Constraints on Improving Speaking Skills: A Study of English as a Foreign Language (EFL)

This paper aims to investigate teacher and student-related constraints on improving learners’ speaking skills in Ivorian secondary schools, and to find out whether there are differences in teachers’ perceptions of these constraints based on their teaching experience, and diploma. A Likert-type questionnaire was administered to 35 teachers with differing characteristics. The data gathered were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results indicated that most teachers believed that students’ inability to speak English was due to their passivity in the classroom. They perceived the need to cover course content, the lack of time and resources, and teachers’ lack of competence in teaching speaking skills as the major teacher related- constraints. The results finally showed that there are no significant differences in teachers’ perception of teacher and student-related constraints based on their diploma and number of years teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL).