A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Award of the degree "licencié en Pédagogie Appliquée, Agrégé de l'enseignement secondaire en Anglais"

RESUME,

This study aims to find out (i) if the class size determines the methods to teach English Oral Skills, (ii) if the techniques used to make the teaching of English Oral Expression in large classes are effective, and (iii) if the lecturer's teaching style affects students' oral expression performance in First Year English and Kirundi Derpartment. To collect relevant information; two data collection instruments were used namely an analysis of result stitistics, a student and lecturers' questionnaires. After the analysis, it was found that (i) class size determines the choice of English Speaking teaching methods, (ii) the Think-Pair-Share was appreciated as effective as other techniques in teaching large size classes as it miniùizes the negative impact of class size on teaching English Oral Expression effectively. What is more, (iii) the lecturers' attitude affects the learners' oral expression performance in First Year English. Equally, large size class was not proven a single significant factor to determine students' success/failure as indicated by the analysis of the students' results over the past years/ However, the results confirmed that when there was a change of lecturer, this also entailed a change in the marks got by the students. That variation of marks which occurred because of the change of lecture proved that the attitude of the latter is of great importance on students' English oral expression performance. All this means that the three research assumptions were confirmed. The study then recommended that Lecturers choose the teaching and assessment techniques that take into account the class size parameter. Future researchers, using a bigger sample and more data collectio, onstruments, wouldcarry out study to determine the causes of stedents' success/ failure in order to inform tertiary education policy.