Teachers’ Perception And Practice Of Integrative Teaching Of English Language Skills: Two Government Secondary Schools In Focus

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the perception teachers hold towards the teaching of integrative language skills with a view to understanding how perception relate to the pedagogical practice with reference to grade 15 in Gimbichu and Jajura high schools in Hossana Town. Mixed research methods were used to conduct the study. The participants of this study were 40 purposefully selected English language teachers. Four data collection tools were employed, namely, questionnaire, semi-structured interview, classroom observations and textbook analysis. Questionnaires were used to generate data about the conceptual understanding of integrated-skills teaching of the teachers. It was distributed for 40 purposefully selected English language teachers. Interviews were made with 10 randomly selected English language teachers (5 teachers from each school) to elicit in depth information and personal feeling of individual teachers and to identify the specific strategies they used to integrate two or more language skills at a time. Classroom observations were made to investigate the efforts that the teachers made to teach more than two skills at a time and to observe the classroom situations while the teaching was going on. Textbook analysis was also held to investigate the adequacy and integration of activities in the textbook and to assess the distribution of skills in each unit. Accordingly, the findings of the study showed that the teachers had better conceptual understanding of integrated-skills teaching. The analysis also showed that they were familiar with the importance and specific strategies of integrative teaching of language skills. However, the results also pointed out that none of the participants taught more than two skills in integration at a time. Besides, the findings of the study confirmed that the student’s textbook held variety of interesting and balance of activities in each unit, which were semantically connected with each other. The results of the study also suggest a need to offer adequate in-service training for English language teachers to implement integrated skills teaching in the classroom lesson(s). Depending on the findings of the study, the researcher forwarded some recommendations with the hope that the use of variety, interesting and communicative activities would contribute to the implementation integrated language skills teaching