zainab mazhar

Speech is an important language skill used for communicating. It is the creative oral language skill that allows one to produce a logical spoken statement in order to express oneself meaningfully. For an effective communication, teaching of speaking skill at schools is of great importance. It is found that in Pakistan, speaking skill is not effectively taught at Government Secondary Schools. The objective of this study was to investigate the perceptions of Government Secondary School English teachers about the challenges they face in teaching English speaking skill to their students. Communicative competence presented by Dell Hymes in the 1960s, provided the theoretical framework for this study. The participants of this study were 100 Government Secondary School English teachers of Quetta city, out of whom 50 were male and 50 females. Data was collected using five items Likert scale questionnaire. Data was analyzed using SPSS. The findings revealed that the majority of English teachers spoke in both English and Urdu in their English class. It was also found that the teachers often asked student for sentence drilling and repeating sentences after them in English. Inclusively, the findings of this study depicted that most English Teachers agreed that they describe grammar only when required in class. The study suggests that English should be taught only by the teachers qualified in this subject. It is further suggested that speaking skill should be assessed in the board examination, only in that case the English teachers would focus teaching of speaking skill in their English classes in order to enhance communicative competence of their students.