Investigating linguistic barriers against communicative ability : a case study of secondary school students in Sudan

Abstract EN

The following paper deals with the linguistic factors that constitute a hindrance to the communicative competence in English of high school students in Sudan.

It pinpoints specific linguistic problems that contribute to the students’ inability to achieve communicative competence in English; and it makes some recommendations to overcome this issue.

Grounded in both a quantitative and qualitative approach, two different instruments were used.

A questionnaire was addressed to EFL teachers on the one hand, and a test was given to high school students on the other hand.

Both population samples willingly lent themselves to the research project.

The findings clearly evidence the existence of a set of language barriers that hinder students’ communicative competence.

The paper comes up with a number of recommendations.