Teaching Speaking Skills to Secondary School Students

Abstract

This research is an attempt to investigate how speaking skills are taught in the Libyan secondary schools in Wadi Al hayat, as well as teaching aids and facilities used. It also intends to identify the shortcomings and problems faced in teaching speaking skills in Libyan secondary schools and explaining the best techniques and strategies that should be used in teaching speaking skills. Data were collected on teaching speaking skills in ten Libyan secondary schools in wadi Alhayat. Sixty students and ten teachers responded to two structured questionnaires. The teachers were also interviewed on the same topic textbook analysis and class rooms were also carried out. The major findings of the study are as follows: 1- Many strategies and techniques are used in teaching the speaking skills such as games, role play, dialogues, reading graphs and so on. 2-Many schools have no teaching aids at all. 3-Most schools lack language labs with audio and visual labs. 4-Many English teachers are not trained on methods of teaching speaking skills. 5-The findings of the study showed that seventy nine percent of the students believe that they always or often feel ashamed when they make mistakes in speaking. 6-Two thirds of the students report that they are not trained by teachers to communicate in English. On the other hand, thirty percent of the teachers strongly agree, and only thirty agree that the students' pronuciation errors should be corrected during speaking. 7-Half of the teachers believe that their students are not always or often confident when speaking in English. Based on the findings, the researchers suggested the following: . The official authorities have to supply schools with the facilities necessary to make teaching speaking skills easier. . Teachers should be further trained to teach English language and in particular speaking skills. . Students should be provided with more speaking activities inside the classroom and should be further encouraged by their teachers to practice speaking in English and in this regard, group work and dramatization of situations are considered very effective techniques. . Teachers should adopt different approaches to teach students how to speak English. . The textbook should include tape scripts at the end, students should also have tapes for practicing speaking outside the classroom. . The textbook should also have a revision speaking unit after each three units. . Topics for speaking are not interesting from students point of view, so topics from daily life experience are recommended these are like customs of marriage in their tribes, interviews with famous football players or journeys.