Fostering EFL Learners’ Speaking Skills: Bridging the Gap between the Middle School and the Rural Society of Adrar

Abstract

: Providing learners with the ability to use English effectively and accurately in genuine communication is, without fail, the major goal of English Language Teaching (ELT). As far as Competency Based Language Teaching (CBLT) tenets are concerned, to attain this goal many factors, incontrovertibly, intervene including parental involvement, environmental home conditions, and the adequacy of the teaching materials. Hence, in an attempt to bridge the gap between the EFL classroom practices and the society in the rural areas of Adrar, this research aims basically at investigating the extent to which parental involvement influences EFL learners’ speaking performance, and exploring how teachers’ positive attitudes toward the use of the course book have heavy impact on the speaking skills teaching outcomes. To testify our hypotheses, we opted for three research techniques: (1) A Four-Likert scale questionnaire addressed to 50 students from three different middle schools of the rural areas and one school in the city center to collect data about their education at home and their parents’ attitudes toward English Language Learning (ELL), (2) A course book evaluation checklist meant for 60 EFL teachers to explore their attitudes (3) a proficiency test to measure 4th year middle school student’s English oral performance. The findings provide evidence of how focal parent involvement is in shaping their children school achievement in general and English learning in particular. At the end of the research, some suggestions are made with the hope of helping EFL rural students to improve the quality of their speaking performance. Providing them with adequate communicative tasks and a number of effective learning strategies, some pedagogical recommendations are also proposed to both teachers and students to overcome oral classroom’s challenges.