Assessing Students’ Participation In English Classroom: The Case Of Grade 11 At Gedo Preparatory School

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess students’ participation in English classroom at Gedo Preparatory School of Chelia woreda in which special emphasis was given to Grade 11 students’ participation in EFL classroom. To achieve the purposes of this study, descriptive research design, which is the integration of both qualitative and quantitative method, was employed. The study involved three purposively selected teachers and 50 students from grade 11 who were selected by using simple random sampling to be the sample of the study. A set of both open ended and close ended questionnaires were prepared and administered to the 50 samples of students selected from the three sections. Moreover, interview guides were conducted and the three purposively selected English teachers were interviewed. Moreover, the teaching learning processes of three classes were observed two times each. Then, the quantitative data were analyzed numerically and percentage while the qualitative data were interpreted narrativelly. The findings of this study indicated that students’ participation in English class is not good and do not voluntarily participate and as a result it is not to the extent they have to at their stage. As the result from teachers’ interview and actual classroom observation indicated, only high performance students were regularly participating. As the data revealed students developed negative attitudes towards participation in English classes holding a perception like English is not their mother tongue language and no need of wasting their time on studying such language, fear of committing mistakes during presentation, un-certainty to join a job that needs knowledge of English language after the completion of their study and as a result being careless about it. As the data gained from all data gathering tools indicated, the majority of the respondents forwarded as the same students participate at different classes of English. The students should be convinced that participation helps them to become self confident and effective on their academic performance so that they should develop good commitment to practice participating regularly in their English language classrooms.