An Analysis of Teachers’ Strategies to Encourage Students’ Self-Confidence in Speaking

Some students have a lot of problems in speaking English, one of which is lack of confidence that makes them nervous to speak. This descriptive qualitative study was conducted to analyze teachers’ strategies to encourage students’ self- confidence in speaking English. Purposive sampling technique was applied to select appropriate samples from the population of second grade students in MTs Darul Ihsan. Five English teachers teaching at this school were interviewed. Five students having highest rank in class VIIIA were also purposively recruited as the participants of this research. Then, the data from interview were analyzed by using coding technique. The findings showed that there were four strategies generally used by the teachers in teaching speaking; motivation, presentation, cooperative activity and drilling. In addition, the teaching strategies used by the teachers were positively perceived by the students. This result also implied that the teachers were successful in encouraging students’ self-confidence, because they felt happy and enjoyed following the teaching-learning process. As result, it is suggested that teachers use appropriate strategies of teaching speaking in accordance with students’ characteristics and level of proficiency.