PRACTICE OF ACTIVE LEARNING IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSES: THE CASE OF DEDER SECONDARY SCHOOL

Abstract

The main of this study was to examine the practice of Active Learning in English classes of Deder Secondary School. To achieve this purpose, the study was guided by three basic research questions such as what is the current practice of Active learning methods in English classes of Deder secondary school ? How do teachers and students perceive practice of active learning ?and what are the main factory that affect the practice of active learning methods in English classes of Deder secondary school? The data was collected from one hundred fifty eight (158) students. eight EFL teachers and one school principal by applying simple random sampling technique. The finding of the study revealed that the main implementers of active learning (instructors) and students) have perceived active learning positively .in spite of their good perceptions. their practices of active learning were low. among the factors affecting the effective implementation of active learning instructors and students tendency to traditional /lecture method. Lack of students interest shortage of time lack of instruction material and large class size were the major ones. finally recommendations were forwarded based on the major finding so as to minimize problems encountered and maximize the implementation of active learning The finding revealed that the activities arranged in order to help the students to experience something new were found to be less than the expected roles of the teachers were not in a position to encourage classroom interaction among students. and most of the classroom time was covered by teachers. generally the overall classroom learning activities were dominated by teachers .Besides the principal as instruction leaders were unable to provide capacity building training opportunities and engage teachers into professional development opportunities based on the findings .if was recommended that when designing lessons ,teachers should consider students of all group(do not overly focus on a certain group of students such as top scorer students) so that organize seating arrangement and apply a range of techniques that can be used to involve students into collaborative work. such as writing problem solving demonstration and presentations .The principal as instructional leader should have the capacity to organize training opportunities and engage teachers in to professional development opportunities and design strong monitoring system of understand learning activity so as to strengthen the practices of AL in the school