EFL Teachers’ Practice and Using Techniques of Teaching Speaking Skills and Challenges They Face: The Case of Grade Ten Students at Seka Secondary School

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate EFL teachers’ practice and using techniques of teaching speaking skills and challenges they face: the case of grade ten students at Seka Secondary school. The study mainly focused to find out the practical implementations of teachers’, students’ roles and challenges teachers face while practicing and using techniques of teaching speaking skills in the classroom. Descriptive research design was employed to establish the existence of phenomena by explicitly describing them. All of grade ten English teachers and students involved in the study. The data were collected by using three tools: questionnaires, classroom observation and interview. Random sampling techniques used to select students’ questionnaire and teachers’ interview. Data were analyzed by quantitative and qualitative methods. The results of data gathered from questionnaire and classroom observations showed that, the practical implementations of teachers’ role in practicing and using techniques of teaching speaking skills in the classes were low. Additionally, from the results of interview analysis, teachers did not create enough opportunities for the students to use English in their real life communication. According to the findings, the major challenges that affecting, practicing and using techniques of teaching speaking skills in the classes were large number of students, shortage of time, student’s poor ability and lack of interest while learning speaking skills. So, teachers prefer using dialogues and instructions in teaching speaking skills in different classes instead of interview, role play, debate, oral report and storytelling. Although number of challenges that influence English teachers practicing and using technique of teaching speaking skills, it was very relevant for students’ future oral proficiency. Therefore, based on the findings the researcher recommended that practicing and using techniques of teaching speaking skills were very important for the students to improve their proficiency in speaking English.