THE PRACTICE AND CHALLANGES OF CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT IN TEACHING SPEAKING: THE CASE OF MELKASEA NO.1 ELMENTARY SCHOOL GRADE 7 INFOCUS

Abstract

This study investigated the practice and challenges of continuous assessment in teaching English Speaking classes at Melkasea No.1.Elementary School grade seven in focus. The researcher took 108 students as a sample by using simple random sampling method to fill the questionnaire and 6 students selected as a sample using purposive sampling method to conduct interview. These samples were taken from the whole population that is 540 grade seven students of 2012 in the mentioned school .All grade seven English teachers (i.e. five in number) were taken as a sample for the study. The researcher used questionnaire, interview and focus group discussion as data gathering tools in the study. Questionnaire and interview were used for both teachers and students while focus group discussion was used only for teachers. The researcher used mixed research design because qualitative and quantitative data gathering tools were used in this study. The data collected by using close ended questionnaire was analyzed and interpreted quantitatively by using frequency count, percentage and mean value. On the other hand, the data gathered using semi structured interview and group discussion were coded, transcribed and analyzed qualitatively. The result revealed that no practice of continuous assessment in teaching speaking at Melekasea No.1 Elementary School because of three different challenges. The first challenge is the large number of Students’ per class, the Second challenge is lack of on job training concerning the implementation of CA in teaching speaking skill and the third challenge is students lack of interest. Thus, it seems that majority of the multi -dimensional aspects of continuous assessment devices were ignored since most of the teachers have not sufficient on job training, So, the researcher would like to put some recommendations as follows: Ministry of Education need to provide on job training concerning the implementation of CA in teaching speaking, and reduce number of students per class as far as possible and finally the teachers and the parents should work on the students’ behavior in order to encourage them to their Education