THE EFFECT OF INSTRUCTIONAL APPROACHES AND LEARNING STYLES ON ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS

When teaching students of the English Education Department, the Faculty of Tarbiyah and Teachers Training State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, the researcher observed that their mastery of English speaking skill as one of their compulsory expertise subjects required is still low. A great number of students used Indonesian. Although they spoke English, there were still many mistakes in accent, vocabulary, structure, comprehension, and fluency. This low mastery of the students’ English speaking skills can also be proven by the fact that the average scores is still below 80.
Therea are many factors that can cause the students’ low mastery of English speaking skills including learning materials, facilities, instructional strategy, the students themselves, among others. The instructional strategy used today, especially in English speaking instruction, does not enable students to achieve the expected learning outcomes. The selection of materials, media, evaluation, and particularly instructional approach do not meet the students’ needs. Instructional approaches in English speaking skills applied today still emphasize the academic grade and intellectual intelligence. This causes learning to be viewed as a burden and not as a need. Those instructional approaches are not able to respond to the problems, needs, and challenges of the 21st century.

To solve the problems, an accelerated learning approach is assumed to enable one to face learning challenges in the global era. Since, the accelerated learning approach does not only emphasize certain intelligence but multiple intelligences of the students. In addition to instructional approaches, there are many other factors that affect English speaking skills: age, talent, attitude, motivation, personality, cognitive styles, including learning styles. The students’ learning styles strongly influence their English speaking skills since learning information in accordance with the learning styles, the students’ English speaking skills will improve.
Different learning styles can cause receiving, managing, processing of information and determine how much information the students obtain. Moreover, they influence the capacity of producing the information in the form of English speaking skills. Students have various learning styles such as visual and auditory among others. These two learning styles are regarded to affect language, in particular, English speaking skills. Visual learning style follows the way the visual parts of the brain works which tends to think holistically, integratively, emotionally, and intuitively. This style has the following characteristics: learning by observing, sequencing information in detail, a preference for jotting down what the lecturer says, preferring silence, and tending to be more independent.
The auditory learning style follows the way the auditory part of the brain works which tends to think analytically, verbally, linearly, and in detail. A person with this style has the following characteristics: prefers sounds, prefers the dim light, prefers informal design, uncontinuous to do an activity, and prefers learning with peers. Based on the above description, it is necessary to conduct a research dealing with English speaking skills correlated to instructional approaches (accelerated learning approach as opposed to traditional learning approach) and learning styles (visual and auditory) as the independent variables at English Department of Education, Faculty of Tarbiyah and Teacher Training, State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta.
In line with the background above, the research problem can be stated as follows: (1) As a whole, is there any difference in the English speaking skills of the students who learn by the accelerated learning approach and those students who learn by the traditional approach? (2) For students having visual learning style, is there any difference in the English speaking skills of the students who learn by the accelerated learning approach and those students who learn by the traditional approach? (3) For students having auditory learning style, is there any difference in the English speaking skills of the students who learn by the accelerated learning approach and those students who learn by the traditional approach? (4) Is there any effect of interaction between instructional approaches and the students’ learning styles on their English speaking skills?

Dr. Didik Santoso, M.Pd
Dosen Intitut Agama Islam Negeri (IAIN) Sumatera Utara

Proceeding of International Seminar Paper“Resource Based Instruction”
Department of Educational Technology Postgraduate Studies, The State University of Medan Cooperation with
Ikatan Profesi Teknologi Pendidikan Indonesia (IPTPI) North Sumatra