What difficulties do students encounter with Speaking Skills in English? How can we help them?

Speaking is the backbone of communication which is the vital way to show ourselves and express our feelings, opinions, and interact with each other in the society. without speaking and communication in general missing punctuation the progress in the working world and in life, would be nearly impossible. Non-native students usually find it hard to speak English for so many causes like they cannot practice it in their actual life situations and consider it is like any school subject bordered by the school. In other words, the environment, the ineffective way of education system and in some cases lack of confidence and telling themselves that English is hard are considered the main causes of English speaking difficulties for the majority of students. As we mentioned the surrounding environment plays an important role in improving speaking skill, but if English were not your mother tongue language, it would be a serious problem to speak English in a right way. In our schools there were large class sizes, standardized tests, and limited class time made it difficult for teachers to focus on speaking with their students. which means that even if they studied English in school, they probably had little practice speaking the language. Many of English language learners tend to have a negative attitude about speaking English that they don’t have the enough courage to speak that they think they will make pronunciation mistakes and people will make fun of them. On the other hand, each teacher can improve the students’ ability to be able to speak English by following an educational plan based on some factors. This plan should start with breaking the ice between the student and speaking and enhancing student’s confidence that he can speak and use English in his life. For me as a teacher I will start with some steps such as Imitation in which student will listening to others and repeat what they say and how they say it – even intonation, emotion and choice of words. It will help them to have confidence. I will ask them to memorize expressions as a unit instead of separate words. For a moment, allow themselves to forget about grammar or the meaning of each word until the expression starts to feel natural. I will ask them to be practical and “copy paste” what they hear without creating unnecessary obstacles. This would mean learning an expression like “I need water” as a whole, rather than translating word by word and learning how to conjugate the verb “to need” before they do it. I will advise them to be “actors “, which means to start with an expression try reading it until they can say it without looking at the paper. The next step is trying to say that expression with different emotions. After a while, they will get used to the sound of the expression without even having to think about it. Another element in the educational plan made for my students to help them to speak English, is to train them to listen to others whatever, to as many songs, series, documentaries, accents and conversations as possible. This will help them understand how English sounds in different countries and how it is spoken by different people. by doing this, they will realize that many, many foreigners around the world have accents but they are still easily understood by natives and can communicate effectively. So…why not you? A foreign accent isn’t the end of the world – it is just proof that you were brave enough to learn something new! The last element in my plan will be based on building the confidence in each student that he can speak and bury the shyness of interacting with English by encouraging them to start in recording themselves reading simple texts. This helps them in two ways. First, they start getting comfortable with the sound of English coming out of their mouth. Secondly, they can save their recording to keep track of the progress in the future and see how fantastic their progress has been! It’s essential that they find somebody to give them feedback on their speaking – ideally a native speaker or me if it possible. In conclusion, speaking allover the world is the main way to make people communicate and understand each other. that’s why our students should work on improving their speaking abilities. Non-native learners find it is not easy to speak English for many causes. It could be environment in which they live does not support practicing English, The way in which they learn English and lack of confidence. We can help them to speak English by putting them on the right path of learning English through imitation, avoid learning word by word but complete expressions, using what they learnt by acting it, listing to others and recording simple texts and find a native speaker or even their teacher to evaluate them.