Exploring the Difficulties Reducing EFL Students’ Interaction in Oral Expression Classes

Abstract

The present research aims at exploring the difficulties that first year English Foreign Language (EFL) learners at Jijel university face during the interaction in Oral Expression (OE) classes. The main problem of this work is that students are unable to have a good interaction in OE class due to some barriers that hinder them from producing the target language as it is expected. The dissertation in hand is based on the hypothesis that if first-year EFL students face difficulties in OE class, their interaction will be affected. The theoretical issue is divided into three sections which represent an overview of classroom interaction in EFL setting, the oral expression skills, and EFL learners’ interaction difficulties. With regards to the practical part, it represents the fieldwork in which both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used; a questionnaire for students and a classroom observation. The description design was followed as a basis to analyse and describe the relationship between the independent variable which is the difficulties encountered by EFL learners in oral expression class, and their effect on students’ interaction which represents the dependent variable. The obtained results from both the questionnaire for students and the classroom observation revealed that the different difficulties faced by EFL learners in OE class affect their level of interaction. Based on the findings, some teaching and learning techniques and strategies were set as pedagogical recommendations to help both the teachers in achieving the course objective and the students to get control of all those difficulties being encountered for the aim of improving their level of interaction