Investigating Factors Impacting EFL Students' Speaking Ability: A study on some public Secondary Classrooms - Misurata- Libya

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the speaking difficulties which encounter public secondary school students at second year in Misurata. It seeks to analyze their problems and factors that negatively affect their speaking skill in order to help them avoiding these problems. The research method adopted in this study was a descriptive one. So, it intended to describe two domains: The first one is "Affective factors related to students", and the second is the "Factors related to teachers" the role in teaching speaking skills. These factors were described in details with some helpful and useful recommendations for teacher to help their students to speak the target language. The data was gathered through two of questionnaires administrated on a sample of 100 students and 20 teachers at secondary schools. The results suggested that the students did not practice speaking skills well both in or out-side classroom due to: Lack of motivation and lack of encouragement by the surrounding environment, anxiety, fear of making mistakes and inhibition , lack of self-confidence , shortage of vocabulary. Therefore, it is primarily suggested that students need to develop their self-confidence, be aware of the role of mistakes in learning speaking skills; Secondly, the teachers should employ their maximum potential to assess and activate the students' motivation and self- confidence in speaking skills.