Developing Communication Skills Through Oral Presentations In Teaching English
Abstract
The English language status gives significant impacts in all education levels. Even though English is a compulsory subject for students from 1st grade, the time allotment for English subject is not sufficient considering basic communicative competence should be achieved by the learners. Communicative Approach was then expected to alter the English Language Teaching as it was chosen as an instructional approach in the 1994 English curriculum. With Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in the curriculum, there seemed to be a crucial change in English teaching, lessening grammatical and vocabulary emphases and moving to the new era in which students’ ability to converse in English communicatively will receive priority. Yet, due to the misinterpretation with oral-based language instructions and controversies among educators, the same approach was redefined and changed into ‘Meaningfulness Approach’ in the 1999 Curriculum (Huda, 1999). Furthermore, Musthafa (2001, pp. 3-4) summarizes the coverage of the approach as follows: