A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requiremnts of the degree "Licence en Langue et Littérature Anglaises".

RESUME

This work entitled PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED IN THE SPEAKING OF ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BURUNDI : CASE OF SENIOL LEVEL STUDENTS OF THE Departement of English Language and Literature (2013-2014) examines how language is very important in the life of any society.

In fact, in any society people need language to communicate, language helps everyone to ask questions, to express his or her opinions, to give or receive information from others, to establish and maintain relationship. In our country, people communicate mainly in Kirundi language except some educated ones who use French and sometimes English for those who have had the opportunity to study English. This study seeks therefore to find out the problems that prevent these students from performing well in English.

These research questions guided our study :

- Do the students of the Department of English Language and Literature have the opportunities to speak English frequently ?

- Do students speak more English than other languages (Kirundi and French) as they progress from one level to another ?

- Are there any factors that hinder students' English speaking ?

After the analysis, it was found that students of English Department do not perform well in all English skills but it is not the case. This is due to many factors that hinder those students for being fluent in that language namely : interference with kirundi and french in their surrounding, students' environment, the background of those students, the cancelling of linuistic immersion in English speaking countries and insufficient time of oral expressions course.