Abstract:
The main objective of this study was to investigate EFL teachers’ and students’ awareness and
practice on extensive reading texts included in the grade 11 students’ English textbook and their
Challenges in EFL classroom. A descriptive research design which consisted of first collecting
quantitative data and then collecting qualitative was used. Thus, both quantitative and
qualitative data analysis methods were used to analyze the collected data. There were four data
collection tools employed in this study: a questionnaire, an interview, classroom observations,
and document analysis. The first three tools were used to measure EFL teachers’ and students’
awareness and practice in teaching and learning process, and the challenges they encountered
during their implementation of the extensive reading included in the textbook. The document
analysis was used to check to what extent extensive reading texts were included in grade 11
English textbook. Simple random sampling method was used to select one hundred one (101)
students to respond to the questionnaire. All teachers (4) who were teaching at the selected
grade level were targeted and used for interview. The quantitative data were analyzed using
frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation and the qualitative data were analyzed
thematically. Thus, the results of the questionnaire and that of the interview showed that most
students and teachers have awareness regarding the benefits of extensive reading in most
aspects even though the practice is not satisfactory. Finally, the overall findings of this study
showed the majority of teachers and students had awareness towards the benefits of extensive
reading. However, the study conversely revealed that there is a clear mismatched between what
the teachers and students are aware about extensive reading and what they actually practice
inside and outside of the classroom. Thus, teachers had problems to implement extensive reading
strategies in their English classroom practically due to shortage of time, pressure on teachers to
cover the text book, lack of enough materials in the school library. On the other hand, students
had problems to practice extensive reading inside and outside of the classroom due to lack of
extensive reading materials in their school library, shortage of time, there is no conducive
environment to read different texts at their home, and lack of interest to read longer texts.
Therefore, the researcher recommends there should be collaboration among syllabus designers
and teachers to assess the gap that English language textbooks has in relation to extensive
reading, teachers should encourage their students to read different materials in classroom.
