Assessing Young Learners’ Speaking Ability in the Fifth Grade of Three Elementary Schools in Padang Essay

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTIONA. Background of the caper Communicative view development in position accomplishment makes the focus on incline learn changed. What once became structurally foc apply, it now moves toward conceiveingful langu get on with-foc gived. Students atomic number 18 non asked to memorize structure- ground dialogues with forth knowing the import any much. at that place be no to a greater extent(prenominal) grammatically controlled sentences for students meaningless repetition. Dialogues, if apply, center around communicatory functions and atomic number 18 non normally memorized (Richards & Rodgers, 1986). That makes the article of faith of address becomes the core part of position breeding. Just like the fully growns, new-fashi iodind scholars immediately ar too taught harangue meaningfully and communicatively.However, childlike learners expect distinctive peculiaritys comp ared with adult learners. hotshot of them is children are still grow ing cognitively, linguistically, heartyly, emotionally, and physically (Teaching association essay youthful Learners Handbook for Teachers, 2010). In other(a) words, in teaching speaking to them, teachers rent to go steady childrens development of skills in the indwelling langu get on with first gear. Young learners overly enthral rhythmic and repetitive speech to a greater extent than adults do. They are to a greater extent likely to variation with language than adults are, and they usher out be more effectively engaged through stories and games (Peck, 2009).The contrastive proficiencys and approaches in teaching speaking to untested learners lead to different ways in the speaking appraisal. This is the chore faced by Indonesian raw learners teachers nowadays. Most teachers do non know how they should evaluate their youthful learners speaking efficiency some in conclusion choose to skip the speaking judicial decision and focus on pencil-paper-tests. Thus, this research is conducted to visit and reveal ways of assessing four-year-old learners speaking ability.B. Identification of the bother Based on the background above, the speaking judging techniques used for young learners should be different from the adult. It should be suited with their cognitive, linguistic, kindly, emotional, and physical development. As we looked upon vocal communication Assessment Principles and Classroom Practices by brown (2010) and integrated it with curriculum standard in Indonesia, KTSP 2006, young learners go out be soften to be assessed in imitative and intensive speaking categories, such as imitating teachers saying, say response tasks, read-aloud tasks, and dialogue completion tasks. substitute(a) assessments such as interviews and conferences stern also be applied for them.C. Limitation of the fuss In this research, the problem testament be focused on the speaking assessment techniques in the fifth grade of trio selected elementary t ake aims in Padang.D. Formulation of the Problem * What kind of speaking assessment technique used by elementary school face teachers? * Why do they use such techniques?E. Purpose of the Research The mathematical function of this research is to discover and reveal the technique used by English teachers to assess elementary school students speaking ability.F. consequence of the Research Theoretically, this research is aimed to give a translation of how speaking assessment for young learners done in Indonesia. Practically, some techniques used by English teachers provided here can be a theme of resource speaking assessment.CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF connect LITERATUREA. The Nature of Assessment in that location has been various explanation of what assessment is. Brindley (as give tongue to in Linse, 2005) refers assessment as aggregation education and making judgments on a learners knowledge. It performer that in assessing students, we indispensability to find out what students know some the subject macrocosm taught and how far that intellect has reached the information indicator.In the same line with Brindley but with an addition, brownish (2010) states assessment as an ongoing surgery of collecting information about a given object of interest concord to procedures that are systematic and substantively grounded. In his program line above, brown implies that the process of collecting and sagacity students empathiseing is not done hospital attendant in one single date it is done continuously.Harris and McCann (1994) also give an all- crucial(a) note that in doing assessment teachers father to measure the performance of their students and the progress they make, as well as diagnose the problems they wealthy person and provide useful feedback. In other words, collecting and judging students intelligence is not enough finding out what becomes students problem and giving advice to them to overcome the problems is also important to create a more t riple-crown learning process.Based on the theories above, it can be understandn that assessment involves collecting information about students knowledge and judging their understanding in order to diagnose the learning problems they sire so that students can beat up useful feedback to be more-successful learners.B. The Nature of utterance As stated in the preceding chapter, immediatelys English teaching focuses more on communicative tendency of language learning than in the past. It leads to the more important consideration of speaking skills than in previous while. Just like assessment, there is also various definition of speaking. One of them is from Lingua Links (1998) that defines speaking as productive skill in the literal mode that involves more than upright pronouncing words. Referring to todays communicative view, of course speaking cannot be thought as unspoilt pronouncing words it needs to be meaningful, and communicative.Furthermore, Noonan (2003) states that , if pronunciation included, speaking involves three areas mechanics (pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary), functions (transaction and interaction), and social cultural norms and rules (turn-taking, rate of speech, etc). All of them are connected to each other and ascend that speaking is not only about what is uttered, but also the meaning and social purpose.C. The Nature of Young Learners Young learner is a child who is in their first six year of formal education, from age 6 to 12 (Teaching Knowledge Test Young Learners Handbook for Teachers, 2010). Many experts represent that it is beneficial to teach the children English since young age. TKT Young Learners (2010) notes one of the advantages that those children lead have positive self-esteem toward English and it will garter them to learn English more once they are adult. That is why teaching English to young learners considered important today. However, young learners have characteristics that make them different from the adults (Teaching Knowledge Test Young Learners Handbook for Teachers, 2010).First, they are still morally, cognitively, psychologically real. Based on Piagets opening of cognitive development, children in age 6-12 years old are still in concrete available thought stage, they already have the ability to do logical reasoning and understand reversibility with the help of concrete objects (Santrock, 1998). It meat that explaining theory will not do for them, we need to make them move, do games, sing, etc. Second, young learners often have no unambiguous reason for learning English. Unlike adults who indigence to do it because of the career-related reasons or teenagers that do it to bury an exam, young learners do not have concrete reason why they mustiness learn English. However, it does not mean they are not motivated to learn English their plantwill, energy, and curiosity to learning overcome that.Third, they may not always have well-developed literacy skills to reinforci ng stimulus their learning of English. Many children in the age of 6-12 years old are beneficial getting to know their first language. It means that as a teacher we need to not have too-high expectation and do more. Fourth, young learners often learn easily and embarrass quickly. It is related to the first characteristic that young learners are still developed morally, socially, and cognitively. Their still-ongoing developments in those basic things make them forget easily and learn slowly. This is why songs, agmes, and chants do best for them. D. Principles of Assessing Young LearnersAccording to METU throw Course Ware (2006), principles of assessing childrens language learning are1. Assessment should be seen from a learning-centered perspective. It means that we cannot get a true assessment by testing kids what they can do all. It has been stated by many experts that the stopping point of learning English is to be able to communicate meaningfully in English. Testing student s, let alone young children, as a rotating shaft to get true assessment will not congruent with the real goal of English learning and it will just be wasting time.2. Assessment should animation learning and teaching. This is something that is not also becomes a problem with young learners, but also with the adult. Before performance-based assessment is introduced, teachers chose paper-and-pencil tests as their source of assessing (Puppin, 2006). It becomes a problematic then since students do not see the connection amidst the learning and the test they are doing, they see them as two different incongruent things. If the assessment done is congruent with the learning they did, children will feel that what they have conditioned is useful.3. Children and parents should understand assessment issues. Their understanding will make the assessment process more meaningful since they can participate and supports greatly on behave of childrens English development. On the other hand, if the y do not understand why the teacher does this and that, there will be no good communication between these three subjects to help childrens development.E. Techniques of Speaking Assessment Brown (2010) states some techniques of speaking assessment based on students language development take aim Imitative Speaking This kind of assessment is intended to see whether students can re-create saying in English correctly. Eventhough it focuses on the accuracy of repeating words, it does not mean that it cannot be communicative and meaningful. Besides, in late years many experts have notice that an overemphasis on fluency can sometimes lead to the decline of accuracy in speech.Intensive Speaking There are four tasks in this kind of assessing tell response task, oral questionnaire, and picture-cued task. In oral questionnaires, students are first given time to read the dialogue to get its main(prenominal) idea and to think about the hold lines to fill in. Then, as the tape, teacher prod uces one part orally the students respond. In enjoin response task, students elicit a extra grammatical form of a chemise of a sentence. Such tasks are understandably mechanical and not communicative, but they do require minimal processing of meaning in order to produce the correct grammatical output.Picture-cued task requires a description from the students. Pictures may be very simple, designed to elicit a word or a phrase, or composed of a series that tells a story or incident. This task is meaningful since sometime a little sense of humor is injected. antiphonal Speaking Assessment of responsive tasks involves instruct interactions with an interlocutor, differing from intensive tasks in increased creativeness given to the student and from interactive tasks by somewhat limited length of utterances. The kinds of this assessment are question and answer, giving operating instructions and directions, and paraphrasing. Questions and answers involve oral interaction with teacher.