INTRODUCTION
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INTRODUCTION
Language is the most important means of communication and
interaction existing among human beings living either in the same or in the
different areas. The globalization of economy and the increasing prosperity of
the American economy make English the most spoken worldwide language. Then, in
order to cooperate with the super-power, the United States of America, and to
be informed about technical and scientific discoveries, every country worldwide
feels the need to understand and speak English. Thus, Benin authorities, very
soon found it necessary that English be part of the subjects taught in schools.
At the university level, students choose freely to enroll for the English unit
for further learning of such a target language. The training takes four years
and consists of courses taught by lecturers. Language learning is a hard work.
Effort is required at every moment and must be maintained over a long period of
time. Communicative strategies help and encourage many learners to sustain
their interest and work. They also help the teacher to create contexts in which
the language is useful and meaningful. The learners want to take part and in
order to do so, they must understand what other are saying and have written,
and they must speak or write in order to express their own point of view or
give information.
Unfortunately, in spite of the long years students spent
learning English and even at the end of their studies, they have much
difficulties in decoding English words uttered by English natives or people
coming from an English speaking country. The English classes being held by
English teachers who are most of the time non-native speakers of English, the
way they pronounce English words reflects their mother tongues through the tone
they use, their intonation, their speaking rate...etc. Indeed, the teaching of
English in Benin schools, either at the secondary or University level, is
affected or impoverished by many factors among which I have the non-existence
of language laboratories, the lack of in-service training of the teacher and
the lack of communicative strategies/tools.
Taking into account all those factors, the Beninese language
learners may not be prepared enough to hold a conversation with native speakers
of English. Indeed, the way English is taught in Benin schools does not enable
the learners to decode easily formal
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message from native speakers of English whose way of speaking
is totally if not basically different from our own. The major difficulty that
hinders a fluent inability conversation between native and non-native speakers
of English is to speak with understanding one another. This kind of
conversation always turns to be a dialogue of the deaf. Such a situation may be
due to the methodology and materials used to teach English, and particularly
speaking in English classes.
The main reason for choosing this topic for my bachelor thesis
were realizing how important communication is in everyday situations. No matter
where we are, either in Benin republic or in a foreign country, English
conversation plays a crucial role in understanding each other and dealing with
different kinds of uncovered problems. I mean, both EFL students and English
teachers need English to communicate with their colleagues and near-native
speakers for real communicative ability's performance.
CHAPTER ONE:
IDENTIFICATION OF THE STUDY
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CHAPTER ONE: IDENTIFICATION OF THE STUDY
In the current chapter, I present the purpose of the study, the
statement of the problem, the significance of the study, the scope of the study
and the research questions. As such, the chapter functions as the background of
the study.
1.1 Statement of the problem
When I talk about teaching, I take into account the methods
used to motivate students to learn. Most of the time teachers just come to
their respective classes without any idea of how students would like to be
taught, they teach English to students following the classical way of teaching.
The classical method of teaching is full of grammatical rules imposed by
English teachers that students should keep automatically in mind and apply them
without even knowing the meaning of those rules, why they are necessary, and in
what kind of situation they are going to use them. In short they do not know
what they are learning.
An English teacher must be a facilitator for his students, he
must show them a clearer way of understanding the new language taught without
providing them with lots of useless rules. So, what I realized is that students
do not really know the `'why» they are learning the language because
basically teachers force them to learn what is unuseful to them. First of all
classes should be students-centered so that they can get engaged in the course
process and be active during the delivery of the lesson. Teachers should show
students that they should learn English with goal, they should know why they
are learning it, when goals are known by students, teachers must find a way to
motivate them to learn the target language for achieving their respective goals
in real-life.
Classroom observations, interviews and questionnaires realized
for English teachers and students in some secondary schools( CEG Suru-Lere, CEG
le Littoral) revealed that most students where taught English with the
classical method where grammatical rules and the teacher's voice are most used.
Students find it very difficult to hold a good conversation in English because
they are not prepared to it, teachers should then apply good tests to motivate
students to learn for real-life communication. Students should both know about
grammar and communication in order to be able to defend themselves in
real-life
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communication. The main objective of this study is to tackle
the issue of tests used in classes and to find solutions in order to better the
teaching in schools.
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