PERCIVED VOCABULARY LEARNING AND TEACHING STRATEGIES USED IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSES IN THE CASE OF BONKIE WOREDA HIGH SCHOOLS

Abstract

The present study aimed at studying Vocabulary learning and teaching strategies used in English language classes. The study employed descriptive design involving both qualitative and quantitative approach. Twenty two grade 9 English teachers and 55 students were selected from grade 9 for the questionnaires through simple random sampling technique. Among those teachers who selected for the questionnaire 7 of them were selected for the interview and 11 participants among 55 students were selected by using simple lottery method for the interview. A questionnaire and interview were administered to collect data on the issues involved. Descriptive analysis was made using the percentages of each specific item. Afterwards the total percentage and grand means of each category of strategies and beliefs were used to obtain the results. The results show that students do not utilize vocabulary learning strategies such as memory, cognitive, compensation, Meta – cognitive, affective and social vocabulary learning strategies, but the teachers utilize these strategies when they are teaching vocabulary. The result indicates that there were no match between vocabulary learning strategies utilized by students and teaching strategies employed by teachers. This is because the strategies were not given attention by the learners, and the teachers’ attention of checking whether the students/learners utilize or not is less. As a result it is recommended that the students should utilize vocabulary learning strategies and at the same time teachers should also utilize vocabulary teaching strategies. To do this the English language teachers should try to know what kind of strategy the learners need to learn vocabulary and in addition they should motivate, aware and introduce variety of vocabulary teaching strategies.