Students' Difficulties and Preferences in Speaking for Academic Purposes Across Gender

ABSTRACT This research aims to discover the difficulties and strategies encountered by English Department students. This research uses qualitative approach and collects the data by interview delivered with narrative inquiry using WhatsApp voice note as the main instrument and VAK questionnaire as the second instrument. It took 30 participants and 4 participants for the interview session of fourth semester in academic year 2020/2021. The result of this research revealed difficulties in terms of speaking skill which are (1) insufficiency in vocabulary, (2) pronunciation and grammar mastery, (3) mother tongue and psychological issues, and (4) male and female students' attitude. Thus, it can be concluded that the preparation depends on their assessment through learning styles in order to discover students' difficulties and strategies. Moreover, the lecturer as the main element in the class must give authentic approaches. In addition, this research still needs further study that can solve their difficulties properly. Keywords: Speaking, Students' Difficulties, Strategies, Gende