Abstract
Teaching English as a foreign language is not an easy task especially in a country like Libya where students are not exposed to the native language in everyday life. They are using Arabic in their everyday life and do not get the opportunity to use English in their communication. Students are generally not even using the target language in the classroom and that results in their inadequate competency when they find themselves in a real-life situation where they have to communicate in English. The focus of the present study was to provide an activity-based teaching-learning methodology which can provide an opportunity to practice English in the classroom and use it in real-life spontaneous situations. Apart from this the present thesis also aims to provide training of ABL techniques which can make in-service teachers competent in teaching productive skills of language especially speaking skills in Libya. Libya is an Arabic state situated in North Africa surrounded by the four Arabic countries Sudan, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria. The population in Libya is about 7 million and the greater parts of them dwell mostly in the northern part of the state. Libya is a bi-lingual country with the dialects talked being Berber and Arabic. Arabic is the only language officially used in Libya and is also the language used in the system of education. Subsequently, when students enter school, they are presented to the formal language of academics which varies from their ordinary language. A Libyan primary school comprises of 6 years followed by 3 years of preparatory school and 3 years of secondary school. The system of secondary school is categorized into two major specialities i.e. science and arts. The school authorities in Libya see training as the best approach to innovative practice and implementation of techniques and approaches in pedagogy. They want to see the changes in the framework to compete with the global and modern situation in the teaching-learning scenario. Teaching and learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in Libya confronts such a variety of impediments and issues. One of the principal issues of teaching English is that many in-service teachers are not capable enough to teach a communicative syllabus. Teaching English need upgradation in the methods, approaches, and techniques in a sense that one cannot rely on the monotonous nature of pedagogy. Techniques need to be varied in classroom teaching. Methods should be shifted in classroom education. Despite the fact that in many parts of the world the principle prominence in English language teaching (ELT) is on methodology, there have been circumstances in which stress was put on raising the language level of the teacher. English Language Teaching (ELT) in Libya has experienced a number of challenges since the 1960s. For instance, in the 1960s and 1970s, there was great prosperity regarding the ELT in Libya (Mohamed 2014). However, this prosperity experienced a serious challenge during Gaddafi reign; there was a serious stagnation regarding teaching English as a foreign or second language in Libya when Gaddafi stopped teaching English language courses in schools for political reasons. As a result, EFL faced serious challenges in Libya. Nonetheless, after eight years, the Libyan government saw the need to increase the level of their foreign relations with countries from other continents and it is for this reason that EFL was reintroduced into the school curriculum in order to increase the Libyan students’ proficiency with regard to English speaking (Elabbar, 2015). English is regarded as a key to advancing international relations, achieving systematic knowledge and technical expertise, nurturing economic growth, and taking part in international competitions (Mohamed, 2014). All these are benefits that every country wants to have and be part of. As a result, most countries that do not speak English strive to include English language as part of their curriculum in their learning institutions to take part in international competitions, and be part of the international communities through trade and other economic benefits. Since the discovery of oil in Libya, they have managed to promote their international relations by incorporating English as part of the curriculum at their secondary schools (Elabbar, 2015). As such, the English teachers have been advised by both the political and social figures to use the approaches available to ensure that they increase English proficiency among the learning students. In essence, the emergent need for proficient English language users in this epoch of globalization has had a significant influence on the Libyan ELT. As a result, major changes have been witnessed in the education sector with regard to the English Language Teaching with the English teachers adopting the best approaches possible to ensure this proficiency. Among the changes that have been made in the education sector to enhance the quality of ELT, old teaching methods have been changed to the new ones. To achieve the utmost, the teachers of the English language used different approaches to try and improve the level of knowledge and proficiency of the students in the learning institutions in Libya. With these two approaches GTM and the CLT approach, the teachers believed that they would achieve the proficiency they wanted among the students as well as increase the knowledge of English as a second language (ESL). In essence, teachers have been encouraged to use these approaches to improve the ELT quality in Libyan learning institutions. However, further changes have been seen in this field as the government has favoured the CLT approach over the GTM and has encouraged the teachers and the learning institutions to adopt the CLT approach of English teaching for a number of reasons. As such, it is essential to have a comprehension of the history of the two approaches and why the teachers and the system decided to adopt them into their system in a bid to improve and transform ELT in Libya. Moreover, the majority of Libyan students face several problems in speaking such as reluctance, fear of committing oral mistakes, poor speaking ability, lack of peers or social circles with whom they can express their speaking potentials, and most importantly structuring discourse coherently and cohesively. Arguably, these problems are mainly caused by the teaching techniques that English teachers follow which minimize the students’ chance to be exposed to the target language. In this regard, the implementation of the policies regarding the use of CLT teaching methods has faced numerous obstacles in Libya. In fact, currently, most teachers still stick to the traditional methods of English teaching in Libya despite the introduction of this modern form of teaching. Intrinsically, despite the efforts directed to the implementation of the CLT method of English teaching at the Libyan schools, many Libyan learners and teachers of English language do not appear to have undergone any initial changes in their view of success and better language education as well as their classroom schedules (Omar, 2014). That is to mean CLT has not gained invasive support and the conventional methods of teaching English still exist in many learning institutions. For instance, in Libya, the most common traditional technique still used despite the introduction of the CLT method is based on the Arabic culture where the teachers are the determiners of the behaviour of the student and have the authority over discussions in the classroom. The teachers are the main cache of knowledge, thus are the major players when it comes to the ELT as opposed to the CLT approach where the students are the major players. Language proficiency has without a doubt composed the core of the professional certainty of non-native English teachers. Speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts" (Chaney, 1998). Speaking is a pivotal piece of second language learning and teaching. Regardless of its significance, for a long time, teaching speaking has been underestimated and English language teachers have kept on teaching speaking just like a repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues. Nonetheless, today's reality requires that the objective of teaching speaking ought to enhance students' communicative abilities, because, only in that way, students can express themselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in each communicative circumstance. Nunan (2004) has expressed that teachers can likewise improve spoken English of students by integrating the differences in learning style and methodologies of learning into their lesson planning. Teachers, for example, can similarly carry out oral dialogue activities for auditory learners, utilization of graphs and posters for learners visually, making models for tactile learners and classification of things for analytic learners. In this manner, it can be inferred that the activities and tasks must be outlined or picked in a way that needs the use of varied strategies of spoken English learning for Libyan students and must enhance students to plan, evaluate and coordinate their strategies of spoken English learning. This is why designing an activity-based training (ABT) course comes as an urgent demand to refresh in-service Libyan teachers of English, and the government is committed to providing competent teachers in English. The problem of the present study could be summarized in the following statement: Libyan EFL secondary school teachers are lacking in the techniques of teaching Speaking skills in the classroom. Hence this study tries to discuss an ABT course design in spoken English for in-service teachers of secondary schools in Libya. This was the result in knowledge and awareness among teachers and they would be able to know the possible teaching techniques and train their students for better learning outcome. In this regard, it is very important to discuss the history of how and why Libyan teachers adopted the two approaches of teaching English language, how and why they moved from the Grammar-Translation Method (GTM) to the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach and finally, to discuss the present scenario of ELT in Libya as well as the English syllabus at Libyan Secondary schools. The study was conducted to find out the existing situation which is prevailing in Libya in teaching speaking skills. A number of schools, teachers and inspectors were targeted to seek the information regarding the focus of the study i.e. teaching spoken English. The data collection, analysis and its interpretation based on four data collection methods (a) teachers’ questionnaires which consisted of 200 questionnaires completed by 181 female respondents and 19 male respondents who work as teachers in secondary schools in 28 schools in different districts of Libya. The purpose of this section is to analyze the collected data using several statistical tools in order to test the proposed research hypothesis, (b) inspectors’ questionnaires which were issued to 10 secondary school inspectors, (c) semi-structured interviews administered to teachers who had between 1 to 5 years of experience, and (d) through observation, the researcher attended ten EFL classes in six secondary schools and observed teachers in the course of teaching English. The researcher issued two different sets of questionnaires. In the first set of the questionnaire it was the inspectors' questionnaires, which contained twelve questions and were issued to ten inspectors. They made vital information available which provided an insight into the difficulties that teachers encountered in teaching English in Libya such as lack of activity, based training, guidance, and support. In the second set of questionnaire, the researcher distributed a teachers’ questionnaire that contained three sections in the in-service teachers' questionnaire. The first section deals with demographic details and was used to collect factual data with regards to the teachers' gender, age, years spent in teaching English, the school from where they graduated and the overall number of students that they teach English in their classes. The second part of this questionnaire explored how teachers conceptualize the activity-based approach to learning. The respondents provided such information by answering eight questions giving opinions, justifying or explaining. The third and last section of the questionnaire contained twenty questions with the Likert-Scale type of answers to enable the teachers to provide insightful information in terms of their experiences in teaching English as well as their opinions on the appropriate course of action in teaching the language.