The Speaking Difficulties Faced by Undergraduate EFL Students: Linguistics and Non-Linguistics Aspects

Abstract

English foreign language students obviously faced several difficulties in learning English. This study aimed to identified the difficulties faced by undergraduate EFL students in speaking skills at UIN Raden Fatah Palembang. Qualitative research design was used in this study in the form of case study. The subjects of this study were twelve third semester English education students at UIN Raden Fatah Palembang who were determined by using homogeneous sampling. Students selected to participate were those who filled out the questionnaire and considered having difficulties in speaking based on the result of the questionnaire and these students were taking their formal speaking courses in the third semester The data were collected by using interview. The interview sessions were recorded and transcribed. The result of this study found that there were two aspects related to the speaking difficulties faced by the undergraduate students, namely linguistic aspects, and non-linguistic aspects. The linguistic aspects were lack of vocabulary, pronunciation, grammatical structures, and the influence of mother tongue on pronunciation and grammatical structures. The non-linguistic aspects were anxiety, lack of confident, and fear of making mistakes.