AN ANALYSIS OF THE CAUSES OF LOW SPEAKING PERFORMANCES AMONG ENGLISH STUDENTS

Abstract

The objectives of this subject are to find out the causes of low speaking performances among English students at fourth semester of English Study Program University of Muhammadiyah Bengkulu. This research used descriptive method. The subjects of the study were32 students from A, B, and C classes at fourth semester who got low speaking performance. The researcher used speaking test and interview as the instruments of the research in this study. The findings of this research revealed that the causes of students’ low speaking performance were; (1) Internal factors (Psychology), such as low self-esteem and confident to speak English, lack of the aspects of language while communicating, including fluency, intonation, vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar mastery, and (2) External factor, it was bad learning environment such as there are no friends or partner to talk/improve English outside of the class because they always speaks in bahasa or local language. The main cause of low speaking performances among English students at fourth
semester of English Study Program University of Muhammadiyah Bengkulu was internal factor. From the interview, there were 31 of 32 students mentioned anxiety and unconfident. The findings of this research revealed that the causes of students’ low speaking performance were; (1) low self- esteem and confident to speak English, (2) lack of the
aspects of language while communicating, including fluency, intonation, vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar mastery (3) limited topical knowledge which is as knowledge structures in long-term memory, and (4) bad learning environment.
Keywords: Causes of Low Speaking Performance, Speaking Performance