EXPLORING EFL LEARNERS’ DIFFICULTIES IN THE PRODUCTIVE SKILLS: THE CASE OF FIRST-YEAR LMD STUDENTS AT TLEMCEN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to shed the light on the linguistic and the psychological reasons behind first-year EFL learners’ weaknesses and difficulties in producing the English language at the Department of English in Tlemcen University. This leads to ask the following research questions:  What are the linguistic factors which cause students difficulties ?  What are the psychological variables that influence the students’ speaking skill ? Two hypotheses were deduced from these two questions:  First year EFL students may face many problems in the productive skills probably because of linguistic factors like: lack of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, spelling, coherence and cohesion.  Self-confidence, motivation, anxiety and self-esteem may affect students’ speaking skill. Therefore, this research was divided into three chapters. The first one was a theoritical view which tried to define key concepts related to language in general and the productive skills: speaking / writing. Then, it highlighted their importance in EFL learning. After that, it discussed the students’ difficulties in learning these skills. The second one described ELT situation in Algeria and the teaching of writing and speaking at the English Department. Then, it dealt with the quantitative and qualitative analyses of the collected data through the use of multiple instruments including: a questionnaire that was designed for students and an interview which was addressed for their teacher. The main results obtained from the research tools confirmed the both hypotheses. Firstly, the participants agreed that there were linguistic factors including: lack of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, spelling, punctuation,