English language skills: perceived difficulties by tertiary level

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the problems in language skills at the tertiary level of education in Bangladesh. It particularly examines the obstacles the learners face in mastering their target language as well as the kind of difficulties teachers faced in educating EFL learners. For the purpose of the study, data were collected from students, studying at the tertiary level, and ELT practitioners from 2 private universities in Dhaka city (purposively selected). The findings suggest that the learners’ biggest problem in all four skills sets (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) is their lack of command on vocabularies. The comparison between the teachers and students’ findings demonstrate that the students are found over confident about their writing skills, while the teachers are not content with the quality of students’ writing skills.