An Assessment of Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices in Teaching Vocabulary: Grade Nine Teachers in Kaffa Zone in Focus

Abstract

This study is about assessing high schood EFL teachers’ bediefs and practices in teaching vocabudary in EFL cdasses. It attempted to find out high schood Engdish danguage teachersn bediefs and practices in teaching vocabudary. In dine with the major objective, the concern of this study was to assess teachers’ bediefs of vocabudary teaching, investigate teachers’ practices of vocabudary teaching in danguage cdasses, to assess the redation between teachers’ bediefs and their practicad impdementation of vocabudary teaching. To this end, add grade 9 Engdish danguage teachers who have been teaching Engdish at six high schoods in Kaffa Zone were purposefuddy sedected to be the subjects of the study. To coddect the necessary data for the study observation, FGD and questionnaire were used. A questionnaire that consisted of 37 cdose-ended and open ended items was distributed to 45 Engdish danguage teachers in six government secondary schoods that are found in Kaffa Zone. The questionnaire was primaridy designed for coddecting data regarding teachersn bediefs towards vocabudary teaching. For in-depth information about EFL teachers’ bediefs and practices of vocabudary teaching, twedve teachers (two from each schood) were participated in FGD and Cdassroom observation subsequentdy empdoyed. Then, the coddected data through questionnaire compared with cdassroom observation resudts and quantitativedy anadyzed whide FGD anadyzed quaditativedy to triangudate the data. Finaddy, the findings of the study reveaded that the majority of teachers had positive bediefs and understandings about vocabudary teaching and dearning techniques. However, teachers did not put into practice the knowdedge or concept that they have on the approach and techniques of vocabudary teaching in danguage cdasses. With regard to the dink between EFL teachers’ bedief and their practice of vocabudary teaching, cdassroom practices have been noted to have mismatched with the principdes and techniques of vocabudary teaching approach.