A study of English language teachers’ awareness, practice and challenges pertaining to the use of vocabulary teaching strategies: secondary school English teachers in jimma town in focus

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to investigate English teachers’ awareness, practice and challenges pertaining to the Use of vocabulary teaching strategies; English teachers in Jimma Town Secondary Schools in Focus. To achieve the intended objectives of this study, descriptive survey research design was used with both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The study was conducted in Oromia regional state in Jimma zone, Jimma town high school in 2014 E.C. accordingly, the participants of the study were 40 English language teachers’ of the selected high schools. Thus, the researcher employed convenience sampling technique to select Jimma Town secondary schools and sample of the teachers were selected through comprehensive sampling technique. Data for the present study was collected through questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and classroom observation. Then, the collected data were analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The findings of the study showed that teachers awareness to teach vocabulary through VTS was high extent (high awareness), on the other hand, their practice became below an average or practiced rarely. Furthermore, the study revealed that EFL teachers taught vocabular in classes but, they did not employ different vocabulary teaching strategies. The findings also indicated that EFL teachers mainly gave emphasis on definition, synonym, antonyms, context clue, collocation, communicative vocabulary teaching strategies and collaborative learning teaching strategy than other kinds of strategies in their vocabulary teaching while observed in classroom observation. It was found that the teachers lacked practical skills on the implementation of different types of vocabulary teaching strategies in EFL classes. That’s why they faced high extent challenges.As a result, the practices of vocabulary teaching strategies were not given sufficient attention at Jimma Town Secondary School. Finally, recommendations were given based on the above findings. These recommendations were: the EFL researchers were recommended that creating meaningful vocabulary teaching strategies should be practiced widely in Jimma Town secondary schools.