Challenges of teaching speaking skill in a large classroom

Abstract

The present thesis entitled Challenges of teaching speaking skill in a large classroom aimed to find out the major difficulties that the teachers and students face while teaching and learning speaking skill in a large classroom, analyze factors affecting teaching speaking skill in a large classroom and assess the strategies that teachers and students employ to promote the speaking ability. Keeping the objectives in consideration, 6 English teachers and 30 students from 6 different schools of Nawalparsi district were sampled through non-random purposive sampling procedure. A set of structured questionnaire was the tool of data collection. After analysis and interpretation of data, it has been found that the ELT teachers of Nawalparasi face several difficulties such as mother tongue influence, low weightage to speaking skill in the curriculum, large classroom, lack of time and resources etc. in course of teaching speaking skill in a large classroom. Various factors such as curriculum factor, students’ inhibition, lack of vocabulary and its pronunciation, less exposure in the target language are affecting teaching speaking skill in a large classroom. Teachers prefer to apply teacher centered activities in comparison to learner centered activities. It has also been found that teaching speaking skill is less emphasized in comparison to other skills. Teachers are found using mother tongue and students are also found following them which is the main obstacle of developing speaking skill. Teachers are not found using the effective strategies to teach speaking skill to make it interesting and students are found that they are neglecting this skill because of various reasons such as shy nature, mother tongue influence, lack of vocabularies and grammatical competence. This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is an introductory part which includes background of the study, statement of the problems, objectives of the study, research questions, significance of the study, delimitations of the study, and operational definitions of the key terms. Similarly, chapter two includes the review of the related theoretical literature, review of related empirical literature, implications of the review of the study and conceptual framework. The third chapter deals with methods and procedures of the study under which design and method of the study, population, sample and sampling strategy, study area, data collection tools and techniques, data collection procedures, analysis and interpretation procedures are mentioned. Likewise, chapter four includes analysis and interpretation of results and summary of findings. Chapter five includes conclusions and recommendations at three different areas i.e., policy related, practice related and further research related. Finally, the references and appendices are included.