ESL Learner and TESOL Practitioner Perceptions of Language Skill Difficulty

With the expectation that ESL learning will be optimized when teachers and students share the same perceptions of teaching and learning priorities and challenges, this study sought to identify perceptions of TESOL faculty and their ESL learners in terms of the relative difficulty of English language skills such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking, and the associated areas of language development including grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. This study analyzed the quantitative and qualitative survey responses of 278 ESL learners and 52 TESOL practitioners. This research found stark differences between student and teacher perceptions of the relative difficulty of the language skills examined in this study. Overall, students viewed the included language skills to be slightly difficult, with relative equal difficulty across skills. However, the TESOL practitioners viewed each of the language skills to be much more difficult than the students considered them to be. Moreover, teachers perceived the most difficult skill to be writing followed by listening, reading, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and speaking. Implications of these findings are discussed.