Studying of the Barriers Faced by EFL Iraqi Students in teaching Speaking skills At Intermediate School

Abstract

Speaking is a very central part in learning a foreign language. In this study, the researcher ; as an English teacher for more than 30 years ,finds out that students at any school level encounter a lot of barriers that avoid them from being fluent English speakers. Consequently, the present study aims to find out these challenges among EFL Iraqi students at Intermediate school s. The sample of this survey consists of 117male students. Cronbach’s alpha was utilized to calculate internal consistency to decide the reasons that lead to oral shortage and suggest solutions to overcome these challenges. The results discovered that there are some challenges that relate to the students , teachers and Textbooks .In fact, Textbooks, may not motivate students to speak particularly, with limited periodic teaching time and consequently, mainly center on teaching grammar` structure and writing tasks. The researcher proposed a set of solutions to tackle these problems such as, teachers should support students to perform the language orally in and out the classroom and provide students the self-confidence to speak unexpectedly using that language. They must also analysis students’ mistakes beneficially. Besides, textbooks should contain a lot of comprehensible pictures to arouse oral communication skills and graspable drills check students’ ability to speak fluently