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"

Résumé,

In many EFL contexts, opportunities to speak English outside the classroom are very limited . This leads to the lack of pupils' self expression. This study "The Effect of conversational practice on the Development of speaking skills in Basic School, Fourth Cycle level ; Case of Form 9 of some Public Basic schools in Ngozi City " aims at finding out the contribution of conversational practice to develop pupils' self-expression of basic school. This study sought to confirm or reject four hypotheses which are : (1) oral expression is ignored by teachers in most of fourth cycle of basic school, (2) techniques used by teachers when teaching speaking skill do not allow pupils to develop oral expression, (3) teachers do not give sufficient attention to conversational practice while dealing with speaking skill (4) conversational practice helps learners to develop oral expression fluency at a very good level. As far as the methodology is concerned, the classroom observation as well as the questionnaires, one for pupils and another for English teachers, were used to collect the data. The area of study was the city of Ngozi and the sampled population were made of one hundred and eleven pupils and three teachers of the form 9 of the fourth cycle. The sample of my population was selected using the random sampling method. After data analysis, it was revealed thatfirst of all conersational practice has a good effect in developing speaking skills. In fact, it was proven that through discussion and dialogue, pupils gain information, learn to deal with facts, and problems, and develop the ability to express themselves effectively. Also, conversational practice not only contributes to the improvement of the pupils'oral expression but also is a motivation for them to learn English. However, other factors have to be taken into account for a good level of pupils's oral fluency. The curricula, the size and the time allotted to English class, the influence of the pupil's social milieu were cited