Developing oral skills of students learning French as a foreign language

Abstract

This paper will focus on how to develop oral skills of Sri Lankan students who learn French as a foreign language. This topic is highly interesting as speaking skills are often under represented in the traditional classroom. This is mainly due to the fact that it is considered a less- academic skill than writing. A questionnaire was given to seventy university students studying French. The questions were aimed at summarizing the main difficulties faced by students when learning to speak French. A thorough study was also made on methodologies used in applied linguistics. It is important to elucidate the main issues related to the acquisition of oral skills mentioned by students and the emphasis will only fall upon the most pertinent issues such as the use of native languages (Sinhala and Tamil) and English in the classroom, over usage of translation, lack of interaction between teachers and students, problems of ignoring real communication, rigid teaching methods etc. Finally, the stress will be on the solutions which can be used to overcome the above mentioned problems. The bespoke solutions derive from teaching methodologies and applied linguistics theories like direct method, the audio lingua method, the behavioral approach, the nativist theories and Noam Chomsky’s theories etc.