THE EFFECT OF THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH IN THE TEACHING OF SPEAKING SKILL FOR TEACHER TRAINEES: A CASE STUDY

English language communication is crucial to develop a community s interest in learning English as a second language. Thus various methods and approaches have been implemented to teach the language effectively. The Communicative Approach to teaching languages is based on the idea that learning a new language successfully comes through having to communicate real meaning. When learners are involved in real communication, their natural strategies for language acquisition will be used, and this will allow them to learn to use the language. The aim of a communicative approach is communicative competence. This study was carried out to study problems faced by teacher trainees who are still lacking communicative competence although they have learnt English for at least 11 years in schools (Maarof,2003) and scored good marks in their SPM examination. Thus it intends to identify the effect of practicing the communicative approach in the teaching of speaking skills for teacher trainees, the effect of motivation factors and the effect of language learning strategies on speaking performance. This case study involved a quasi-experimental method to analyse the students speaking performance using the speaking module (DRA) based on CA principles. 34 students of the TESL Foundation Course were selected and various instruments were used namely the oral diagnostic test, pre-test and post-test based on MUET components, questionnaires, interviews and also observations. Motivation Scale (MS) is used to measure motivation and Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) to measure language learning strategies. The findings revealed that all the subjects achieved better performance, thus enhanced their speaking skills. This approach is hoped to result in an improvement in English Language communication in the community.