Oral Communication Barriers among Secondary Schools Sudanese Students

Abstract

This study aims to investigate thebarriers of oral communication: A case study of Sudanese English Language students at secondary school in Khartoum locality. Oral communication is considered as one of the major skills of English language learning. Sudanese students have different difficulties when they want to communicate orally with their teachers and to each others. They find it difficult to converse in English in front of their classmates. They resort to the use of mother tongue to communicate orally with their teachers and classmates. This has a negative effect on the general standard of learning. The main objective of this study is to investigate the above mentioned problems to find out whether the cause concerns the lack of vocabulary, confidence and motivation as well as interest of the part of the students. They feel afraid and anxious when they try to talk in English. Some English language teachers participate in these problems especially those lack experiences in teaching English through English and instead of this they teach English through mother tongue, therefore, they play a passive role. Also the techniques of teaching oral communication effectively at secondary school may need tackling. Beside the cultural differences among the students, weakness in vocabulary, lack of grammatical and socio-linguistic competence are other factors. However, the barriers of oral communication aggravate gradually and it comes to existence as a real problem.