DEVELOPING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS: Barriers faced by the Bangladeshi EFL learners

This study aimed at investigating the prevailing barriers for developing English speaking skills faced by the undergraduate level students in Bangladesh. The attempt was to locate the importance of speaking proficiency in English as one of the basic skills of a language in this “English” era. In this global age, the use of English has been inevitable, and it is used in different phases of our life. But Bangladeshi EFL learners often fail to attain proper speaking proficiency for some reason. This nature of the study was quantitative, and the data collection tool was questionnaire. This paper is presenting the problems and plausible recommendations in order to develop speaking. The reasons behind the incompetency in speaking skills are many and some of which are the influence of mother tongue, lack of vocabulary, lack of practice, unfavorable environment, teachers’ non-cooperation, shyness, fear, and language ‘fossilization.’


INTRODUCTION
English has become the most widespread means of communication in the world from the beginning of the Second World War. It is the most common 'lingua franca' in the present world (Canagarajah, 2014;Mackenzie, 2014). It is no longer in the unique possession of the English or the American; rather it is the language of the global world now (Shahidulla et al, 2001). Hence, English has been an integral part of our teaching and curriculum system. The teaching of English has traditionally been considered as teaching and making the students aware of certain aspects of the language such as grammar, vocabulary, translation etc. In this way, the students are hardly provided with adequate practice in the development of communicative skill through speaking (Littlewood, 1981;Richards, 2006). As a result, after years of study, students have known a great deal about English without being able to use it to express their thoughts and intentions. The language is usually studied in its written manifestation and often conversation skill is set aside.
Again aspects of the spoken language are taught in a very superficial way.
Teachers also prefer to teach writing elements as it is the most conventional form to teach (Rivers, 1981;Copland, Garton & Burns, 2013). For this reason, many teachers give up the attempt to teach it and concentrate on the writing aspects.
There are also several techniques of developing conversational skill and these are often skipped in our teaching and learning system. For all, English is a matter of dire importance, our learners can hardly attain competency in English especially in speaking skills.
As an independent nation, we do possess our mother tongue which has rather a glorious history as well as recognition. Nevertheless, it is a demand of time to make English widespread among the learners after Bangla. Prior to 1971, the medium of learning was English (Khan, 2003). After independence, Bangla received the constitutional recognition in the newly born state as for linguistic nationalism. In the consequence, English learning in the country started to get deteriorated. During the past five decades, multifarious policies were attempted to make it more effective.
But the situation is yet to reach up to the mark. The downward situation of English proficiency is one of the prime issues of the education policy in the country. Keeping the situation in mind, a number of changes in the textbooks and syllabus have been made to gear up the situation. Many seminars, conferences, and workshops teacher trainings arranged from time to time seem to be of no use. That language is primarily for communication is known to everybody and thus speaking is the elementary skill in any language.
The emerging and ever increasing importance of speaking skills in English both in educational and corporate areas, in recent years, have drawn our attention to the development of such these skills. English has been made compulsory from the primary level in our country, but the outcome is not telling so much and it is still in the making. After the completion of university education, our students can hardly speak in English and they can hardly prove their conversational worth. But the demand from the corporate area is that they often need persons knowing good English and having a good proficiency in conversational skill. In the long run, both the employer and employee suffer and they start learning English again getting admitted to English Learning Centres.
Eventually, our educational system is not being proved to be very much effective way of making our student apt in speaking English. Few years back, our curriculum and syllabus were not in the favor of contextual communication system. It was rather Grammar Translation Method of teaching where speaking, though an important skill, was set aside. Communicative language teaching approach was introduced in our country in 1997 (Ahmed, 2003). Although speaking is an important skill, it has not been yet included in our syllabus and public examination system of SSC and HSC level. So, this important skill has to be re-examined and emphasized on properly. The study tries to examine the existing problems and the causes of these problems. The study will also recommend some measures in order to minimize those problems and develop conversational skills. This study is sought to answer the main research question "what are barriers that students face in learning English speaking skills?"

LITERATURE REVIEW
This section presents an overview of related literature including problems in developing skill, importance of speaking as skill and related research. Conversations serve a variety of purpose (Rivers, 1981). The different kinds of conversational interactions can be distinguished those in which the primary focus is on the exchange of information (transactional) and those in which the primary purpose is to establish and maintain social relations (interactional) (Brown & Yule, 1983).
However, teaching speaking is affected by whether the primary purposes involved are transactional or interactional. According to Krashen's (quoted in Ellis, 1985) monitor hypothesis, input (listening) supersedes output (speaking). A number of factors such as fear, fatigue, inattention etc. affect one's speaking skills.
Practice in the process of learning speaking is also an important thing to be done. Students should be encouraged for free practice. As the student becomes more and more independent of his teacher, he should be encouraged to practise talking to himself and thinking in the foreign language as often as possible: describing to himself the things he sees on the way to school, recounting to himself what he has done during the day or what he intends to do. The forging of the instrument is not enough to prepare the student for act of speaking in the foreign language; he needs guided practice (Richards, 2015).
The more you practise, the more you will improve your own oral skill as well as help your students improve their skill. The ideal way for him to develop the speaking skills to the fullest is to go and live among the people who speak the language. For the average student; this is not possible to have frequent contact with native speakers of the language in his own country. We can, however, import to him in the classroom with basic attitudes and fundamental skills upon which he can build rapidly when the opportunity for real communication presents itself (Widdowson, 2003). Speaking is an act of communication we are influenced by our environmental cues (Rivers, 1981).
Feedback from the teacher is considered very important in developing speaking because feedbacks from listener (facial expression, interoperations etc.) give us indications of the meaning he is extracting. If the student has an unsympathetic relationship with his teacher or does not feel at home with his classmates, he may well feel that what he would like to say can be of little interest to them or would not be appreciated by them (Rivers, 1981).
Congenial environment for free speaking is a next to nothing in developing speaking skills in any language. In some places, free conversations may cause unpleasantness and embarrassment for themselves or for the people with whom they are conversing. Psychological experiment has shown that people are more likely to continue a conversation when other people agree than when they disagree (Daft & Samson, 2015).
Success in a language is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the (target) language. Therefore, if students do not learn how to speak or do not get any opportunity to speak in the language in the classroom, they may soon get de-motivated and lose interest in learning. On the other hand, if the right activities are taught in the right way, speaking in class can be a lot of fun, rising general learner motivation and making the English language classroom an effective and dynamic place to be (Nunan, 2006). Some other aspects contribute speaking as well. For example speaking and listening are complementary language skills (Brown & Yule, 1983).
Certain psychological factors which enter into interpersonal communication are highly relevant to the process of developing speaking abilities in a foreign language. In a class group, the teacher must be alert to recognize personality factors which are affecting participation in foreign language discussion. Some students are talkative, others are shy or taciturn. These characteristics affect student performance in the oral part of lesson. It has been noted that the talkative extroverts among missionaries learned language faster than quiet; studious person (Moeller & Catalano, 2015).

Rationale of the Study
The research is an authentic scenario of the EFL learners in Bangladesh.
Different linguistic factors of second or foreign language learning have been investigated in this research. This is a good source of study for the teachers, teacher trainers, stakeholders, policy makers, and researchers who want to carry out further research on language learning. The Ministry of Education, National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB), different educational institution could benefit from research.

METHOD
The research approach employed in this study is a quantitative descriptive in nature and hence it incorporates field work. The art of quantitative research lies deeply with an approach for evaluating an objective theory by examining particular relationship among various variables (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). For collecting data, a survey as the part of study was carried out for ten days in five departments under the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh.
The participants of the survey include 100 students. They were taken from five departments, 20 students from each department. The students were selected from the departments (Bangla, History, Philosophy, International Relations and Archaeology) other than English department. The students studying in the English department have been excluded because they do not represent the general students of Bangladesh. All the students were selected from 38th Batch (honors 3rd year) as they study in the middle of Honors Programme and serve the best purpose of the survey. There was a balance of sex in conducting the research. There were a few indigenous students among the participants. They all hailed from different parts of the country and hence they all can represent overall learning situation of the country within a limited scope. English is a language primarily for communication and so it is studied under the faculty of Arts and Humanities.
A questionnaire has been used for collecting data. The questionnaire contains three types of questions and there are total 13 questions or statements. The subjects were required to answer those questions by putting tick mark on the appropriate answer. They could answer single option for question number 1-3 and they could answer multiple options for the question number 13. They were asked questions or statements about their present speaking performance, their classroom environment, teachers' cooperation and performance, their past activities in the English classroom, at SSC and HSC level, their opinion about the contribution of SSC and HSC syllabus and textbooks for developing conversational skill etc.
Students' background information was also taken in the questionnaire. But there was no option for student's name for maintaining confidentiality.
The survey was conducted directly going to the respondents. The respondents were clarified the purpose of the survey at first. Then, they were clarified the items of the questionnaire. It took them 8-10 minutes to answer the questions. However, many of them were found very enthusiastic in answering the questions. Data analysis framework of the study is as follows.

FINDINGS
Mutual understanding or mutual communication or transfer of message is the prime concern in my language. In this regard, speaking, one of the four skills of a language meets the purpose best, as it is the primary and most direct way communication in any language. Thus, the first statement in the questionnaire is that speaking is very essential in English language. The respondents were asked how far they agree or disagree with the statement. Nearly 81.71% respondents strongly agree with the statement and another 18.26% respondents agree. It is important to note down here that nobody disagrees with this statement.  In developing speaking skills, practice and contextual conversation play important roles. Conversations with classmates and peers enable to grow their skills.
To find out the information, respondents were asked if they converse with their classmates. Findings are that 9.52% respondents never speak with their classmate, 29.52% respondents rarely speak with their classmates, and 53.33% sometimes, 6.66% often and 0.95% respondents always speak English.      There are many reasons of incompetency in the oral skills of English. In this question, there are multiple answers and the respondents were asked to define the main reasons of lacking proficiency in English from the answers. This question is about English classes in schools and colleges of the respondents. Students should practise speaking from their school level. Since language learning is more fruitful before puberty, according to Lenneberg's Critical Period Hypothesis (quoted in Ellis, 1985) and Rescorla (2019), our school and college teachers' role in this case is very important. This question was asked in order to know if they used to speak English in their school and college English classes.
Did you use to speak English in your school and college English classes?
40.38% respondents replied in the affirmative that they used to speak. But 59.62% respondents replied in the negative that, they did not use to speak English in their school and college English classes.
The mushrooming of coaching centers throughout the country is the direct indication that our students do not feel their academic classes sufficient for learning English. This very question was asked to the respondents if they have done any English speaking course so far.
Have you done any English speaking course so far?
26.67% respondents replied in the affirmative that they have done speaking course and 73.33% respondents replied in the negative that they have not done any speaking course so far.

ANALYSIS OF THE FINDINGS
Speaking or conversation is a "multifaceted activity" (Richards, 1990). It includes production of message, transmission of message, decoding of message and reception of message. In speaking, a speaker transmits message and hearer decodes and receives the message. The hearer also plays the role of speaker and speaker the role of hearer by turn. Weaver (1949) (Brown & Yule, 1983). It is a matter of irony that our students feel the necessity of conversational skill, but they are unable to communicate.
There are number of barriers in the ways of developing skill. The student who is to speak a language to express his personal meaning needs much practice.
Frequent practice enables a student to have mastery over conversation. In this regard, students need to converse with their classmates in English. But many students hardly converse with their classmates. Even, a number of students never speak English with their peers. Such kind of phobia for speaking on the part of students reduces their ability. Thus, there is absence of spontaneity for natural communication.
An important finding of the study that hampers our English skill is the mother tongue interference. In case of ESL learners, the transfer of different elements from mother tongue is inevitable and natural. But when they interfere foreign language in an excessive way, the target language remains in the static position. Most of our students speak Bangla naturally as it is our mother tongue. But Bangla is even spoken in the English classroom and it hampers our English learning. Another fact is that when our students speak English, they do not use only English, rather they mixture both Bangla and English, popularly known as 'Banglish'.
A teacher should take the role of facilitator in a language class. Teachers in the conversational class should encourage the learners to use English. He should speak English in order to make the students speak the language. Besides, teachers in the speaking class find themselves talking less and listening more and becoming active facilitators of their students' learning. The study shows the negligence and inefficiency of teachers in the classroom. Teachers do not use English always in the classroom and many teachers rarely speak in English in the classroom.
Students should have conversational contribution in the classroom and they should be given real life communication system. Our teachers might not be friendly enough to make the learners easy in making spontaneous conversation. The study shows that students are to speak English in the classroom rarely. A huge number of students never talk in the class. They even do not feel comfortable at using English.
This is one of the main reasons for which our speaking proficiency does not develop because language learning cannot be fruitful if there is fear or shyness.
Our SSC and HSC syllabus seem to be less effective in developing communicative competence. It is a matter of hope that CLTA (Communicative Language Teaching Approach) has been introduced, but still dialogue making and other conversations are memorized. Our textbooks instruct our teachers for natural and contextual conversation such as situational talk, greetings, dialogue making, pair work etc. But they are followed neither by our teachers nor our students. The objectives of the textbooks are to enable our students to use the most common form of expression of the language freely and spontaneously. Students are forced to memorize because they need to pass in the exam and they can do it without much effort and even their minds reside elsewhere.
Our public examinations fail to put equal stress on all the four language skills. Our SSC and HSC syllabuses mainly focus on reading and writing. Questions in the public examination are set on reading and writing, but listening and speaking are excluded. Students always concentrate on the items necessary for passing and getting a good grade in the examination. Such kind of non-cooperation on the part of teachers highly contributes to the lacking of competency in conversation skill in English.

DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
To teach the speaking skills, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of the process involved in speech. If we wish our students to speak with ease in the foreign language, we must ensure that they are given ample practice in expressing themselves in different situations. Students in a foreign-language class will not learn to speak fluently merely by hearing speech although this is important in familiarizing them with the acceptable forms of language. The teacher should give the students many opportunities to practise speaking skills. The active practice of speech cannot be left to a later stage to be done. Students should be given the opportunity throughout the years of study to develop skill in speech and control in speech habits.
If the students are able to practise speech habits, our problems will be reduced.
Student motivation is also considered to be a strong factor in developing speaking skills. This is in line with the research conducted in Chinese university students (Cao & Meng, 2020). Students come to study English with the strong idea that the will be able to speak it. But they are often discouraged and as a result they lose interest when the find that English is just like other subjects learning a lot of matters from a book. Then, they find that being able to speak English is some far distant goal, attainable only after a long time and labor. But students should be taught language with a lot of fun and spontaneity. The students should be allowed to say something in English from the very beginning, no matter how simple it may be.
Thus, they feel a great sense of satisfaction and their attitude towards language learning becomes much more favourable.
Students should be given freedom in their selection of expression in language learning. They must be given the opportunity to apply they have learned. Teachers should wait with patience until practice is completed. Students will select expression themselves and such selection will develop their oral skill where they will create new utterances and expressions. Students may be encouraged to vie with each other in the production of affirmative, negative, statements, questions, conditional utterances etc.
A teacher's role in a language teaching class should be facilitating. He should make everything amusing, exciting and enjoyable. He should make his student practise orally without the support of a written script. Teachers often try to provide with overlearnings which cause fatigue and distaste on the part of the students. Teachers should take care of making quite clear the situational context such as the place, the time of the day, the type of activity involved etc. to the students and the relationships among the characters such as approximate age, sex, occupations, authority patterns etc. and the emotional overtone of their conversation such as friendly, formal, hostile, teasing, reprimanding (Rivers, 1981). In a foreign country, the students live in a natural speaking environment.
Expression and conversation strike their ear continuously around them. Thus, they can internalize skill without conscious effort. This constant hearing from native speaker is missing in a country like ours. Hence, they must converse and practise themselves. A student should describe himself the things he sees on the way and remember what he has done during the day. In this way, he will have a good practice and can develop his skill (Rivers, 1981;Breidenstein, Fahey, Glickman, & Hensley, 2012).
English is a foreign language and naturally it will seem difficult to us to attain.
But our students and teachers should be more active, energetic and innovative.
Teachers should change their outlook and they should be more dynamic as language learning is not like the teaching of other general subjects. They should have the role of a real facilitator. They should provide the students with the every kind of motivation possible. They should talk in the class and should make it interactive and communicative.
Our textbook writers and syllabus designers should give more attention to the natural conversation because speaking skills cannot be attained by fake memorization or force study. Listening is strongly connected with speaking and so students should listen to English news, discussions and dialogues as part of developing speaking skills. Students should shake off fear and shyness because they bring nothing but failure in language learning. Our students will need to be patient and persevering in improving their oral skills. In the existing scenario, our students face a lot of problems for which they cannot attain proper proficiency in English.
Nevertheless, with the right attitude to the problems, we can minimize them and develop the oral skill in English among our students.

CONCLUSION
To conclude, the competence of speaking skills have become a vital need in the present world. This emerging necessity influences our career path along with personal communication and interaction. No doubt, we do love our mother tongue.
But we also need to have competency in the global language because we are also part of this globalized world. English as the most accepted language of the world has been made wide in different sectors of our country. Different multinational companies and international organizations working in our country also use English as a means of communication. In this situation, conversational skill in English must be developed among our students though there are scores of barriers in developing the skill.