Assessment Of Vocabulary Teaching Strategies Employed By English As Foreign Language Teachers: The Case Of Grade 9 Students At Haro Lago Secondary School, Jardega Jarte, Oromia

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to assess of vocabulary teaching strategies employed by EFL teachers at Haro Lago Secondary School. The study particularly, tried to find out teachers’ knowledge on the theoretical perspective of vocabulary teaching strategies, examine to what extent teachers practically use vocabulary teaching strategies in EFL classes and identify the major factors that might hamper the implementation of vocabulary teaching strategies in EFL classes. To this end, the study employed descriptive survey method, which involves both quantitative and qualitative methods. Accordingly, Haro Lago Secondary School was selected through availability sampling. Then, 6 English teachers from grade 9 were selected purposefully for classroom observation, four teachers selected for interview from grade 10-12. In addition, data were collected from 60 randomly chosen students through questionnaire. Thus, descriptive statistics using frequencies and percentages were employed in analyzing the quantitative data and the qualitative data were analyzed qualitatively. Finally, based on the findings, the researcher recommended that creating meaningful vocabulary teaching opportunities through different vocabulary teaching strategies should be practiced widely in the school. The results of the study reveal that the teachers were not capable enough on the knowledge and the theoretical orientations of vocabulary teaching strategies employed by EFL classes. In addition, it was found that the teachers lacked practical skills on the implementation of different types of vocabulary teaching strategies employed by EFL classes according to their suitability. Furthermore, the study revealed that they rarely practiced these strategies during vocabulary instruction. Generally, the employed of vocabulary teaching strategies were not given sufficient attention at Haro Lago Secondary School. Thus, the study indicated that the English teachers didn’t employee different vocabulary teaching strategies in EFL classes. Finally some recommendations were drawn based on the findings. It would be advisable for the teachers to use vocabulary teaching strategies and implement them as much as possible when they teach vocabulary employed by EFL classes; the students need to be aware of the advantages of vocabulary learning through different strategies to their daily life, the school administration should exert every effort to provide adequate teaching materials for the teachers.