A STUDY ON FACTORS AFFECTING OF ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN THEIR SPEAKING PERFORMANCE

The purpose of the current study is to discover the factors that cause English-majored students’ difficulties in their speaking performance. To facilitate this investigation, the researcher recruited a group of 30 English-majored students who study English as a foreign language. Furthermore, the instrument of this study utilized the questionnaire method as the tool of data collection. Moreover, the participants were asked questions focusing on a series of 27 items put into the three categories of difficulties in speaking performance. These difficulties are related to linguistic, psychological, and environmental factors. The results of the analysis showed that the English-majored students had more difficulty in the psychological factor than the other factors, namely, linguistic and environmental factors. Similarly, most of the students had difficulties related to the linguistic factor such as a lack of vocabulary knowledge to orally produce ideas and arguments about many topics encountered. Meanwhile, in terms of the psychological factor, the students revealed that the difficulty they faced is their low self-confidence. Finally, the result also confessed that they lack the environment for practicing speaking outside the classroom which is seen as an environmental factor. Article visualizations