English as a Foreign Language in Morocco: Psychological Barriers

English language students ‘speaking and oral performances are among the prioritized skills with which students should be equipped; still, students struggle when they attempt to speak or perform oral tasks. Psychological issues are among the principal obstacles that hinder the development of the skills in question. This paper aims at enquiring about the psychological issues refraining students from acquiring the necessary skills to be better speakers. This enquiry complies with a causal-comparative methodology according to which the sample of participants is compared to another group to determine the psychological variables responsible for the students’ speaking skills. Data is collected in a digital questionnaire distributed online among students of English languages in the city of Nador in Morocco. This study assumes that focusing on positive emotions helps to mitigate psychological barriers hindering the speakers of English. The major conditions underlying this study are the importance given to speaking English and the learners’ eagerness to overcome the psychological barriers hampering the speaking process. The results of this study show that several psychological barriers have been uncovered along with the various ways used by the participants to mitigate the effects of such barriers. It has also been observed that the participants are aware of the strong effects of psychological barriers. The results of this paper confirm that such barriers can be overpowered by strong positive emotions. In short, the speaking skill cannot be promoted if the psychological barriers are overlooked.