2.3 ENGlISH SPEAKING ABILITY
In Thailand, English is regarded as an international Langrage. Some scholars pointed out that most Thai people rarely use English in their daily lives, especially listening and speaking skills, skills, which are considered to be serious problems for Thai people when communicating with foreigners.
As the global economy is becoming integrated, companies need their non-English speaking employees to have basic skills of conversational workplace English to help the companies the companies stay competitive. The ability to speak a language can human communication and speaking in a second language has been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills required by the employers. Riemer (2007) indicated oral communication skills are considered as one f the best career enhancers and to the single biggest factor in determining an employee’s carrer success of failure. Learning to speak a foreign language requires more than knowing its grammatical rules. Learner must also acquire the knowledge of how native speakers use the language in the particulay contexts. Each learner may face different problems when they speak English. Gan (2012) summarized the four problems underlying English speaking ability.
The first problem is the grammatical problem. Grammatical competence is an important part of English speaking skill. They pointed out that learners must have the knowledge of words and sentences; that is, they must understand how words are segmented into various sounds, and how sentences are stressed in particular ways. Thus, grammatical competence enables learners to use and understand English language structures accurately and unhesitatingly, Which contributes to their fluency. In addition, Krashen(1988) reported that some students need to ensure grammatical accuracy, they would think about the particular grammar item being involved before producing thee utterance.
The second problem is the vocabulary problem. In the present study, inadequate vocabulary was also reported as a prevalent concern among the students. The result of Gan’s study indicated that this vocabulary problem was the major reason why they sometimes could not express themselves clearly. Moreover, Liu and Jackson (2008) supported that lack of vocabulary was regarded as a main obstacle for spoken communication by Chinese English learners.
The third problem is the pronunciation problem, Imperfect pronunciation was one of the main problems faced by L2 learners. In the study, some L2 learners mentioned in the interviews that they had to speak carefully in order to focus on pronouncing certain words. When they speak fast, there will likely be inaccuracies in some sounds. The last problem is inadequate opportunities to speak English. Enadequate opportunities to speak English were one of the main problems faced by L2 learners. In the study, some L2 learner did not think there are enough chances for us to speak in everyday life.
There are many approaches to learn English speaking. Seltzer (2005) suggested effective and efficient study techniques to learn a langrage by self sturdy such as watching movies in a foreign language with or without subtitles and attending a foreign language course. Seltzer (2005) also summarized that if the learners try to be immersed in the environment where the langrage is spoken, they tend to advance their speaking skill quicker than those who are. The study supported the earlier sturdy of Gan’s regarding opportunities to speak English.