An Investigation on EFL Teachers‟ and Students‟ Awareness and Practice on Extensive Reading Texts included in the Grade 11 Students‟ English Textbook and their Challenges: Sayilem Secondary School in Focus

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.