THE OBSTACLES IN SPEAKING FACED BY ENGLISH LEARNERS AT “NEW CONCEPT PRIVATE ENGLISH COURSE” EAST JAKARTA

Speaking is an important skill among four abilities. It lets learners express their thoughts, so it is important to master in meanwhile, learners still have obstacles in speaking at “New Concept Private English Course”. This research investigated speaking obstacles and strategies used by English learners at New Concept “Private English Course” East Jakarta. This research was investigated to describe learners in informal academics which has never been studied before. This research investigated (1) the obstacles encountered by learners (2) the strategies to solve the obstacles.
This research design used a descriptive qualitative method, semi-structured interview was used to collect data. In this research, four learners participated and became participants who had been studied for at least more than five months. The findings reveal there are included external and internal obstacles, such as vocabulary limits, pronunciation, being laughed at, and mixed language. While they have their strategies to solve the obstacles that are suggested by themselves or their teacher. There are self-practice, journaling, watching movies, and speaking with foreigners on ome tv. Besides that, the strategies also have strengths such as helping learners to gain confidence, tracking learners’ speaking improvement, gaining learners’ pronoun skills, and reducing learners’ mixed language meanwhile the weaknesses are confusion, limiting in tracking, boredom, and limiting learners' capacity.