic and psychological factors. The writer expects that the result of this study can help the lecturers to overcome the students’ difficulties and determine what strategies to help them. The students’ can also create their own strategies to cope with their own difficulties as they know what kind of their difficulties. The writer also expects that the findings of this research can be additional information for the next writers who are interested to conduct the study with similar topic. Keywords: Speaking Subject, Students, and Difficulties.