AN ANALYSIS OF TRADERS’ SPEAKING SKILL AT SENEK BEACH IN KUTA MANDALIKA

Abstract

The use of English as an international language has been an interest in mastering the language. Language is used to describe the way people communicate. Language in common is divided into two categories; spoken language and written language. The existence of the huge tourism destination has increased the possibility that the tourism sector could give benefit to the Lombok Island in West Nusa Tenggara which has various destination areas. The tourism destinations might support the local residents the opportunity to increase the level of regional economic income. This study aims to investigate (a) the traders’ speaking skills for transactional use and (b) the traders’ strategies in learning English to communicate with foreigners. There were six participants which were selected through a convenience sampling technique. The results showed that among six participants, each of them is categorized as follows: trader number 1 has “moderate” speaking skill (scored 58 in average), trader number 2 has “very poor” speaking skill (scored 18 in average), trader number 3 has “moderate” speaking skill (scored 48 in average), trader number 4 has “poor” speaking skill (scored 26 in average), trader number 5 with “good” speaking skill (scored 72 in average), and trader number 6 with “poor” speaking skill (scored 21 in average). The traders who are good at speaking skill explained that they learned English by autodidact as they were constrained by their economic needs to earn money for living.