A Preliminary Research On English Speaking Challenges And Learning Strategies In EFL Countries

The strong presence of English language has made it the most commonly spoken language in the world.Nowadays,English plays a prominent role in developing the world’s education and business.The significance of Globalization makes English receives special attention for Arab people and Chinese.Although a number of studies have been carried out to investigate the difficulties related to learning English language skills for Arab students in Arab World or in native English countries,the current study highlights the problems in learning English speaking skills for Arab in China where English is actively spoken as a foreign language.This paper is to study these problems and provide help for Arabic students to learn English speaking.This study investigates Arab postgraduates’ English learning behaviors in China,and tests the response of Arab postgraduates to the English speaking learning strategies.This study collected the data by using Strategy Inventory for Language Learning(SILL)questionnaire by Oxford 1990 and in it the language learning strategies are classified into six categories,such as Memory,Cognitive,Compensation,Metacognitive,Affective and Social language learning strategies.The data were analyzed via descriptive statistics.170 Arab postgraduate students(81 female and 89 males)who are living in China participated in this questionnaire.Based on the response average value of the participants,Oxford 1990 defines the participants as:low,medium,or high users of learning language strategies.Referring to the classification of Oxford 1990,Arab postgraduates can be considered as medium users of the learning strategies with an average response value of 3.18.It is also found that Arab postgraduates used Memory strategies least frequently.Thus it is important for language teachers to focus more on using different ways to increase the number of English vocabularies In addition,Arab postgraduate students use Affective strategies with an average value of 2.81,which shows the importance of the influence of classroom emotional atmosphere in the teaching process.In addition,the Metacognitive strategies are to be the most frequently used with an average of 3.65.The research provides a variety of ways for non-native English speaking students to learn English speaking,through which the communication between people can be promoted,and Arab world and other countries can be more closely connected and more friendly with each other.