Abstract:
The current research aims at investigating the existing obstacles that lead to having reduced
oral production competence of the English language among Azerbaijani learners. The researcher
sets a goal of exploring the reasons why school graders cannot master oral production of English
despite having 9 years of language instructions. With that in mind, a comparative analysis has been
held with 4 schools located in Baku, Azerbaijan – 2 central and 2 non-central educational settings.
A mixed-method has been applied with 80 students – 40 from central and 40 from non-central
schools, 12 English language teachers, and 3 education specialists to dig into the roots of the
existing issue. To gather needed data, testing students’ level of English-speaking skills, conducting
surveys, holding interviews, and statistical analysis of findings have been adopted to get as much
informative data as possible. Study findings revealed that factors of teacher quality, having
grammar-focused lessons, lack of language environment, assessment tasks, and the student attitude
towards mastering English language are the barriers in Azerbaijani students improving their
communicative competencies of English. Moreover, all the mentioned factors, in fact, create the gaps between the students studying at central schools and the ones who study at non-central
educational settings. Because the listed components are lacking in non-central schools, students
studying there get little to no chance to develop their spoken English. To eliminate the obstacles,
the provision of professional development trainings for teachers, reconsidering the lesson plans and
syllabi to make English classes more communication based, and the integration of speaking tests to
assessment system should be brought to the attention of faculty members and specialists of
education.