Selvi Panggua, Nur Fitri, Sushy Teko Patanduk
Speaking skills are viewed as motor-receptive and interaction skills in communication. As the rapid growth of technology, especially in the era of big data of Industrial Revolution 4.0, English speaking skills should be improved in order to be able to enhance communication with native speaker as well as non-native speakers in the international community. However, recently, researchers reported that the speaking skills still remain a big problem for Indonesian students who learn English as a foreign language. The low-level competence of EFL teachers in Indonesia, more especially in Toraja Indonesia, in doing their professional tasks is one of the factors that cause that problem. Therefore, there should be continuous development of speaking training for EFL Teacher in Toraja Indonesia. The study aims to investigate the EFL teachers' needs of speaking skills training materials. A survey questionnaire, observation and interview were used to analyze the high school EFL teachers' needs in their speaking training materials. 20 high school EFL teachers from private and public high school in Toraja, Indonesia were participated in this study. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings of the existing study reported that teachers do not have enough adequate and appropriate speaking skills training materials in their career time for improving their speaking skills. They have some trainings, however those trainings were only focus on teaching methods, designing lesson plans, implementing new curriculum and other training materials. On the contrary, they rarely or even never got speaking skills training. This study found that EFL teachers in Toraja needs training on all components of speaking skills, where grammar, vocabulary, fluency, and pronunciation are all rated as high importance and they repoted that they need a specific training material: for helping them to speak accurately and fluently; to exposure and use the language as well as improve their English vocabulary; that provide material related to linguistics problems; that provides a practical application of teaching methods, strategies and techniques as well as implementing IT in the teaching process; and that be done continuously but required a low budget and reachable place. The finding of this study suggested valuable implications for curriculum developers and teachers in developing adequate and appropriate speaking skills training material for high school EFL teachers in Toraja, Indonesia in order to help them in improving their speaking skills. © 2020 Asian E F L Journal Press. All rights reserved.
Universitas Kristen Indonesia Toraja, Indonesia; Universitas Negeri Makassar, Indonesia
