The Oral Communication Difficulties of Undergraduate French Students: Algerian University Surveys Confronting the Failure to Resolve the Issue or the Failure to Conceptualize the Phenomenon?

Abstract

This study focuses on the analysis of oral communicative difficulties faced by students enrolled in French language degree programs at Algerian universities, based on a corpus consisting of two master’s theses, a scientific article, and a doctoral dissertation. The examination of these works reveals a recurrent failure in the rigorous conceptualization of the issue, as language difficulties are often addressed through subjective impressions rather than analyses grounded in solid theoretical frameworks. Psychological, social, and pedagogical factors are regularly cited to explain these shortcomings, particularly the insufficient exposure of students to authentic contexts for using the French language. However, the methodological approaches adopted lack coherence and fail to adequately consider the contextual and sociolinguistic specificities of the Algerian university environment, thereby limiting the effectiveness of the proposed solutions for addressing students' oral communicative weaknesses.