One class in each stage selected randomly in order to ensure that the sample was an unbiased representation of the population. Then a questionnaire was distributed among the selected sample, 121 EFL undergraduate students (Table 2). 3.2 Research Instrument The five-level Likert-scale questionnaire consisted of twenty-eight items classified into three domains. The first domain included difficulties related to affective factors, the second domain included difficulties related to the linguistic factors, and the third domain included difficulties related to the sociocultural and environmental factors. The items were designed in line with the objective of the study, research questions, and issues raised in the review of the related literature. The questionnaire was designed with closed-ended questions; required the respondents to choose the response that most closely representec their perspective as shown in (Table 4). Table 4: Domains of the questionnaire and corresponding items Table 6: Descriptive statistics of the three domains Communication Challenges Facing Soran University Students in Speaking English as a Foreign Language As the sum of all percentages for each domain and the mean scores of factors that affect EFL students’ speaking illustrated in Table 6, the results are moderate in the three domains (3.56, 3.64 and 3.49) with a total mean of 3.57. These results are summarised in Table 7. Table 7 above illustrates the means recorded with the standard deviations, the level of the problem, the percentage as wel the rank of each domain in terms of the difficulty it represents for EFL students’ speaking. The highest rank is the students linguistic-related factors, with a mean of 3.64 and a standard deviation of 1.099. As Table 7 illustrates, the sum of the items percentages shows that 36.42 % of the sample have difficulty in speaking English because of linguistic factors. In the seconc position come the affective factors with a mean of 3.56 and a standard deviation of 1.187. The percentage indicates that 35.62 % of the sample has difficulty in speaking English due to affective factors. Finally, in the last rank is the students’ sociocultura factors and environment, with a mean of 3.49 and a standard deviation of 1.209. As indicated by the results, 27.95% of the respondents have difficulty in speaking English because of sociocultural factors. Table 8: Descriptive statistics and the ranks of the affective factors As shown in Table 8, the difficulties from the most important to the least important have been arranged to their mean score. Item 1, “! am afraid of making mistakes in speaking English” occupies the first rank with a mean of 3.95 and a standard deviation of 1.285. In the second rank came item 4, “My anxiety is too high, this prevents me from speaking well”, with a mean of 3.77 and a standard deviation of 1.117. In the third rank came item number 5, which is the fear of criticism and evaluation from others while speaking. Items 7, 2, 3 6, 8 and 10 come in the fourth to the ninth position, respectively. Finally, in the last rank comes item 9, “I find it hard to participate in a discussion going on in my class in the English language”, with the lowest degree in this domain. Table 9 illustrates the above linguistic-related difficulties encountered by the students. Table 9 shows that item 17, “My vocabulary knowledge is not sufficient enough to orally produce ideas and arguments about any topic”, comes in the first rank with the highest mean of 3.94 and a standard deviation of 1.080. In the second rank came item 18, “/ do not have enough knowledge of phrases and collocations”, also with a high mean of 3.4 and a standard deviation of 1.012. In the third rank came item 20, “When | speak English | need to search for the proper words”, with a moderate mean of 3.74 and a standard deviation of 1.027. Finally, in the last rank came item 12, “My English conversation skill tends to be poor’, with a mean of 3.40 and a standard deviation 1.027. All the remaining items had a moderate degree. Table 9: Descriptive statistics and ranks of the linguistic factors Table 10 illustrates that item 24 “I have difficulty finding opportunities to practice speaking outside the classroom”, with < mean of 3.87 and 1.130 of standard deviation, came in the first rank. “The environment does not support us to speak English frequently” occupied the second position with a mean of 3.80. “/ think in my mother tongue when | speak in English, which leads to my lack of fluency and naturalness in speaking” came in third place with a mean of 3.68 and a standard deviation o' 1.082. In the fourth rank came item 27, “Our classes are overcrowded”, with a mean of 3.54 and a standard deviation of 1.195. In the last rank came item 22, “My family does not encourage and support me to speak English”, with a mean of 3.08 and < standard deviation of 1.323. Table 11 shows that 28% of the students agreed and 27.3% of them strongly agreed, they were afraid of making mistakes i speaking English. This means that over 55% of the students were in agreement with the fear of committing mistakes whe speaking in the target language. This factor can be considered as one of the main problems encountered by students whe trying to speak the target language. However, about 17% of the students disagreed, and 8.3% strongly disagreed about havin; this problem, while about 19% did not have any idea whether they were afraid or not.
