The Problem of Communicative Approach Implementation in Teaching Speaking

The intention of this writing was to present some findings based on the field research with the main focus on the difficulties faced by the English teachers in applying Communicative Approach to teaching speaking. In addition, this study was also aimed to reveal the ways how the teachers solve the problems and what their suggestions are to enhance the students’ speaking proficiency. This study took place at SMA 1 Rikit Gaib where three English teachers of this school were chosen as the subjects. In obtaining the data, three kinds of techniques were employed-that is, questionnaires, observations, and interviews. The research results revealed that all of English teachers faces several difficulties in implementing Communicative Approach. The difficulties can be classified into four categories: teachers related problems, students related problems, education system related problems, and method or approach related problems. The teachers and students related problems were, for instance, teachers do not have sufficient time to develop communicative materials; the teachers have deficiency in spoken English; the students have low motivation in class participation; the students have different abilities; the students have poor vocabulary and grammar mastery. Other problems were, for example, big class size and scarcity of communicative materials. There have been some efforts carried out by English teachers to overcome the problems such as inviting the students to study outside the classroom, teaching grammar in special session, and making a group discussion. The teachers also suggested many things for implementation of Communicative Approach and the students’ oral competency improvement such as adding more classroom and making extracurricular activities such as speaking club.