DETERMINING THE CHALLENGES IN ENGLISH LEARNING SPEAKING SKILL FOR PRE-UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

Due to the conditions in which students adjust themselves after high school and into college, specifically pre-university, this paper aims to determine the challenges pre-university students face in learning speaking skills for English subjects. Since pre-university students have numerous subjects to focus on during their academic period before entering their preferred universities, the attention to non-main subjects is limited. Hence the need to understand students’ perceptions in continuing their English study, especially for their speaking skills. This study uses a quantitative method, in which the researchers provide the pre-university student candidates questionnaire forms enquiring about their perceptions, needs and motivation levels that they possess during English learning speaking classes. From the results taken from the data, it is revealed that the pre-university students perceived that they do not have a negative view towards English classes. However, they do opinionate that in order to have good speaking skills, one must possess good syntax and semantics skills. They also perceived they would perform well by studying with the materials given by the instructors. If they performed lower than expected, they took the initiative to study and perform better than the previous achievement. The importance of this study is to help instructors understand their students’ perceptions towards English learning speaking skills better, their motivation and the need for instructors to provide a better and more convenient environment for pre-university students to learn in the classroom.