The Nature of Difficulties in Learning English by t he students at Secondary School level in Pakistan
This study was a comparative investigation into the nature of difficulties in learning English by the secondary school students of Provincial and Federal governmen t schools in N.W.F.P (Khyber Pukhtunkhwa). The objectives of the study were (1)To find out the lev el of difficulties of secondary school students of Provincial and Federal government schools of N.W.F.P (Khyber Pukhtunkhwa) in tenses, active and passives voices, direct and indirect narrations, conjunctions, prepo sitions, articles, construction of sentences and re ading with comprehension and (2)To compare the level of diffic ulties in learning English as a second language at secondary level of Provincial and Federal government schools in N.W.F.P (Khyber Pukhtunkhwa). The sample of the study was comprised of 654 randomly selected students from twenty four Provincial government schools and twenty two Federal government schools located in twenty four districts of N.W.F .P. (Khyber Pukhtunkhwa). An English language achievement test for secondary classes was administered to t he sample students of the study. The data obtained wer e tabulated and analyzed through SPSS 17.0 software to compute mean, standard deviation, t-value and p-val ue (significance) level. The main findings of the s tudy were; the students of Provincial government schools faced more difficulties in learning of verb forms, narration, conjunctions, prepositions, articles, se ntence arrangements and reading comprehension. The students of both types of schools systems faced sam e difficulties in learning voices.