Enhancing Class Participation for First-Year Amharic Majors in Public Relations

Abstract

Amharic is the major, widely spoken language in Ethiopia. In many public universities it is an alternative medium of instruction for a majority of courses in many cases. The purpose of this action research project is to explore why students may or may not participate in various activities during public relation classes. In order to identify the factors that affect student’s attitudes toward PR education and their motivation to participate in the classroom activities, the researcher administered a survey to a total of 40 students. Interviews were also conducted with students to clarify questions unanswered by the survey. The results revealed that a language barrier impedes students’ familiarity with the public relations topic and thus negatively impacts their willingness to participate in class. This language barrier exists because Amharic is the primary instructional language in Ethiopian public universities which has Ethiopian language and literature-Amharic Departments, but the public relations literature is not available in Amharic.