Teachers’ Agency and Teaching Challenges in Multilingual Spaces: An Exploratory Study of How EFL Teachers Address Listening and Speaking Skills Needs in Centralized Systems

The study examined challenges EFL teachers in Burkina Faso face in teaching listening and speaking to grade 10 students in centralized education systems and how they address these issues. The primary obstacle is the focus on national exam formats, which prioritize grammar, vocabulary, and reading comprehension, sidelining communicative language skills. Teachers feel pressured to meet stakeholders’ expectations of exam success, limiting their ability to emphasize listening and speaking skills. To balance these demands, teachers adopt strategies to mediate between exam preparation and developing broader language skills. While adhering to official curriculum requirements during class time, they create extracurricular opportunities such as English clubs, dictation contests, and occasional classroom activities to improve listening and speaking. The study emphasizes the importance of addressing both classroom-level practices and school-community-level initiatives to support the implementation of national EFL curricula.