Essay On Speaking Skills

Teaching English as a foreign language depends on the four skills which are: writing, reading, listening and speaking. This latter is considered as the most important communication skill, whereas most students need to acquire. The term speaking has been defined by many researchers and writers. Therefore, it has more than one definition according to each author’s point of view. Tarigan (1990, p.3-4) defines that “speaking is a language skill that is developed in child life, which is preceded by listening skill, and at that period speaking skill is learned”. It means that speaking is the basic skill of language in addition to listening . According to Grognet A.G (1997, p.136), “ Speaking is one of the skills that have to be mastered by students

Concerning the importance of speaking skill, Gammidge (2004, p.7) claims that "Speaking is a highly challenging yet essential skill for most learners to acquire." In addition, Renandya and Richards (2002) state that “a large percentage of the world's language learners study English in order to develop proficiency in speaking”(p.201). Many English foreign language students consider the mastery of speaking skill a priority. Besides, they evaluate their success according to their spoken language proficiency. (Richards, 2008, p.19) For many teachers, teaching speaking is so important. Burns and Goh (2012, p. 1-2) claim that teachers do much efforts to help their students develop their speaking abilities. For them speaking skill is important because of three main reasons. First, all language learners should be able to communicate well with the foreign language speakers. Second, many students are good in reading and writing, but they have poor speaking and listening abilities. Finally, many students memorize words from dictionaries, but they could not use them to speak in English or to communicate in formal situations. Therefore, teaching speaking is very important part in English language teaching and