A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the degree" Licence en Langue et Littérature Anglaises

RÉSUME,

The importance of speaking is undeniable in language teaching and learning. Therefore, understanding the teachers' difficulties in teaching speaking skill is apparently necessary to gain effective teaching and learning.

This thesis was carried out with an attempt to investigate the areas of difficulties and obstacles that the teachers and students have encounter when teaching and learning speaking skill in Burundi secondary school. THe work is organized in 5 chapters:

Chapter one made by the General Introduction, which pressents the rationale, aims and significance of the study, research questions, scope, method and design of the study.

Chapter two made by Literature Review provides some theoretical background of related issues concerning the definition of CLT, characteristics of CLT as well as the teacher's and student's role in CLT. Moreover, there is a presentation of the language skills, the nature of speaking skill, the characteristics, the role of speaking in language teaching and learning, the approaches to teaching speaking and some problems in teaching speaking.
Chapter three is about the research setting, the methodology, the instrument, and the subjects of the study.
Cha^pter four presents the results of the two survey questionnaires designed to find out the problems that teachers and students of 4th form encounter in teaching and learning speaking skill. It also provides researcher's findings of the problems in teaching and learning the speaking skill.

Chapter five is the General Conclusion and recommendations which help overcome the major problems as improve the quality of teaching and learning the speaking skill in Burundi secondary schoolsand it offers some suggestions for further study.
The objectif of the study was to carry out the problems encountered by teachers and students of 4th form in teaching and learning the speaking skill.