Factors Affecting The Development of Speaking Skills in EFL Classes: Grade 10 Students at Wera Bera Secondary School in Focus

Abstract

This study was conducted to assess factors affecting the development of speaking skills of grade 10 students in EFL classes at Wera Bera Secondary School in focus. Two teachers and thirty students were the subjects of the study. The students were selected from seventy students of two sections A and B using simple random sampling. Two teachers were also selected as the subjects of the study using available sampling techniques. Questionnaires with close and open ended items for students, semi-structured interview questions for teachers, and Classroom observation check-lists with semi-structured items were employed as data collection instruments. These data collection instruments were analyzed and interpreted by using both qualitative and quantitative methods. For example, the data collected through close and open ended questionnaires were reported using frequency and percentages quantitatively whereas the data those collected through semi-structured interview and classroom observation were narrated qualitatively and data from all sources were triangulated to increase reliability of the findings. The results suggested that the students did not practice speaking skills both in and out-side classroom due to: lack of motivation, fear of making mistakes, lack of self-confidence, poor background of grammar knowledge, shortage of vocabularies, lack of exposure, and their poor back-ground experience. Therefore, it is primarily suggested that students need to develop their self confidence, be aware of the role of mistakes in learning speaking skills, feel responsible for their learning and build their knowledge of grammar and vocabulary; secondly, the instructors should employ their maximum potential to assess and activate the students’ basic language skills and increase students’ motivation and self-confidence in speaking skills; Thus, it is recommended that English language teachers should employ their maximum effort to minimize the problems that affect the development of speaking skills of students by motivating the students to speak in the language, providing the students with various opportunities of speaking skills, providing appropriate supplementary speaking materials and giving additional/tutorial classes for better improvement of students’ speaking skills. Finally, it is hoped that the result of this study encourages other researchers to conduct a research on the same or related issues so that further research needs to be carried out in order to get a wider and deeper understanding of factors affecting the development of students' speaking skills in English classroom.