Abstract name : semanur kayhan student no. :1306102020097 study program : english education title :the difficulties faced by efl students in learning speaking skill (a qualitative study at fatih bilingual school banda aceh) keywords: speaking skill, efl, problems this study aims at finding out the problems mostly experienced by the students at fatih bilingual school in speaking english as their foreign language and this study also aims to know factors hinder behind them. moreover, this study tries to find out the best strategy/ method to be used in order to overcome the problems. to collect data in this study, the writer observed the speaking class regarding the teaching and learning process in accordance to heaton (1989). the data were also collected from students’ questionnaires. from the result of the classroom observation showed that the students still needed some improvements in grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary building. meanwhile from the result of the