Investigation Of The Challenges Encountered By Iraqi Efl Preparatory Students In Using The Four English Language Skills

The present study is apragmatic attempt for investigating the challengesencountered by Iraqi sixth preparatory students in using the four language skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening). The reason behind choosing sixth preparatory students as a sample of the study is that they are the most advanced students among the preparatory stages. Generally, Iraqi sixth preparatory students suffer a great deal from English language curricula and that is negatively reflected throughout their examinations scores. This negative implication is related to the fact that their linguistic competence is very poor at reading, writing, speaking and listening levels on which the English textbook for the preparatory stages is based. The present study aims at investigating the difficulties that Iraqi sixth preparatory students may face in writing compositions, reading passages, speaking and pronouncing certain problematic vocabularies, and listening to some audio conversations. The research also aims at suggesting some possible solutions to the students in learning the four language skills mentioned. The study is hoped to be of special importance to the Iraqi sixth preparatory stage students for improving their language skills in term of reading, writing, speaking and listening since their curricula is based on these four language-teaching skills. Moreover, the study is pedagogically hoped to be of special importance to the textbook and curricula designers to include language materials that fit the level of the learners and lead to linguistic progress in term of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. The study is based on a diagnostic test to measure the difficulties of the learners at the four language skills learning. This diagnostic test is essentially classified into productive and recognitive parts. The productive part is designed to measure the students’ ability in writing short requested compositions, reading certain given passages from their Student Textbook, and responding orally to certain short given (written) conversations. Whereas the recognitive part is designed to measure the students’ ability in comprehending short read passages, i.e., the students are requested to tick the correct options, complete certain required options, or to choose the proper choice that best matches the item(s) employed in the passage. The researchers have relied on statistical methods for analyzing the study sample responses for accurate results and a proper hypotheses testing. The research ends up with some important recommendations and suggestions for further studies.