This Research aims at investigating: (1) the teacher’s perceptions about teaching speaking to students of Tourism Program in Vocational Secondary School (VSS); (2) the teacher’s teaching practices in teaching speaking to students of Tourism Program in VSS; and (3) the challenges and solutions in teaching speaking to students of Tourism Program in VSS.
The research was conducted at SMK Sahid Surakarta from January to February 2018. It is a qualitative research in the form of case study. The subject of this research was an English teacher of the Tourism Program. The data of this research were obtained from interview, observation, and document analysis. In analyzing the data, the researcher conducted data condensation, data display, and data verifivation (drawing conclusion).
The research concludes that: (1) Teacher’s perceptions about teaching speaking to students of Tourism Program are as follows: (a) The teacher knows that teaching English in VSS focuses on building students’ communicative skills; (b) The teacher believes that teaching speaking for Tourism students is to build students’ knowledge related to tourism purposes such as guiding skills; and (c) The teacher develops the students’ speaking skill by providing them with appropriate teaching materials, teaching methods, and speaking activities; and (d) Teacher’s educational background and teacher’s teaching experiences are the source of perceptions which affect the teacher’s practices (2) The teacher’s teaching practices are done in three main stages as follows: (a) Exploration covers discussion activities to expand and deepen students’ knowledge; (b) Elaboration involves presentation and role play activities with regard to the materials they students have found and discussed; and (c) confirmation covers question-answer activities to confirm the students’ understanding about the materials; (3) The challenges found in teaching speaking for Tourism students are teacher’s content knowledge, teaching resources, students’ confidence, students’ motivation, and speaking components (grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and content). The solutions are: (a) developing teacher’s reading habit to advance content knowledge; (b) modifying and adopting teaching materials form various sources such as textbooks and internet; (c) applying activities such as presentations and role plays to foster students’ confidence; (d) suggesting valuable tips to increase students’ motivation; and (e) providing feedbacks to promote students’ improvement related to the speaking components.