STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVES AND CHALLENGES IN

ENGLISH SPEECH PROGRAM

Miftahul Jannah1
Bustami Usman
Saiful Marhaban

Universitas Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this mixed method research is to describe the students’

perspectives, the students’ challenges and how they overcome those
challenges in English speech program. Approximately 68 students filled
the questionnaires and 15 of them were selected for the interview. The
instruments used in this study were a closed ended questionnaire
consisting of 22 questions adapted from the public speaking competence
rubric proposed by Schreiber, Paul and Shibley (2012) and the interview
guideline adapted from Abubakar, Atmowardoyo and Korompot (2017).
The findings of the study revealed that the English speech program was
an essential program to increase the students’ speaking ability (65%).
Moreover, the program gave advantages to the students (51%). It also
found out that the program mostly challenged the students to choose the
appropriate topic to the audience (69%) and to use good language (59%).
From the interview, it found out that the students made the following
efforts to overcome the challenges, namely making independent
preparation for the performance, doing practice with friends and having
consultation with classroom coordinators.

Keywords: challenge, public speaking, English speech program.

INTRODUCTION

Public speaking becomes a necessary skill for people in this modern

era. It is required whether in the social environment, academic
environment or the workplace. Public speaking is seen as one of the most
fundamental skills in any discipline. Dobrzinskiene (2016) states that

1
Corresponding author: [email protected]

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public speech takes a big role in communication in this modern society

which is one of the aspects that measures someone’s quality. Similarly,
Chollet et al. (2015) assert that public speaking is one of the interpersonal
skills required in any career and social life. Moreover, The ability to talk
in the public highly determines someone’s improvement in his career,
building good relationships, reducing conflict and easily doing
negotiations.
Schreiber and Hartranft (2017) state that many people are aware of
the importance of public speaking, but most of them avoid speaking in
the public place. They add that eventhough public speaking is not a
favorite activity to do, people can learn how to deliver the speech well.
Therefore, English speech program is an essential program for students
in order to prepare them to have adequate public speaking skill.
Previous studies presented the challenges and difficulties found by
students in speaking English. A study done by Dobrzinskiene (2016)
found that some of the respondents said that their anxiety disappeared
once they finished their public speech, various uncontrollable
psychological experiences such as irritability or worry. It was also found
that only a few students had willing to talk in public and a very limited
number of them tended to experience pleasant feelings while standing
and talking in front of the audience.
Similar study was conducted by Quyen, Nga and Nguyen (2018).
The findings showed that the students found both internal and external
challenges, especially the latter ones regarding the limitation of English
speaking environment and extracurricular activities. There were some
other findings such as lack of students’ vocabulary, speaking skill
strategies, a limited number of native teachers and limited English
speaking environment as the most inhibiting factors for students’
speaking skills.
The study conducted by Moulida (2019) revealed that the challenges
found by students relate both linguistics and nonlinguistic aspects. The
linguistic aspects were fluency, pronounciation and lack of vocabulary,
while non linguistic aspects were feeling nervous, anxious, afraid of
making mistake, the vocabulary loss, and afraid of being center of
attentention. Besides, there were some solutions in order to cope the
challenges such as often practice, listening to others talking, reading and
learning vocabulary, maximum preparation and practice speaking
English regularly.
Another study relating to this issue was done by Abubakar et al.
(2017) who investigated the students’ challenges in undertaking an

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English speech program at the Islamic Boarding School of Indonesian

musholla mosque association in Makasar. The results found that the
participants considered the three most significant problems that
challenged the students; peers generated anxiety, monotonous design of
the program, and a speech by rote. Moreover, there were two actions
done by the students to tackle the problems; consulting to supervising
teachers and preparing everything independently.
Those previous studies investigated the challenges in English speech
program which were focused on problems and difficulties. However, in
Aceh, there is a very limited research about this issue, whereas there are
many boarding schools in Aceh providing English speech programs as
one of the school extracurricular activities. This is a missing space that
the writers expected to fill through this study. It is a crucial object to be
explored more to find out the students’ perspectives about English
speech program, the challenges and how the students overcome the
challenges in order to help other students and improve the program itself.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Public Speaking
Public speaking is an activity to convey the idea to the spectators
(Schreiber & Hartranft, 2017). Slagell (2009) explains that public
speaking is delivering a speech to assign ideas to the audiences which
refers to communication activity. Public speaking is a common activity
done in the society with different types of public speaking depending on
contexts, for instance in the classroom, office or any other public places
through various types and functions. According to Triastuti (2006), there
are three types of public speaking; speaking to inform, speaking to
persuade, and speaking to entertain.

Public Speaking Competence

Some people successfully speak in front of audiences with
meaningful thoughts, while others fail to do it even after practicing many
times. To be an effective speaker, we have to know the competency of
public speaking. There are eleven speaking competencies based on
public speaking competence rubric (PSCR) according to Schreiber et al.
(2012), namely useful topic, engaging introduction, clear organization,
well-supported ideas, closure in conclusion, clear and vivid language,
suitable vocal expression, corresponding nonverbal, adapted to the
audiences, adept use of visual aid, convincing persuasion.

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Function of Speaking
Various studies have been tried to classify the function of speaking
in human interaction. According to Brown and Yule (1983) and Jones
(1996) as cited by Richards (2006), there are three categories of the
function of speaking including talk as interaction, talk as transaction, and
talk as performance. Basically, talking as interaction is a talk mainly
attending a social function. It focuses more on the speakers and how to
present themselves than to the message, for instance, when people meet,
greet each other, get in a small conversation, and recount their experience
due to being friendly and comfortable with the people. Talking as
transaction primarily focuses on the message rather than the participants
and how the social interaction used. The message should be
understandable while accuracy is not a priority. It is such as classroom
discussion, conversation in a shop, asking or giving opinions and
planning to do something with friends or family, etc. The third function
of speaking is talking as performance which refers to public talk. The
talk conveys the message systematically and accurately such as debate,
class debate, giving a lecture, public announcement and speech.

Types of Speech Delivery

There are several types of delivery to be successful in delivering a
speech based on needs and occasions. Jaffe (1995) and Kearney and Plax
(1996) affirm there are four modes of speech delivery.
a. Manuscript Delivery
Manuscript delivery is delivering the speech by reading the whole
text which is written including the detailed information, specific point or
exact number. This delivery model provides the most security for the
speakers because they only need to read the written text. It is usually used
for formal occasion such as ceremonial, radio or television reporter, etc.
On the contrary, it is not appropriate for most public speaking including
classroom speeches.
b. Memorized Delivery
Memorized delivery is delivering the speech by memorizing the
written text. This delivery model is similar to the manuscript mode where
the speakers write the script, but it lets the speakers practice repeatedly
until the whole text is remembered on their mind. Then, it allows the
speakers to move around and use gestures rather than holding the script.
Nevertheless, this mode has some disadvantages in which the new
speakers often forget the words that they had memorized and this
condition will build the fear. Besides, the speech is delivered in unnatural

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communication where the speakers keep remembering the words of the

speech.
c. Impromptu Delivery
It is delivering the speech which has no formal preparation or
sometimes a person is suddenly called to speak on the stage. Only some
people who are able to do this kind of delivery mode because it needs
much knowledge and experience so the speakers can deliver the speech
directly without preparation. However, then if the speakers are able to
deliver through this mode, they look smart and credible.
d. Extemporaneous Delivery
In contrast to impromptu delivery, this type of delivery requires the
speakers to prepare the headline or main points before delivering the
speech. Then, they practice delivering those points with different words
usage. This mode delivery is focused on the idea of going to be delivered
rather than the exact words written on the script. Thus, the speakers can
talk normally and uses gestures and body movements flexibly.
Therefore, it seems like a natural conversation in which the speaker can
respond to the audience spontaneously.
As indicated above, there are four different types of delivering a
speech. None of those types of delivery a speech is the best over the
other. Each type of speech delivery depends on the event of the speech
which has its advantages and disadvantages. Some people tend to
memorize the speech script in order to be well prepared. Sometimes, they
forget the word or sentence which have been memorized before the
performance which builds nervousness. Otherwise, some people are able
to do extemporaneous delivery or impromptu delivery.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This study applied a mixed-method research. It is combining both

quantitative and qualitative approaches by collecting and analyzing two
kinds of data to be investigated and find out more understanding about
the case of the study (Creswell, 2014).

Research Participants
This study was carried out at Oemar Diyan Islamic Boarding School
on the tenth grade students. A number of 68 respondents participated in
filling out the questionnaire. The respondents were chosen by applying
the purposive sampling technique. The students who have enrolled the
English speech program for four years were deemed to fulfill the criteria

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of the subject in this study. Then, the writers further chose 15 of them to
be interviewed because of the limit of time.

Research Instrument
The instruments used in this study to collect the data were the
questionnaire form and the interview guideline. The questionnaire with
close-ended form was to answer the first and second research question
asking the students’ perspectives about English speech program and the
students’ challenges in undertaking it. Leedy and Ormrod (2005)
emphasize that a close-ended question in the questionnaire provides
limited choices to answer and uses simple, clear, and unambiguous
language. Besides, the interview was done to collect the third research
question asking the students’ effort to overcome the challenges.

Technique of Data Collection

In collecting the data, the writers distributed the questionnaires to 68
students of the first grade of Senior High School of Oemar Diyan Islamic
Boarding School. The questionnaire was given for two different classes
which consisted of 34 students in each class. The writers collected the
data for four days; two days for distributing the questionnaire and two
days for interviewing the participants. Before distributing the
questionnaire, the writers asked permission from the headmaster. Then,
the writers made an appointment with the students for having a meeting
in order to fill the questionnaires. After selecting the schedule, the
researchers met the participants in the classroom. On the third and fourth
days, the researchers did the interview with 15 selected students.

Technique of Data Analysis

The data obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed by
statistical descriptive way by using percentage formula. Moreover, the
data obtained from the interviews were analyzed by using interactive
model analysis proposed by Miles, Huberman and Saldana (2014). There
are three steps to analyze the data namely: data condensation, data
display and drawing and verifying conclusions.

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RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Result
The researchers present the result of the study in three sections:
students’ perspectives about English speech program, students’
challenges, and students’ efforts to overcome the challenges.

1. Students’ Perspectives about English Speech Program

 English Speech Program increases students’ speaking skill

SD D
0% 3%
A
32%

SA
65%
SD D A SA

Figure 1. English Speech Program Increases Students’ Speaking

Skill

Figure 1 shows that 97% of the students had positive perception

towards English speech program and only 3% of the students had
negative perception about the English speech program. These
percentages indicate that most of the students perceived themselves as
having positive perception about the English speech program that can
improve students’ speaking ability.

 English Speech Program gives many advantages

SD D
0% 6%
SA
43%
A
51%

SD D A SA

Figure 2. English Speech Program Gives Many Advantages

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Students’ Perspectives and Challenges in English Speech Program (M. Jannah, B.
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Figure 2 reports the English speech program gives many advantages

to students. It shows that 51% of the students agreed and 43% of the
students strongly agreed to the statement. There were only 6% of the
students disagreed with the statement. It means that almost all of the
students’ believed that the English speech program gives many
advantages to the students.

2. Students’ Challenges in Delivering the Speech

80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%

Strongly agee Agree Disagree Strongly disagree

Figure 3. Students’ Challenges in Delivering the Speech

Figure 3 shows the challenges found by the students in delivering

the speech. Those challenges are adapted from Public speaking
competence rubric proposed by Schreiber et al. (2012). The figure shows
that the most challenging for the students was to choose a useful topic to
the audience. The second most challenging point for them was closure in
conclusion, while using engaging introduction was as challenging as
using clear and good language.

3. Students’ Efforts to Overcome the Challenges

 Practice
The most important things pointed out by the students was practice.
They thought that practice made someone able to perform better. As
Participant 3 said “I practice before delivering the speech. I practice in
front of 2 or 3 friends in the room.” Similarly, Participant 4 said “the
action that I do usually I prepare myself such as checking the language

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and grammar. We have to practice a lot to improve ourselves.”

Participant 4 also confirmed that to avoid being of feared or nervous
speaking in front of many people, he imagined talking in an empty
classroom or nobody was in front of him. It was also helpful for him. He
said “Imagine there is nobody in front of us when delivering the speech.”

 Comprehend the Text

Furthermore, ten out of fifteen students tended to understand the
topic rather than memorize the text which was aimed to avoid losing the
idea when delivering the speech if the students focused on the text. The
students elaborated what they undestood to the audience. As Participant
7 said:

“The solution that I do is usually when I come forward, I don’t want

to memorize the text, I prefer to understand the text well and then I
just use my language. It is a challenge for me bacause I have to think
how to deliver in a good sentence to be understandable. To be able
to present the text well, firstly, I usually write the text by myself. I
ususally look at the Indonesian text, then I translate into English,
then I explain by my own word.”

Participant 11 said understanding the text was better than

memorizing it. She said “I think it is not enough if we only share what
we have memorized based on the text, but we have to speak and explain
by our own word or explanation to make the speech more fruitful.” In
addition, another student confirmed that she comprehended the text well
before she performed in order to be able to use suitable expression.
Participant 15said “I try to understand the topic or text well before I
speak in the class. Then it can reduce my nervous feeling and I can use
suitable expression when delivering the speech.”

On the contrary, one of the students believed that both memorizing

text and understanding the topic were helpul for her. As Participant 6
said, “To overcome the challenges, beside memorizing the text, I also
understand the topic. So if I forget the text, I can explain based on my
understanding about it.”

 Reading
Another student believed that vocabulary was a crucial element in
delivering the speech. A dictionary was a tool for her to find out the word

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and pronounciation. The vocabulary could also be enriched through

reading English story. By knowing the vocabulary and English
knowledge she affirmed that she could speak English well and this effort
reflected her performance in delivering the speech. As Participant 10
said:

“To be able to speak in a good language, I look at a grammar

book and the dictionary to see the word and the pronounciation,
then I memorize the word. Beside, I like reading English story. It
can also enrich my English vocabulary. To train my self
confidence, I try to tell the speech well based on my English
knowlegde. If we have good English, we will be able to expalin it
well and speak confidently. I deliver the speech based on what
we already understand. We have to push ourselves and believe
that we can do it and it is interesting.”

The data of interview showed that the students did various actions
to deal with the challenges. Some of the students tried to overcome those
challenges by themselves such as choosing the interesting topic,
understanding the material, practicing before performance and checking
the word and grammar. Some other students asked their friends and
senior students’ help to check the language used and the pronounciation.

Discussion
 Students’ Perspectives about the English Speech Program
The researchers found that the first grade students of Oemar Diyan
Senior High School were highly motivated in undertaking the English
speech program. It is shown that the students were conscious of the
importance of the English speech program which could increase the
students’ speaking ability. Practicing public speaking is quite important
for students.
Furthermore, the result also revealed that the students got many
advantages by participating the English speech program. The students
learned more knowledge about Islam and social, public speaking skill
such as choosing an appropriate topic, controlling anxiety, managing
audiences, attracting the audience and using body language and building
self-confidence. According to Morgan and Nelson (2015) practicing
public speaking trains someone to reduce speaking anxiety and increase
self-confidence, be able to deliver the message as effectively as possible,
provide more useful feedback to others, excite and engage people,

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strengthen critical thinking skills, succeed in college, get hired and

advance in his career and empower yourself to be a leader.
This finding was similar to the previous study done by Abubakar et
al. (2017). The study found that the English speech program was a
helpful media for the students where they learnt new vocabulary, knew
how to be a good public spaker, and grew as independent and confident
individuals. Therefore, based on the finding of this study and a previous
study focusing on the English speech program, it can be concluded that
this program is important for the students in order to increase students’
speaking ability and prepare the students to be a public speaker.

 Students’ Challenges in Undertaking the English Speech Program

Based on the result of the study, there were many challenges found
by the students in undertaking the English speech program. Some
challenges found by the students were related to the linguistic aspects
such as pronunciation and grammar and nonlinguistic aspects such as
choosing a topic, convincing and attracting the audience, talking without
nervous, being of self-confidence and missing the idea. Likewise, the
previous study conducted by Abubakar et al. (2017) also found the
similar result. It found that the students encountered the challenges
mostly related to linguistics: pronunciation and vocabulary, anxiety,
monotonous design of the program and speech by memorization.

 Students’ Efforts to Overcome the Challenges in Undertaking the

English Speech Program
Challenge is a difficult task which tests someone’s skill or ability
and needs an effort to success. The challenge whose core purpose is to
enable someone and needs an effort to do things successfully (Turner,
2017) gives a chance to the success and growth. From the result of
interview, the researchers found that there were various efforts done by
the students to overcome the challenges in undertaking the English
speech program. Most of the students believed that practice was a key to
the success in delivering the speech.
In regard to the pronunciation, the students regularly checked the
word on a dictionary and asked the language mover center or a senior
student. Furthermore, checking both a grammar book and dictionary
were the ways to be able to use a vivid language and good grammatical
sentence so that the students can revise their script before the
performance.

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The result of the interview also found that the students delivered the
speech that fitted into the students’ background, level of the students, and
their audience. Besides, the students also chose a different topic with the
previous performances done by other students and supported with the
examples and current issues in order to attract and convince the audience.
This is in line with Schreiber et al. (2012) who assert that a good public
speaker should deliver a useful topic, well-supported ideas, clear and
vivid language adapted to the audience to convince them.
Moreover, when the researchers interviewed the students over how
they overcame with the loss of the idea, some students confirmed that
they usually comprehended the topic well. To be able to comprehend text
the students should have prior knowledge about the topic; otherwise they
will be difficult to comprehend the topic. Adams and Bruce (1982) say
that “without prior knowledge, a complex object, such as a text, is not
just difficult to interpret: strictly speaking, it is meaningless”.
Conversely, some students memorized the script to make them
easier to speak without accidentally thinking a new sentence needed.
However, sometimes when someone preferred to memorize the text, he
was focused more on the word rather than the core messages of the
speech and could not interact with the audience well. These situations
could create unnatural conversations. Thus, memorizing is not suggested
for the students. The speakers have to be familiar with the topic and do
not memorize the words because focusing on the words let the speakers
under pressure and increase their anxiety and then will not be able to
react to the audiences (Graspy, 2017). In addition, the students assumed
that the vocabulary and grammar knowledge were needed by the students
to deliver a clear explanation. In addition, they believed that good
English allowed them to speak confidently and deliver the speech well.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

Conclusion
English Speech Program is an important program in order to
improve students’ speaking ability. It can be seen from the students’
perspectives about the importance of English speech program that 97%
of participants pointed out that it was an important program for them and
91% of them got many advantages by participating the program.
There were various challenges found by the students in undertaking
English speech program. The students were challenged to choose a
suitable and appropriate topic to the audience, explain in a clear

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explanation, and deliver the speech clearly and confidently. Besides,

they were also challenged to use a good language and pronounciation.
Moreover, there are also some other challenges that were found by the
students that came from the class advisor such as score and reward.
The students did some actions to solve the challenges in undertaking
the English speech program. The students independently prepared the
materials by themselves without asking for help from anybody. They
chose a suitable topic, analyzed it, checked the language and practiced
delivering the speech before the performance. Some other students
practice with their friends to be assessed. The other students ask senior
students’ help to check the language and the pronounciation.

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