DEVELOPING ORAL ENGLISH COMPETENCE

UNDERSTANDING EMOTION AS PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSTACLE
IN ENGLISH ORAL COMMUNICATION

Mr. Junaidi

INTRODUCTION

Foreign language learners have difficulties in oral communication in class. They do not speak by using the target language they learned. Even though teachers have invited them to share ideas, only few of them are eagerly to speak. Moreover, teachers consider themselves to be the ones who must talk in class all of the time. As a consequence, they forget their students. In other words, teachers do not give learners a chance to speak and to express what they feel. The learners are too lazy to speak; not because of inability to use the language but because of psychological obstacles.
Psychological aspects are very influential in successful achievement in learning a foreign language. Students who do not understand the obstacles in speaking find it difficult to cope with them. If this situation continues long enough, it is believed that they will loose their self-confidence. On the other hand, for those who know their psychological obstacles in speaking, it will be easy for them to solve such problems. The ability of the students to know the influence of psychological aspects in oral communication determines their success in copping with them. This paper exposes the psychological obstacle deal with emotion in oral communication for foreign language learners in class.

THE INFLUENCE OF EMOTIONAL ASPECT

The main way to communicate to other people directly is by speaking. Speaking as one of the language skills, is very crucial since it is the easiest way to express ideas, thoughts, ands feelings. Also, it is a way to communicate knowledge or experiences to others. The main purpose of speaking is to inform other people the ideas or knowledge about something.
However, the ability to speak in foreign language, like English, is not so easy to be achieved by language learners . They have some emotional obstacles in using English for oral communication in class such as fear, nervous, shy, and etc. Goleman (1995) in Ghosn viewed emotional intelligence as knowing what one’s feeling are and using the knowledge of the emotion to make a good decision. It is obvious that realizing what is happening inside us and understand the emotion and use it to do the right thing is very helpful . When language learners are going to talk or to communicate in target language, they feel fear, shy, anxiety, and other negative emotion or feelings, they must know such feelings and use the energy of the emotion to act, here to speak or to communicate in the target language. If the learners do not speak to communicate, it means that they fail to control the emotion. If this happens for along time, it will make the learners fail in mastering the target language.
Emotion is source of energy. It could be in form of negative or positive energy. It is just like electrical, has negative and positive. The electrical electronic will not on when there is no connection of electrical wires, the negative and the positive. By realizing that emotion as source of energy, language learners must be aware that fear, nervous, shy,
And anxiety when they face oral communication should be used as negative energy and combined it with the positive one in order to trigger the maximum energy to produce the language. If language learners are not aware of this advantages of negative emotion as source of energy to trigger the positive one, they will fail to have oral communication in foreign language they learn. By knowing the condition of inner side of emotion , it could be the first step to control the emotion and to manage it. If the language learners can control and manage their emotion they can improve and increase the emotional intelligence as more important than intellectual intelligence.
Another example how powerful the emotion is a couple who is falling in love. Those who are in love, know that they can do many things, creative. On the other side, people who fail in love, feel negative emotion such as down in the dump, sad, and angry. Yet, those who fail in love, can do a lot of things too. Many people become creative, by writing poem, poetry, even they can create something news in order to reduce the negative emotion. At the time, the negative emotion is used to to be creative. It is obvious that negative emotion is really source of energy. What people need is to control and manage the emotion. The most important thing is that when we feel something negative, it could be a warning for us to get ready to use the energy from the largest source of energy that is emotion. It shows us that language learners must realize that when they are going to speak, they feel, shy, anxiety, fear, and nervous, it means that they must be ready to use and launch the energy of such feelings to communicate in the target language, particularly in oral communication.
Teacher as the one who gets in charge in the classroom should pay attention to the atmosphere of the classroom. In conducting teaching learning process teacher must prepare him/herself to create enjoy atmosphere in class. The personality of the teacher shows that she/he is the one who loves their students. The teacher must be able to create a safety atmosphere in the classroom. It means that the teacher is not the one who is frightened by the students. The students must feel peace with the attendance of the teacher. The attendance of the teacher is hoped by the students. Why? The prerequisite of the memory is far away of the frightening, fear, anxiety, and anger. All of the negative emotion can reduce the power of memory to save and to recall the information. It means that mental peace is the main point in teaching-learning process in order to learn English since the vocabulary learned by the students could be easy to save and to retrieve when it is needed. It means that emotion can retrieve information in form of language. By having good and comfortable atmosphere, language learners can produce the language because they feel safe in class without any disturbance or fear of the attendance of the teacher.

MIND AFFECTS LANGUAGE

As human being, all people have felt negative emotion such as , sad, fear, nervous, anger, and anxiety, etc. Not all people can control and manage such negative emotion. A person who is not in good mood, like feeling anger or in bad temper, will affect his/her way of thinking. Everything on his mind will attract him/her to negative position. Because of thinking the bad things, her/her mind will produce the negative point of view. He/she will see the world as the bad thing. Everything he/she does will be wrong. Even the language he/she produces will follow the condition of mind. He/she cannot produce the correct language, for example when someone is angry, terribly angry, sometime he/she cannot say any word. The words seem not to complete. It means that negative emotion affects mind, and mind or thoughts affect language. That is why it is very crucial to understand the emotion in order to be able to control and manage the emotion to bring us to that advantages of having the source of energy that is emotion, both negative and positive.
Controlling the emotion means controlling mind. Furthermore, it will affect in using and producing the language. When people can control emotion and control mind,, they will be able to control their environment. Controlling the environment to socialize with other people is by using mostly the language. Those who are able to control the language will be easy to interact to other people. It means that the ability of using and producing the language is a communicative competence. It is almost impossible to live in this world without interacting with other people by using oral communication. By having peaceful mind, most people can use and produce the language to interact. The language produced is based on the language skills which are learned through language learning. It means that controlling emotion is very important because emotion will state our mind in comfortable atmosphere where it is a good condition in learning a foreign language, like English. It is obvious that mind can affect the language. On the contrary, whether language can affect our mind or thoughts?

LANGUAGE AFFECTS THOUGHTS

Language as a means of communication can also affect thought of people. According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity in Clark & Clark (1977), language affects thought. Moreover, how language affects thought proved through hypnotizing, giving affirmative statement as repetition treatment to cure people to have good health. The power of words can be found in government rules, which determine the policy of a country, what should do, how to interact with other country, how to give punishment in court. Furthermore, the power of language rules people to obey to follow the instruction, to prohibit or to do something in our daily life.
We can see the power of words or language in a poetry or poem. The language used in the poem brings us to the world of the author. Reader’s mind at the time is as out of control, following the meaning of the poem. A sad story be able to make readers crying, sad. On the other side, funny story will make readers laugh without controlling of mind of the readers. All explanation above proves that language can really affect people’s thought or the way of thinking.

CONCLUSION

Learning English as foreign language needs to prepare the knowledge of emotion and understand of psychological obstacle in oral communication. These knowledge of emotion and understand of psychological obstacle will help the language learners in learning a language. A learner can use the negative emotion such as fear, nervous, anxiety, and shy as source of energy. When the learner feels such emotion, it means a kind of warning to use the energy. By understanding the situation that the energy is awaken the learner can use the power of the emotion to produce the language. Also, creating peaceful atmosphere in class will help language learners to control and manage the emotion. Finally, between thought and language there is a tight connection. Teacher and language learners must be aware that thought can influence the language and language can affect thought. Both of them are very crucial in successful of teaching and learning a foreign language.