مجلة دراسات الإنسان و المجتمع

The purpose of this study is to find out the speaking problems and difficulties encountered by the first semester students at Higher Technical Institute. In this study, a questionnaire was distributed to 20 students (17 female students and 3 male students) from Hospitality and Tourism Department. The results reveal that most of students face problems and difficulties in speaking due to some reasons like lack in vocabulary, poor grammar, and knowledge, and those problems are belonged to linguistic problems. From the questionnaire findings, the majority of the participants about 45% of them are willing to improve their speaking skills by giving them a chance to use English. The results show that 40% of students consider the lack of vocabulary as the major difficulty in oral English language interaction. More than 70% of the participants preferred learning strategies (activities like role play, games, pair work) as compared to passive learning. Inconclusion, linguistic problem is the most dominate problems faced by the first semester students at Higher Technical Institute.