INVESTIGATING THE PRACTICE OF INTEGRATING LANGUAGE SKILLS IN ENGLISH CLASSROOM IN THE CASE OF HARO SABU SECONDARY SCHOOL GRADE 9 IN FOCUS

Abstract

ABSTRACT The main objective of this study was to investigate EFL teachers ‘awareness, practice and Challenges of teaching language skills in integrated approach in Haro Sabu High schools in in Dale sedi. The study employed a descriptive survey design. To this end, the study used both quantitative and qualitative data. Haro Sebu Secondary School was purposefully selected to be the settings of the study. All grade nine English language teachers (4) who taught English in schools were comprehensively taken to be the subjects of the study and these 4 EFL teachers were taken purposefully from the mentioned School for classroom observation. In order to collect data from the subjects, three data collecting instruments, questionnaire structured observation and interview were employed as main data collecting instruments. The collected data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively in an integrated manner. The findings of study indicated that EFL teachers had high theoretical awareness towards integrated language skills teaching; but they were impractical to put in to practice the integration of the four macro language skills at a time. They ‘’usually’’ taught two language skills in integration i.e. in writing lesson, writing and reading, and in reading lesson three language skills i.e. reading, writing and speaking. Whereas they ‘’sometimes’’ taught in listening lesson, listening and speaking, in speaking lesson, speaking listening and writing. Moreover, teachers rarely used communicative activities and project work when they taught language skills in integration. It had also been revealed that whole class teaching was frequently employed by the teachers at the expense of pair and/or group work. Furthermore, the EFL teachers had rarely been observed employing instructional materials and equipment when they taught the skills in integration. Teachers of English also face major challenges to teach language skills in integrated approach in terms of shortage of teaching time, large number of students in classroom, inadequacy in teacher training that failed to equip teachers with the adequate skills to handle integrated approach hindered integrated skills practice in English language classroom.