Improving EFL courses

We, as learners, find one special difficulty to learn the English language; although students are given a vast amount of material with explanations and practical tasks throughout courses, they are more likely to remain outsiders or unable to have a full understanding of the whole language and its many expressions. On the other hand, the contemporary goal of EFL is to make students capable of communicating effectively in English. These courses are not intended, for instance, to make them understand or memorize every single idiomatic expression or develop an English-speaking country accent. However, there is undoubtedly an enormous difference in results between those who learn by being completely surrounded by the language, i.e. in a place where English is the language spoken, and those who enroll in a course with several levels to teach all kinds of students, with the use of EFL books and applying a variety of tasks and activities; regardless of the learners ability to learn languages. The latter does not have the proper environment to utilize the language in natural contexts. As a result, one particular limitation for most of them is the impossibility of developing good writing and speaking skills.The importance of this relies on the fact that EFL students are not able to communicate properly after having taken the course, especially speaking. This issue reflects in the 4 macro-skills, but the field in which this lack of fully natural communication will be evident depends on the learners purposes. Regardless of their particular interest in the language, one of the most likely and common skills to make an interlocutor acknowledge the level of English of the speaker is through verbal communication, e.g. mispronunciation shows the lack of sufficient speaking practice.Students might improve speaking skills if they are taught Phonetics in earlier levels through innovative methods. Its rules can be useful to avoid mispronunciation and, thus, fossilized errors in speaking, which are very frequent even in advanced level students. In addition, various dictionaries give phonetic transcriptions for words, yet seldom do students use them to help or improve their speaking. Being able to understand Phonetics will allow learners to recognize these transcriptions and correct their pronunciation, avoiding error fossilization and making self-correction actually feasible.