DEVELOPING ACADEMIC SPEAKING MATERIAL: WHAT DO COLLEGE STUDENTS REALLY NEED?

Abstract

As the official language of ASEAN Economic Community, the ability to use English in communication will inevitably be listed as the main requirement for the process of both job recruitment and career development in the participating countries. Despite of its importance, the process of teaching English i.e. speaking presents the lecturer with several challenges. Some of which are students’ inability to organize their ideas to speak, the inappropriate implemented instructional framework, and other related problems. Regarding to this phenomenon, this research is aimed to design speaking instructional material for English Departement students. This study belongs to Research and Development (R & D). It was conducted in English Department of STKIP AbdiPendidikanPayakumbuh. The steps involved in this research were analyzing the existing material, doing need analysis, designing the material, and validating the material. The data were collected through observation, interview, and questionnaire. The research findingsreveal that there are some facets in speaking;communicating opinions and information on daily topics,using appropriate language and diction while speaking,organizing ideas coherently,expressing and justifying the opinions, and speculating about an issue. From these findings, it is suggested for the lecturer to design instructional material that corresponds to students’ needs since it will assist not only the students but also  for the lecturer to achieve the learning objectives.