A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE DILEMMAS ENCOUNTERED BY LEARNERS OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN SPEAKING SKILL AT INTERMEDIATE LEVEL

Abstract

This study aims at highlighting the difficulties encountered by learners of English as a foreign language in speaking skill at intermediate level. Most of the learners, especially at intermediate level, find it difficult to express themselves in spoken language. Sometimes, they fail to use the foreign language to express their thoughts effectively. The nature of this very research is qualitative. As an illustration, fifty students of both first and second year were chosen as participants at Govt. Degree College Peshawar as population for data collection. The data were collected by two tools namely; questionnaire and observation. The participants were given at first stage questionnaires and then followed by observation technique by giving them a topic in class about which they used to present a presentation where vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and enunciation all were closely observed. The result shows that the learners stop speaking because they suffer from various problems such as inhibition, mother tongue interference, attitude and lack of proper approach which play a decisive role adversely affecting the speaking ability to learn the speaking skill. In a nutshell, a number of recommendations have been suggested on the basis of results obtained from questionnaire and observation.