ASSESSING ENGLISH TEACHERS’VOCABULARY TEACHING APPRROACHES IN ODA BOKOTA SECONDARY SCHOOL: GRADE 9 IN FOCUS

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess EFL teacher’s vocabulary teaching approaches at Oda Bokota Secondary school. A descriptive case study research design which included both qualitative and quantitative approaches of data gathering and analysis were used in this study. Six English language teachers were included for observation and interview by using availability sampling technique. First, semi-structured interview was used to collect information from 6 EFL teachers. Next, three classroom observations were conducted for each English teachers. The data from interview and class room observation were analyzed qualitatively by thematic analysis. The finding of the study revealed that EFL teach vocabulary but they did not practice various vocabulary teaching approaches during class room observation. More importantly, the study also found that approaches such as role play, collocation, and vocabulary self-selection, cooperative and task-based approaches that may develop learners’ knowledge of vocabularies in the classroom and/or outside the classroom were not practiced by the teachers during vocabulary lesson. However, the result of the study also revealed that English language teachers mainly gave emphasis on approaches such as context clue like synonyms, antonyms definitional clue and examples to teach vocabulary. Since foreign language learning is mainly the result of acquiring sufficient amount of target language vocabulary, all EFL teachers should practice various types of vocabulary teaching approaches while they teach vocabulary to their students. Finally, the study indicated that factors such as students' motivation, shortage of students’ vocabulary knowledge like their incorrect pronunciation, problem of classifying words in their parts of speech, affected teachers’ use of vocabulary teaching approaches during the lesson