EFL Teachers’ Practice of Assessing Learners’ Composition Skills And Challenges They Face: The Case Of Secondary Schools In Kambata Tembaro Zone

Abstract

Obviously, the ability to achieve competence in assessing EFL students' composition skill is a major facet of language development and academic success among students of all levels. Having an effective assessment of composition skill could identify gaps observed on EFL students and enable plan to address accordingly. Similarly, the main purpose of this study was to investigate the practice of EFL teachers’ Practice of assessing learners’ composition skills and challenges they face in case of secondary schools of Kambata Tembaro zone In order to achieve this, descriptive survey with mixed research approach was operated. Concerning sampling procedures, purposive sampling technique is employed to select eight secondary schools based on their best academic achievement, highly experienced staff size and convenience to collect adequate. Then, 83 EFL teachers are selected by using comprehensive sampling due to lower population size. In the last stage, purposive sampling was employed to select eight English language department heads, EFL students and school principals based on their proximity for the study topic. The study was used questionnaire, interviews, classroom observation and document analysis to collect data from respondents. The findings were analyzed by using mixed method of data analysis. To this effect, the quantitative data were analyzed by using SPSS with descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. Qualitative data were analyzed qualitatively in the ways that correlate with quantitative data. The finding shows that the extent of awareness of EFL teachers in planning strategies has convincing trends in assessing the interest of students and developing strategies accordingly. However, the teachers were criticized for poor commitment in enabling students to write short composition and for their failure to facilitate share experience. In relation to the frequency of assessment, it was found out that there is consistent and regular assessment of compositions, facilitation of independent composition tasks, encouraging students for taking blames and consistently helping them with compositions. The finding also indicate that EFL teachers are providing constructive feedbacks, created friendly approach with students, magnify their strengths; provide honest feedback and facilitated varied level of support in assessing compositions. Finally, there were various challenges sourced from EFL teachers, their students, school and external conditions against the assessment of composition skill. Lastly, the study recommended zonal, woreda and school administrations including EFL teachers have to facilitate conducive environment; create awareness in students; facilitate trainings; create interesting composition topics; introduce incentive for best composition; share experiences and develop cooperation among stakeholders in the secondary schools of Kambata.