Difficulties Encountered By Students at a University in Vietnam in Speaking English

Abstract

The research investigates into the speaking difficulties of fourth – year students at Thai Nguyen University. The goals of the research are to find out what linguistic difficulties and psychological difficulties do EFL learners at Thai Nguyen University face when speaking English. Quantitative method was used as the main method of this study. A total of 150 students were chosen as participants of the study. Due to the impact of Covid-19, data were collected through online survey in two weeks. The research discovered three linguistic difficulties (pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary) and three psychological difficulties (attitude, anxiety and motivation). The findings of the study revealed that students tend to encounter linguistic difficulties than psychological difficulties. The most common problem is grammar incompetence, followed by vocabulary and anxiety. Furthermore, the outcome of the study indicated that EFL learners at Thai Nguyen University do not have pronunciation difficulty. The findings also show that students have positive attitudes, high levels of motivation toward speaking English. In addition, the researcher has proposed some recommendations for both teachers and students to reduce these speaking difficulties.