Iraqi EFL Students’ Problems in Secondary Schools

Abstract

This paper aims to highlight the challenges faced by Iraqi EFL students in secondary schools, in Annasiriyah province. This action research was conducted by an English language teacher who has been teaching this cohort for two academic years. This researcher collected his data via survey, interviews and observations. He also used his own experiences teaching these students to elaborate the data. The analysis of the collected data showed that these students encountered some ongoing problems in their journey of studying English. Problems such as: the structural syllabus which is often used interchangeably with the grammatical one, the activities available in the structural textbooks, the English language used in the said textbook is not an action one, and the gradation of the items and structures does not depend on complexity vs. easiness.