An Assessment Of The Practice Of Vocabulary Teaching Strategies In EFL Classes: Kellem Secondary School Grade 9 And 10 English Teachers In Focus

Abstract The purpose of this research is to assess to what extent English language teachers practice vocabulary teaching strategies at Kellem Secondary school. The study particularly, tried to find out teachers’ knowledge on the theoretical perspective of vocabulary teaching strategies, examine to what extent teachers practically use vocabulary teaching strategies in EFL classes and identify the major factors that might hamper the implementation of vocabulary teaching strategies in EFL classes. To this end, the study employed descriptive survey method, which involves both quantitative and qualitative methods. Accordingly, Kellem Secondary School was selected through availability sampling. Then, 13 English teachers from both grade 9 and 10 were selected purposefully for the interview, for the questionnaire and for classroom observation. In addition, data were collected from 90 randomly chosen students through questionnaire. Thus, descriptive statistics using frequencies and percentages were employed in analyzing the quantitative data and the qualitative data were analyzed qualitatively. Finally, based on the findings, the researcher recommended that creating meaningful vocabulary teaching opportunities through different vocabulary teaching strategies should be practiced widely in the school. The results of the study reveal that the teachers were not capable enough on the knowledge and the theoretical orientations of vocabulary teaching strategies in EFL classes. In addition, it was found that the teachers lacked practical skills on the implementation of different types of vocabulary teaching strategies in EFL classes according to their suitability. Furthermore, the study revealed that they rarely practiced these strategies during vocabulary instruction. Generally, the practices of vocabulary teaching strategies were not given sufficient attention at Kellem Secondary School. Thus, the study indicated that the English teachers didn’t practice different vocabulary teaching strategies in EFL classes. Finally recommendations were drawn based on the above findings