Investigating barriers to EFL students development of speaking ability at General Foundation Programs in Oman Research questions: 1) What could be the barriers to EFL students development of speaking ability at GFPs? 2) What could be the strategies which contribute in EFL students development of speaking ability at GFPs? Investigating barriers to EFL students development of speaking ability at General Foundation Programs in Oman Background: Speaking is considered as the most difficult and complex skill to be developed by EFL learners. Specifically , the learners struggle with the development of this skill when the learning setting is happening in an EFL context where most of the students do not have the opportunity to speak English outside the classroom setting (Al Hosni, S. 2014) .Likewise, speaking in the General Foundation Programs (GFP) is considered as the most challenging skill after writing. Students always struggle with expressing their ideas despite the fact that they spent more than 10 years in studying the English language at primary and secondary schools. Most of the students of GFP have low language proficiency especially at the level of the productive skills which are speaking and writing. Statement of the problem: Most of the curriculum and syllabus designs are opting for communicative language teaching (CLT) approach in teaching English as a foreign language. This approach involves intensive communication inside the classroom where the students are encouraged to interact and use the language to express their ideas and participate in classroom discussion. As a matter of fact, students speaking ability development is essential so that the students can take an active part in classroom discussions and be enabled to progress in their language learning process. However, there are barriers to students development of speaking abilities and skills. Some of the challenges are psychological such as anxiety (Woodrow, Lindy 2006), These barriers should be studied in the Omani context where students need to develop their speaking abilities to succeed at both academic level and social level where they interact with a large number of expatriates working at different sectors of economy and business. Objectives: The aim of this research is to investigate the challenges that face the students speaking ability development in the classroom. The researcher tries to explore the different sorts of difficulties that hinder the students development of speaking ability I a classroom setting. In addition to that, the study aims at finding out the factors which cripple the development of students speaking abilities. Significance of the study: This study will shed light on the difficulties that frustrate the GFP students which is speaking abilities in a classroom setting. Thanks to this study, the teachers, the experts of curriculum design will have a better understanding about the challenges affecting students communication inside the class and the different factors which cause them. Research questions: 1) What could be the barriers to EFL students development of speaking ability at GFPs? 2) What could be the factors affecting EFL students development of speaking ability at GFPs? Research hypotheses (optional): Definition of terms: Communicative language teaching: is an approach to language teaching that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of study. (Wikipedia) Productive skills: The productive skills are speaking and writing, because learners doing these need to produce language. They are also known as active skills. They can be compared with the receptive skills of listening and reading. Literature review Introduction: This section introduces an overview of the literature related to speaking skills. It is composed of 3 sections which are conceptual framework, theoretical framework and past studies. Conceptual framework: According to Florez (1999), speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning both its form and meaning. Also, Chastain (1988) defined speaking as a means thatS2ED enables the language learners to participate in the different classroom tasks and express their feelings and thoughts. Besides, he revealed that speaking enhances second language learning. As a matter of fact, speaking occupies an important position in the foreign language learning. Undeniably, teachers rely on the students oral communication to have information about their degree of understanding and to what extent they have learnt (Edge, 1999). The lack of the communicative competence will deepen the gap between the teacher and the learners and consequently hinder learning. Several researchers dealt with the speaking skill and the obstacles which hinder its developments. One of the barriers is the lack of the exposure to the target language. Al-Sobhi & Preece,(2018) stated that the environment has a primordial role in enhancing the language development in general. The EFL context deprives the learners from a maximized use of the target language because the opportunities of speaking the language outside the walls of the classroom are very limited. Consequently, the EFL learners face some difficulties in developing their communication skills in such an unfavourable environment. The lack of motivation can constitute another obstacle to oral communication skills. In fact, Littlewood (1984) states that motivation is the driving power that gives the learner an incentive to engage in a task and determines how much interest and effort he dedicates to it. If the teacher provides a positive classroom environment where the students find themselves engaged in meaningful conversations related to their life context, their demand for communication will probably increase. Students anxiety and lack of confidence can be one barrier which impedes EFL learners speaking skill development. Anxiety has a negative impact on the language learning process as it makes them less involved in oral conversations. Students anxiety arises from a feeling of fear of negative evaluation of the listeners and failure of not being understood. Consequently, they avoid taking the risk of putting themselves in an embarrassing situation (Al-Sobhi & Preece 2018). The lack of confidence can represent an obstacle to the amelioration of the learners speaking proficiency. Krashen (1982) argues that language learners with high self-confidence are likely to succeed in second language learning. Besides, to language anxiety and the lack of self-confidence, low language proficiency can impede the learners speaking skill development. A limited knowledge of vocabulary, grammatical rules and the functional use of the language can affect negatively the students speaking skill development. This is in line with Canale & Swain (1980) who believe that the learners knowledge of sound and words pronunciation and how to use words in meaningful utterances are essential. From a pedagogical point of view, non-effective teaching strategies and methods have negative impact on the learners communicative competence. Theoretical base: The aim of this study is to explore the barriers which hinder the learners speaking skill development and the implementation of strategies to enhance the learners communicative competence. Early theories of second language acquisition focused on the idea that learning the language takes place by imitation and repetition. This was in line with the behaviourist of language learning principles which highly valued the importance of the environment and marginalised the role of the individual in second language learning. The audio-lingual method is a teaching approach which emerged from behaviourism and it is mainly based on habit formation and repetition. Brown & Principles (2001) argued that the audio lingual method was strongly founded in linguistic and psychological theory which incorporate conditioning and habit-formation models of learning. Basing on this principle, speaking skill was learnt through dialogue memorization and the repetition of grammatical structure. In the late of 1970s, researchers noticed that the learners could produce the language with accuracy, but they were unable to use the language to communicate in different situations ( Widdowson 1978). As a result, the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach emerged as a dissatisfaction with the audio lingual teaching method which did not allocate a great importance the pragmatic and the functional aspect of the language. The CLT was strongly grounded in the communicative competence theory which was advocated by Dell Hymes (1966). Dell Hymes believed that the language learners need more than the pure linguistic competence to be able to communicate in an effective way. As far as the speaking skill is concerned, the learners should take an active role in the second language learning. They should be engaged in a series of communicative activities which enable them to communicate in a meaningful way rather than memorising imposed decontextualized conversation. The adoption of CLT in teaching English as a foreign language provides the students with opportunities to produce the language in meaningful conversations related to authentic situations from their real life context. The students can negotiate problematic situation in collaborative learning context. A several researchers and educationist believe that the second language learning process is affected by external and internal factors. As one of the four skills of the language, speaking skill is also affected by these factors. The internal factor is purely psychological ones and they are related to the learner himself. The speaking skill development is highly affected by students anxiety and lack of confidence. This is in line with Harmer (2007) who believes that students avoid oral interventions in or out of the classroom because they are afraid of being mocked by others. Krashen (1982) argued that language learners with high level of self-confidence are more likely to learn better. Motivation is another internal factor which affects the speaking abilities of the second language learners. Lightbown & Spada (2006) argued that motivation in language learning is related to two important elements which are the need to communicate and the learners attitudes towards the language being learnt. Teaching methodology and the learning environment are two external factors affecting the learners speaking skill learning process. According to Al-Sobhi & Preece (2018), most of the classes in the Arab World are teacher-centred and the students are rarely engaged in meaningful free conversations during communicative language speaking tasks. Past studies: There have been arrays of studies which investigated the obstacles affecting the learners communication skill learning. The previous studies mainly categorised these factors as being external and internal. The external factors are related to teaching environment and methodology whereas the internal factors consist in the learners anxiety, lack of language proficiency and lack of motivation. The external factors affecting the EFL learners speaking performance were mentioned in several previous studies which investigated the speaking difficulties encountered by EFL students. Diaab (2016) conducted a study aiming at investigating the speaking difficulties encountered by the Libyan language learners and the factors causing these difficulties. The results revealed the learners had speaking problems because they lacked exposure to English and they excessively used their mother tongue inside and outside the classroom. In addition to that, the study showed that one of the contributing factors of the students speaking problems was that the teachers involved the learners in speaking activities which focused mainly on language accuracy rather than communicative fluency. Jindathai (2015) carried a research which explored the agents which affect English language speaking skill difficulties faced by engineering students at Thai-Nichi Institute of Technology (TNI). The finding proved that the principal source of the students English speaking problems were ineffective teaching strategies of the speaking skills. Another study by Ocak et al. (2013) attempted to appraise The English program of grade 6 with regards to speaking skills and to investigate the factors of the pupils speaking challenges. The results revealed that the teachers who took part in this study generally found that the curriculum was unsuccessful in terms of enhancing students oral communication skills. A research by Bani Younes and Albalawi (2016) investigated the causes which generated speaking difficulties of EFL Saudi students from the instructors and the learners points of view. The findings of the research showed that teachers’ feedback during speaking activities and the lack of vocabulary knowledge affected the students speaking performance. The findings showed also that ineffective teaching methodologies and the limited time allocated to practising speaking were among the reasons which contributed in EFL learners poor speaking performance. Apart from the external factors of the barriers affecting speaking skills, a plethora of studies showed that there were internal factors affecting the EFL students speaking skill development. Hamouda (2013) conducted a research aiming at exploring the unwillingness of Saudi EFL students to participate in the classroom in a university in Saudi Arabia. The research findings proved that a high percentage of the students did not react to the teacher during classroom discussions and preferred to remain silent. the causes which affected the students attitude were the fear of negative evaluation by the others, timidness, lack of confidence and preparation and the embarrassment caused by making mistakes. Al Nakhalah, A. M. M. (2016). Carried out a research whose aim is to investigate the oral communication challenges faced by EFL learners at Al Quds Open University. The findings indicated that there are some factors which hinder the students oral production such as anxiety and lack of confidence. Khan and Al-Mahrooqi (2015) carried out a study that investigated the Foreign Language Communication Anxiety (FLCA) of Omani EFL learners at the tertiary level. The findings proved that Omani EFL students at the university suffer from anxiety EFL classes. They also suffer from evaluation anxiety and teacher anxiety more than from peer anxiety. Methodology Context: The study will be conducted in Sohar University and the College of Applied Science. Both Institutions are located in Sohar Governorate. The target population of the study are students and teachers from the General Foundation Program Department. In order to address the research questions, the researcher will use a qualitative research design in order to explore the barriers to students speaking skill development. Participants: In this study, the population of the research will consist of 100 students and 10 teachers from Sohar University and College of Applied Science 50% are female and 50% are males. The students will be selected randomly from the elementary levels of the two institution. 5 teachers from Sohar University and 5 teacher from the College of the applied Science will be selected for the online questionnaire Data collection: An online interview will be used to collect data in order to find out the speaking barriers from the students perceptions. To determine the speaking difficulties perceived by the teachers, an online interview will be devised. The respondents will sign an online form of consent. The online interview of the students will be translated into Arabic in order to be accessible to students understanding and increase the reliability of the gathered responses. Data analysis: The collected responses of the students will be translated into English and after reading the responses of the students and the teachers, the researcher inspects the pieces of information References: Al-Sobhi, B. M. S., & Preece, A. S. (2018). Teaching English speaking skills to the Arab students . Saudi school in Kuala Lumpur: Problems and solutions. International Journal of Education and Literacy Studies, 6(1), 1-11. Bani Younes, Z., & Albalawi, F. (2016). Investigating the factors leading to speaking difficulties: Both perspectives of EFL Saudi learners and their teachers. Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume, 7. Brown, H. D., & Principles, T. B. (2001). An interactive approach to language pedagogy. NY: Longman, 430. Chastain, K. (1988). Developing second language skills: Theory and practice. USA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Diaab, S. (2016). Role of faulty instructional methods in Libyan EFL learners speaking ..difficulties. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 232(1), 338-345. Edge, J. (1999). Essentials of Language Teaching. Longman Keys to Language Teaching Series. Florez, M. C. (1999). Improving adult English language learners speaking skills. National Center for ..ESL Literacy Education, 5, 16-20. Hamouda, A. (2013). An exploration of causes of Saudi students reluctance to participate in the English language classroom. International Journal of English Language Education, 1(1), 17-. 34. Jindathai, S. (2015). Factors affecting English speaking problems among engineering students at Thai-Nichi Institute of Technology. TNI Journal of Business Administration and Languages, 3(2), 26-30. Harmer, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language , England: Pearson Education ..Limited. Hossen, Mohammad Tofazzal. "Communicative language teaching: teachers’ perception in ..Bangladesh (secondary level)." PhD diss., BRAC University, 2008. Khan, A., & Al-Mahrooqi, R. (2015). Foreign language communication anxiety (FLCA) among tertiary ..level Omani EFL learners. The Asian EFL Journal, 17(1), 57-89. Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon Littlewood, W. (1984). Foreign and second language learning: Language acquisition research and its .implications for the classroom. Cambridge University Press. Al Nakhalah, A. M. M. (2016). Problems and difficulties of speaking that encounter English language students at Al Quds Open University. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention, 5(12), 96-101. Ocak, G., K?z?lkaya, H., & Boyraz, S. (2013). Evaluation of 6th grade English curriculum in terms of speaking skills and identifying causes of speaking problems students face. Journal of Modern Science, 2(17), 35-49. Widdowson, H. G. (1978). Teaching language as communication. Oxford University Press.Show more
