The effectiveness of the strategies to teach speaking in English as a foreign language course to 7th grade students at Benjamin Zeledón School during the second semester of 2016

The present research is mixed; it is qualitative because is primarily exploratory research. It provides insights into the problem or helps to develop ideas or hypotheses. It is important to mention that the qualitative information is collected applying an observation guide to the class. Moreover, it is quantitative because the information collected through interviews and surveys is quantified generating numerical data. It is used to quantify attitudes, opinions, behaviors, and other defined variables. The purpose of this study was to research the effectiveness of the strategies to teach speaking in English as a foreign language courses and how these affect students‘ learning. The study also addresses the types of activities used by the teacher during the speaking activities such as discussions, role play, simulations, information gap, brainstorming, pair work/ group work and others as well as the importance of using the second language to develop students‘ oral proficiency. This research paper presents a thorough analysis of the direct interaction between students and teachers of Benjamin Zeledón regular high school. It was possible to observe and assess the quality of education in teaching speaking in 7th grade, which determine the most pressing difficulties, identifying how the little use of speaking strategies demonstrated was not a quite effective in students‘ learning. Most of the problems encountered in students match with many national studies that have been already presented, as the major problem that exists is that teachers teach English classes in Spanish and sometimes they explain the class in the same way or in some cases the lack of motivation, difficulties in the learning speaking such as lack of knowledge and participation of the students are some factors that limit the development of speaking skills in the classroom