Speech Pauses Used by Male and Female Students in English Oral Examination

The objectives of this descriptive qualitative study were to discover: (1) the types of speech pauses used by male and female students, and (3) the reasons of using speech pauses by male and female students in English oral examination. The subject of the study was class XI of MAS Pesantren Arraudhatul Hasanah Medan which had been choosen randomly. The data were obtained from the recorded conversation of English oral examination and then were transcribed. The data were the male and female students’ utterances in English oral examination. The data were identified, analyzed and categorized based on Rose’s (1998), Clack & Tree’s (2002) caroll’s (1985), theory in relation to Tottie’s (2001) concept of gender and speech pauses. The findings of the study showed that: There were 3 types of pause that could be found in both data of male and female students’ utterances, 5 conventionalized formulae, namely 1) silent pause, 2) unlexicalized filled pause, 3) lexicalized filled pause. Silent pause was the most frequently type used by male and female students’ speech. All forms of unlexicalized filled pause are performed by male and female students in English oral examination, namely 1) aa, 2) ee, 3) em, and 4) oh, which the last form was only found in male utterances. Unlexicalized filled pause ‘ee’ was dominantly used by either male or female students. It was found that there were five forms of lexicalized filled paused which appeared in English oral examination, namely 1) like, 2) like this, 3) okay, 4) I mean, 5) I think. and 2) the use of speech pause during the the English Oral Examination by male and female students shared some reasons, namely a) to take breath, b) to organize the idea, c) to hold the floor, d) to hand over the turn, e) to emphasize the next utterance, f) to correct the previous utterance/ to clarify error, g) to ask for attention, h) to ask for help, i) to mitigate the utterance, j) to confirm understanding, l) to control the speech. The most frequent reason of using pause by male and female students was to organize the idea and the least frequent reason is to mitigate the utterance. There were only 2 reasons found only in male students’ speeches namely to confirm understanding and to ask for attention. Overall, the data showed that speech pauses were used as hesitation device and communication stategy as well, however the use of silent pause and unlexicalized filled pause can be minimized by including the teaching of English filler in the teaching material.