An Assessiment Of The Strategies Employed By English Foreigen Language Teachers In Teaching Speaking Skills For Grade 10 Students: The Case Of Abuna Secondary School

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to assess the major Strategies employed by teachers in teaching English speaking skill for grade 10 students at Abuna Secondary school. To achieve the objective of the study employed a descriptive research design that incudes quantitative and qualitative approach. From the total of 450, 207 students were selected using simple random sampling method. Moreover, the two English language teachers were also purposively included as the subject of the study. In order to obtain relevant and sufficient information, questionnaire, interviews and classrooms observation were employed to collect the data for the study. Both quantitative and qualitative data analysis method were used to analyze the data. simple descriptive statistics, such as percentage, mean values and standard deviation were computed using SPSS version-21, and thematic analysis was employed to interpret and summarize qualitative data to support the quantitative one. The validity and reliability of the data was tested. The finding of the study revealed that the teachers used several strategies in teaching English language skills where the strategies could not solve the students learning problems in English speaking learning. They were reluctant in using group discussion, conversation/dialogue, role play because they listed lack of motivation, poor practice in English speaking, deficient students’ language background and speaking experience, fear of making mistake, and limited vocabulary as the challenges for implementing strategies in teaching English language speaking skills. In addition, inadequate time, teachers’ insufficient support and inappropriate feedback were also challenged the implementation of strategies in teaching speaking skills. Inappropriate activities and the difficulty level of speaking skills in the text book were found to be the major causes for students’ reluctance in speaking English. Based on the result the major recommendation of the study also revealed that English language teachers need to give considerable attention the strategies of teaching speaking skill in order to upgrade the students the students ‘speaking abilities and teachers’ should use varieties of strategies of speaking activities participating actively pair work, creative task, information gap, and problem solving activities in teaching speaking skills