ASSESSING THE PRACTICE OF USING POETRY IN TEACHING READING: THE CASE OF THREE SECONDARY SCHOOLS AT WOMBERMA WOREDA, WEST GOJJAM ZONE: GRADE 9 IN FOCUS

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the practice of using poetry in teaching reading skills: the case of grade 9 three secondary schools,Shindi , Mekonnen Shindi ,and wogedad secondary schools in West Gojjam Zone. To achieve the objective of the study, descriptive survey design was employed .The data for the study were collected and analyzed to find out how teachers and students use poetry in teaching reading as literary text ,to do so ,questionnaire, observation, and interview was used. Questionnaire was employed for students to find out the method of teaching teachers use, the involvement of students in poetry lessons, and the elements and relevance of poetry in their education. From 1404 students 140students were selected using probability sampling techniques. Besides, from the total ten English language teachers of the target schools 5 were selected by purposive sampling technique. Observation utilized to find out how teachers effectively implemented using in the EFL class room in teaching reading in the actual classroom .Finally; interview was employed for five teachers to find out the challenges teachers faced in using poetry to enhance reading skills. As a result data triangulation was undertaken using the data obtained from the three instruments. Hence, this research revealed that due to knowledge gap for teachers to use poetry in the EFL class room, they consider teaching poetry as ordinary text, the students were inclined to learn grammar lessons for instrumental purpose, culturally specific contents incorporated in the poems, the students background to cope with unfamiliar words and following this L1 became dominantly applied in the EFL classroom. More over nominal lesson plan of teachers for poetry lessons, mostly teachers skip poetry lessons, and wastage of unnecessary time starting from the beginning of the year up to the end of the yearmade the practice of usingteaching readingineffective. Based on the findings teachers should encourage the learners to practice read a loud and practice identifying the rhyme, rhythm, intonations, and pronunciation of words, and they should identify teaching poetry as literary t but not as ordinary text through updating themselves by reading how to teach poetry.