Sharfina, Dini. 2026. English Teachers' Strategies in Overcoming Students' Speaking Challenges at SMPN 1 Banjarmasin. Sarjana's Thesis. English Language Education Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Lambung Mangkurat University, Banjarmasin. The first advisor: Dr. Moh Yamin S.Pd.M.Pd., the second advisor: Inayati Fitriyah Asrimawati M.Pd.

Keywords: teachers' strategies, speaking challenges, speaking skills

Speaking is a highly complex skill in learning English, since students must simultaneously recall and apply pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary while communicating spontaneously. Junior high school students, whose linguistic system is still developing, often struggle to coordinate these components, making speaking one of the most demanding skills to master. This condition requires teachers to be able to identify students who face speaking challenges and to respond with appropriate instructional strategies. This research therefore aims to describe how teachers identify students who face speaking challenges, discover the forms of challenges faced, and explore the teaching strategies used to help students overcome them during classroom activities. This research employed a qualitative descriptive approach. The subjects of this research were two English teachers who taught eighth-grade students at SMPN 1 Banjarmasin. Data were collected sequentially through a semi-open questionnaire, classroom observation, and follow-up interviews, and were analyzed using the interactive model by Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña (2020).

The findings showed that the teachers identified students' challenges through the observation of verbal behaviors, specifically word repetition during formal assessments and code-switching during natural classroom interactions. Furthermore, the forms of challenges commonly observed—which in this research were predominantly related to vocabulary—were inappropriate word choice, code-switching, and the overuse of fillers, which occurred most frequently during storytelling activities. To help students overcome these challenges, the teachers applied various scaffolding strategies, including direct assistance such as giving clues or extra time, and classroom adjustments such as warm-up activities, providing sentence models, pair work, and visual media.

These results confirm that teachers actively respond to students' speaking challenges through adaptive instructional steps that help maintain the flow of communication. Therefore, it is recommended that English teachers treat continuous classroom observation, not only formal testing, as a legitimate basis for identifying students' speaking difficulties, and that they apply flexible, scaffolded teaching strategies to help students build both their speaking competence and confidence.