Challenges in Speaking Classrooms among Non-English Majors

Ngoc Boi Trinh ,Duy Thuy Thi Pham

doi:10.52296/vje.2021.52

Abstract

As a great challenge to most English learners, speaking skills have aroused the interest of numerous researchers in many countries where English is taught as a foreign language. This study aimed to investigate some difficulties that students faced in speaking classrooms. A group of 57 participants at Tra Vinh university was selected to complete the questionnaires to find out students’ speaking problems from psychological and linguistic perspectives and 12 of them participated in the face-to face interviews. The results from the questionnaire revealed that non-English majors encountered more linguistic difficulties than psychological ones. Also, students’ psychological problems identified includes: pressure to perform well, being overpowered by more competent students, fear of making mistakes in front of the class and fear of criticism or losing face. The linguistic difficulties are lacking vocabulary and topical knowledge, being uncapable of arranging ideas logically, insufficient sentence formation skills and inappropriate vocabulary. The findings from the interview also showed that learners encountered more linguistic difficulties. Based on the findings above, some possible solutions are suggested to assist students in improving their speaking skills when acquiring English.

Highlights

To study English effectively, learners need to master the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing
Ur (2000) suggested that learners encountered some problems in learning speaking skills relating to the fear of making mistakes, losing face, mother tongue use and poor ideas
The results showed that learners’ overall performance in speaking skills was very low

Summary

Introduction

To study English effectively, learners need to master the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Among them, listening and speaking seem to be more difficult to English learners from both linguistic and psychological perspectives. Some teachers tend to focus more on reading and writing skills instead of listening and speaking skills. According to Alam & Uddin (2013), teachers usually employ their traditional teaching methods which emphasize on reading and writing while the productive skill of speaking is treated as trivial. Hodson (2006, as cited in Alam & Uddin, 2013) claimed that the explicit teaching of speaking and listening has been neglected. Students spend long hours learning grammar and vocabulary yet insufficient time for listening and speaking. Some researchers such as Al Hosni (2014), Nguyen & Tran (2015) and Riyaz & Mullick (2016) proved that speaking is hard for most students because it requires learners to have good psychological and linguistic skills. Ur (2000) suggested that learners encountered some problems in learning speaking skills relating to the fear of making mistakes, losing face, mother tongue use and poor ideas

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Results

Conclusion