Spoken Communication Problems of Aden University EFL Undergraduate Students. Causes and Solutions

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2021 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: A+, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, language: English, abstract: This study was designed to investigate the spoken communication difficulties encountered by the fourth year EFL (English as a foreign language) students of some rural faculties of Aden University and the factors that might negatively contribute to their poor acquisition of spoken communication proficiency during their learning of English in these faculties. The goal is to reach some suggestions and solutions that may help in changing the current situation and enabling the concerned EFL programs to produce proficient speakers of English. The data were collected through varied instruments, namely students' questionnaire (n = 120), teachers' questionnaire (n = 23), students' interviews (n = 30), speaking skill teachers' interviews (n = 4), students' spoken communication proficiency assessment rubric (n = 42), classroom observations (n = 6), and an assessment of speaking skill syllabi. The collected data were analyzed by using the SPSS 21st version and manually. The results revealed that the majority of students encounter fluency and automaticity related difficulties and lack of communication strategies. Moreover, some students also share one or more difficulties with these two major ones, such as phonological difficulties, comprehension difficulties, sociocultural difficulties, lack of discourse knowledge, affective difficulties, and lexical and grammatical difficulties, respectively. Though most students seem to have mastered a somehow sufficient level of grammar and vocabulary, many of them cannot put their lexical and grammatical knowledge into use orally.

Dr. Sabri is an assistant professor at Department of English - Aden University. He got his B.A. & Ed. Degree, major of English, from University of Aden in 2008. In August 2014, he joined M.A. English Program at Dr. Dr B.A.M. University and got his M.A. English degree in 2016. He then joined Ph.D. program and got Ph.D. in English Applied Linguistics in September 2022. His main areas of interest are Linguistics, ELT, CALL, MALL and English Literature.