I Prefer My Own Ways to Acquire My English Speaking Skills: A Grounded Research

Abstract

Formal educational practitioners tend to neglect the students’ sense of liking; we labled as Preferent learning, in order to acquire certain skill in the learning foreign language, especially speaking skills. In general, so far, issues of formal learning with the focus on bounded academic rules, cognition, and motivation have been used as the main basis for the learning foreign language and even learning in general. In fact, the individual learning, language community, social change, and sopihisticated technology need to be considered in how students acquire the skills they want based on their preferences. By investigating how the University students in Kolaka learned and improved their English speaking skills, we applied a Grounded study that involved 10 informants who were the students and alumni of the English Language Education Study Program of the University X in Kolaka, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia. All data were collected 12 times in 3 stages then were analyzed using three steps of Strauss and Corbin's analysis that applied theoretical sampling and constant comparison in generating the substantive theory. The findings revealed that the informants acquired the English speaking skills because of a sense of liking or preference toward any topic to learn. Further, they prefer to learn in an unpredictable ways without any rules and an informal self-evaluation were applied as a way in sustaining the skills.