Introduction

Learning English as a second language offers many benefits in today’s

business world not only as a means to communicate with people on the other
side of the world but it serves to show a person’s intelligence too. When a
person is willing to commit to learn what has become known as the
International language of today’s modern world it shows they want to be a
success. Below are just a few reasons why it is so important to be able to speak
English and to speak it well.

- English is the most commonly accepted language used when people from
various different countries get together for conferences, debates as well as social
gatherings. This is why it is so important to be able to speak English, not only
will it give you an advantage work wise, but on a social level your lifestyle will
be enhanced too.

- English is the most commonly accepted language used when people from
various different countries get together for conferences, debates as well as social
gatherings. This is why it is so important to be able to speak English, not only
will it give you an advantage work wise, but on a social level your lifestyle will
be enhanced too.

- When it comes to the sciences, again English is the accepted language used
throughout the world. Should you wish to get ahead in a job that’s science
related, you would need to have mastered the English language to a high level
of both speaking, reading and writing.

- Being able to speak English allows parents to teach their own children to
speak the language from an early age, making it that much easier for the
children to get to grips with the grammar, vocabulary and idiosyncrasies of the
language. This is one of the important reasons why it is so important to be able
to speak English because it means your children will benefit too.

Teaching English in context is generally very important and in high

school textbooks conversations are often used to introduce grammar and
vocabulary for a new lesson. The students’ problem in their pronunciation and
grammar make their speech hard to be recognized. Poor speaking may lead to
misunderstanding in delivering the message in oral communication. The
method used in here is conversation in which it will concerned to the
improvement of students’ speaking skill in everyday. From conversation, the
students can exchange their ideas when they do the the convesation, and it can
make the students creative to be able to speak.

First, since the conversation was used as a context to introduce new

language, the teaching of vocabulary and structures was aimed to show students
the meaning, rather than helping them to practice new language. Therefore,
pronunciation should be also an important focus at this stage as it is the oral
form of the language introduced. Specifically, teachers should spend more time
helping the students practise pronunciation so that they can speak with
comprehensible English. Also, not only the pronunciation of individual words
but also the supra-segmental features of pronunciation, such as intonation and
sentence stress should be introduced to the students as these features ‘have the
greatest impact on the comprehensibility of the learners English’ (McNerney
and Mendelsohn, 1992 cited in Celce-Muria, Brinton, Goodwin, 1996, p.10).
Teachers need to read the conversation or play the recordings a few times so
that students can have more exposure to model pronunciation. This will help
them in practising the pronunciation later. Apart from this, more practice in
different forms should be given to the students before they are asked to read in
front of class for error correction. Pronunciation activities should be varied to
raise students’ awareness of features of spoken English. For example, teachers
could ask students to underline the words that they mispronounce and then work
in pairs to find some help from their friends. After that teachers could let
students listen to the recordings carefully to check the words they
mispronounce.

Discussion
What is a conversation?

- Conversation is interactive or communication between two person or

more. We usually say that a conversation is a dialogue between two
person or more.

What is the benefit of teaching speaking through conversation in class?

1. They represent real life speech.

- By using a dialogue, you can introduce the meaning and use right
grammar when you ask your students to make a dialogue.
- Dialogues also represent the fillers people use when talking such as "oh,"
"and a," and "you know." They also employ numerous contractions like
"you've" for "you have," use slang like the word "yeah" instead of "yes,"
and degrees of stress and intonation when speaking.

2. They teach culture in different social situations.

- The great thing about dialogues is that you are learning the culture of a
people through its language when reciting them. For example, in a
conversation on the topic of introductions, students quickly learn that
males are introduced to females in American culture and that it is
customary for people to shake hands, including men shaking hands with
women. A conversation might also reveal that it is impolite or improper
to ask a person about their age, weight, or salary or income.

3. Students love to roleplay.

- All of my students love to recite and practice dialogues because they can
be role played. Each example that I present reflects a social situation such
 as visiting a friend, talking on the telephone, or shopping. Students love
acting out the ones which call for a lot of body language and emotion.

4. They are springboards for learning new vocabulary and sentence

structure.
- Through the use of substitution drills, dialogues can introduce the student
to new vocabulary and sentence structures. In the example, "You have a
very cute baby," said while giving a compliment, one may substitute the
noun "baby" with "dog," "kitten," "puppy" or "rabbit." You could also
introduce a tag question in a dialogue like "You're a tourist, aren't you?,"
and through substitution drills you could generate sentences such as
"You're an American, aren't you?" and "She's your daughter, isn't she?"

5. Scaffolding learning leads to improved conversation ability.

- We try to get our students to proceed from dialogue recitation to casual
conversation as soon as possible. We do this by scaffolding learning. We
teach students how to apply appropriate substitutions to memorized
dialogues in different situations. If the students are motivated and having
fun, most can make the big jump to casual conversations after going
through a series of practice runs.

How to apply the conversation at the classroom?

1. Introduce the context

2. Let students listen to the recording while reading the conversation
3. Ask students to listen and repeat the conversation
4. Explain some vocabulary
5. Bring students' attention to the structure(s) in the conversation
6. Ask students to do role-play to read the conversations
 7. Ask one or two pairs to perform the conversations in front of the class
8. Ask students to do the task in the textbook and then correct it

Conclusion:

The study does make contributions to the conversation teaching carried out
by school teachers from a considerable number of aspects. First it causes the
teachers to increase activities, such as question and answer or true / false exercises
to help students understand the conversations, without translating it into another
language. Second, it also causes the teachers to practice more pronunciation,
especially intonation and rhythm for students to improve their oral skills and less
structures because students could study them in the language focus period. Third,
it caused teachers to use a greater variety of techniques to present vocabulary, not
only translation so as to make the lesson livelier, but to attract students’ attention
and to increase retention.