English Speaking Challenges of Rural Learners: Possible Solutions

Lalitha Devi Bommanaboina, Madanapalle Institute of Technology and Science, India

Challenges Faced by Rural Students in Speaking English

This article addresses the major problems faced by rural students with English speaking skills. Based on data collected from 200 first-year Bachelor of Technology students from an engineering college, several key observations have been made. Many of these students come from diverse socio-economic backgrounds with limited exposure to spoken English. Their socio-economic status include the region they belong to that is rural, semi-rural and urban areas, and from different income level groups. The students’ first language is Telugu and they are from the age group 17 to 18 years. Due to their lack of exposure to target language, they struggle with even short speaking tasks of one to two minutes. Common reasons for their low proficiency include:

• Fear of expressing their views
• Lack of self-motivation or need to speak
• Minimal exposure to the target language
• Bilingual classroom instruction that encourages reliance on the mother tongue

Outside the classroom, students often do not see the value in using English unless they associate it with a specific career need. This information was gathered from one to one interaction with students.

Classroom Challenges for Language Teachers

Teaching speaking skills in a class of 60 students is a significant challenge for language instructors. The commonly found reason was that students’ motivational levels to speak vary based on their needs. As students do not join the course to get into a specific career they often struggle to find a reason to speak and improve their communication. This raises a crucial question: How can teachers effectively teach speaking strategies to students who do not feel an immediate need? One possible solution is to help students visualize speaking scenarios using visual aids and contextual role-plays. This method is referred to as simulation-based teaching (Hamad & Alnuzaili, 2022).

Creating Awareness of Language Purpose

It is important to make students aware of the various purposes of language use, particularly self-expression with confidence and accuracy. Teachers should guide students from the receptive to the productive phase of language learning. Students from rural areas, in particular, benefit from metacognitive strategies (Shin, 2024). However, awareness-building needs to be part of teaching. Motivation should be tailored to their personal needs, and individual feedback is essential to maintain motivation and track progress. Ideally, feedback strategies should align with learners’ personality traits (Rahimi & Zhang, 2015), but in a large classroom, where providing one-to-one feedback might be challenging, teachers could rely on providing feedback for collaborative speaking activities.

Addressing Personality and Learning Styles

Speaking is closely linked to personality traits such as introversion and extroversion. Introverted students often find it exhausting to speak in front of large groups, even if they are classmates. For such learners, speaking activities can be paired with art-based tasks like drawing or integrated into other skills such as reading, writing, or listening. Collaborative speaking tasks can also be more effective than individual ones, depending on the learner's needs. To get closer insights into students’ personalities and identify learners’ preferences, learning style, and learning pace, teachers can prepare a simple questionnaire (oral or written one). Free online questionnaires can be adapted for this purpose, or a similar questionnaire can be generated with AI tools like ChatGPT.

Innovative Teaching Strategies

Creating speaking clubs can encourage students to express their ideas and opinions in a supportive environment. These clubs can use innovative activities to make speaking engaging and safe. These speaking clubs can be planned both inside and outside the classroom. While assessment might be an integral part of speaking tasks, to reduce students’ anxiety of formal assessments, self-assessment and peer-assessment strategies can be used to enhance motivation. Teachers can prepare their own rubrics or adapt the available online rubrics for the classroom. Both teacher and learner rubrics can be used, and the teacher can guide the students on appropriate use of rubrics for self and peer assessment.

Utilizing AI Tools in Speaking Practice

As AI-based speaking assistants become more common, students should be encouraged to explore these tools to enhance their speaking skills. However, it is important to test these tools, provide clear guidance for the students to use these tools effectively, and to prepare a backup plan. I explored a “speak and improve” application in my classroom by instructing learners to use a tool called Aptis speaking for individual practice. The activity was mostly successful, but I encountered occasional issues such as internet access and availability of time. In cases of limited internet access, the teachers could train group of learners on how to use AI tools for improvement of particular aspect of speaking while providing the remaining class an offline option to watch (e.g. previously downloaded video/podcasts). Finally, to encourage autonomous practice, it is helpful to provide an outside classroom group speaking activity for learners which include speech to text tools and using ChatGPT to get suggestions on refining their speech.

Cultural and Social Barriers in the Indian Context

In rural India, students are often raised in environments where they listen more than theyspeak, and are rarely encouraged to express opinions, whether at home or school. This results in discomfort when asked to share views in class. In order to motivate them, simple speaking activities with scaffolding can be provided. These can be done in groups and the instructor can monitor these groups. But in large classrooms, the teacher may identify specific learners and interact with them and then encourage pair talk before asking learners to speak in a group.

Comprehensive Approach to Teaching Speaking

To effectively involve students in speaking tasks, teachers may conduct classroom-based analysis of: Students’ challenges and strategies; learners’ awareness and speaking styles; personality traits and assessment needs, and feedback strategies.

Teachers can rely on questionnaires to get to know about their learners. Without a basic understanding of their learners’ needs, it might be difficult for the teacher to achieve the desirable outcomes. The feedback strategies include peer-to-peer feedback and self-evaluation with the help of rubrics. Sometimes, the teacher can provide group feedback, for example group discussions which are highly effective for even larger classrooms.

Additional teaching strategies may include:

• Attention-grabbing techniques using non-linguistic features such as proper eye contact, facial expressions, hand movements, and standing postures. Apart from this, visual clues can be used that is speaking with the help of images and symbols which are known to everyone.
• Autonomous pronunciation practice using Open Educational Resources (Guskaroska, et al., 2024)
• Confidence-building activities, including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) (Syaifullah & Hardi, 2021)
• Memorization and information-gathering strategies
• Presentation skills development

Conclusion

The above techniques include teachers’ particular focus on needs analysis, classroom management, learner engagement, time management, inclusion of AI tools, assessment, and providing feedback. There will be considerable improvement in the learners’ acquisition and performance of speaking skills.By adopting these comprehensive and personalized strategies, teachers can ensure that rural students approach speaking tasks with greater awareness, motivation, and enthusiasm, ultimately improving their English communication skills.

References

Guskaroska, A., Zawadzki, Z., Levis, J. Challis, K., Prikazchikov, M. (2024). Teaching Pronunciation with Confidence: A Resource for ESL/EFL Teachers and Learners. Iowa State University Digital Press. https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/teachingpronunciation /

Hamad, M. M., & Alnuzaili, E. S. (2022). The effect of using simulation strategy in developing English as a foreign language speaking skill. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 13(1), 198–206.

Rahimi, M., & Zhang, L. J. (2015). Exploring non-native English-speaking teachers’ cognitions about corrective feedback in teaching English oral communication. System, 55, 111–122.

Shin, M. H. (2024). Improving English Speaking Skills in a College General English Course Using Metacognitive Strategies. English Teaching, 79(3), 99–121.

Syaifullah, E., & Hardi, V. A. (2021). Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on Speaking Skill. Journal of English Language and Education, 6(1), 131–140.

Lalitha Devi Bommanaboina is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Foreign Languages at Madanapalle Institute of Technology and Science. She earned her Post Graduate Diploma in the Teaching of English (PGDTE) from EFLU Hyderabad. With a rich academic and research background, Lalitha has also contributed to the field of education through her 5 years of teaching experience. Her research interests include teacher education, TBLT, language assessment, and blended language learning and teaching. (ORCID ID 0000-0002-4819-7741)