Secondary School English Teachers Research Articles

THE EFL 9TH GRADERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARD THE USE OF VISUAL AIDS IN READING COMPREHENSION AT A SECONDARY SCHOOL IN KIEN GIANG, VIETNAM

<p>Reading skill is an essential component of language acquisition since it aids in the development of other associated skills. Therefore, how to improve students' reading is always the primary concern of most secondary school teachers of English. Besides, thanks to the visual aids, teachers have been able to design many interesting and lively reading lessons. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the students’ attitudes toward the use of visual aids in reading comprehension. The participants were 45 students from grade 9 at a secondary school in Kien Giang province. This study was conducted as a quantitative research approach. Data collection was from questionnaires. The finding of the study indicated that there was a good correlation between visual aids and reading comprehension. Most of the participants had positive attitudes toward the use of visual aids in reading comprehension.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0029/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Curriculum Implementation Approaches of Secondary School English Teachers: A Case Study

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify the curriculum implementation approaches of secondary school English teachers.
 Design/Methodology/Approach: The study group of this qualitative case study consists of 14 English teachers and students studying in the classes of these teachers. In determination of the study group, maximum variation and criterion sampling was used. The data of the study was obtained by observations, interviews, document review and it was analyzed by qualitative content analysis technique with an interpretive qualitative approach.
 Findings: Study results indicated that English teachers have basically three different approaches while implementing the curriculum: curriculum fidelity, curriculum adaptation and curriculum design. In each three approaches teachers make student-based and exam-based implementations. However, under the curriculum adaptation approach, the student-based and exam-based adaptations made by teachers during their implementations are philosophically so different from each other that they worth mentioning under a different sub-title as student-based adaptation and exam-based adaptation. Teachers who adopt curriculum fidelity approach tend to apply the curriculum materials without making any change while teachers with curriculum adaptation approach make some adaptations in these materials. In the student-based adaptation approach, teachers make these adaptations by taking student characteristics into account, while in the exam-based approach, the focus of the teachers is to prepare students for national exams or the exam of the course. Teachers with curriculum design approach teach in private schools and do not make use of curriculum materials during their instruction. These teachers have more flexibility in their classroom practices compared to the teachers with curriculum fidelity and adaptation approaches.
 Highlights: Based on the results of this study, it can be suggested to investigate the effect of teachers’ curriculum implementation approaches on their professional development and on their students’ motivation and academic success.

Secondary school teachers’ attitudes to phrasal verbs

Phrasal verbs are a vital, nonetheless challenging to teach and learn, part of the English language. Even though phrasal verbs are frequently used by native speakers, for learners of English they pose a considerable challenge as far as their acquisition and use are concerned. For this reason, these multi-word verbs are also demanding for English teachers in terms of teaching them effectively. The general aim of this study is to examine English teachers’ approach to phrasal verbs taught at the B2 level in upper-secondary schools. The paper presents an excerpt of a survey conducted among secondary school English teachers. It examined their attitude to phrasal verbs, their opinions of phrasal verb tasks used in the coursebooks and it analysed the methods which should be used in order to introduce and practise these demanding multi-word verbs well.

Research on “Internet+” Secondary School English Teachers’ Professional Development Strategy Based on SWOT Analysis

In the era of “Internet +”, the rapid development of information technology has also promoted the continuous innovation in the field of education. In recent years, scholars have begun to pay attention to the use of the Internet to promote teacher professional development, which provides a new path for teacher professional development, but at the same time, secondary school English teachers also face new challenges. Therefore, through SWOT analysis, this paper accurately grasps the strengths and weaknesses then provides relevant strategies for the professional development of English teachers based on opportunities and challenges of “Internet+” secondary school English teachers’ professional development.

영어 학습자의 장소 어구 도치(locative inversion) 구문 인식 연구

This study aims to explore Korean learners’ perceptive knowledge of locative inversion(LI) in L2 English. A survey questionnaire with 16 items (plus eight fillers) was constructed based on (in)compatibility of the target verbs and LI. A total of 68 subjects participated in the study; 44 college students (low and mid level), 14 secondary school English teachers, and 10 native speakers of English. The data analysis revealed that English proficiency and verb types were main factors interacting with the participants’ judgements of the acceptability of LI. The low and mid level learners differed from the English teachers and native speakers in their judgement patterns. The English teachers, however, tended to overgeneralize LI to the verbs incompatible with this construction. Variation observed across verb types and individuals was discussed in relation to various factors involved in the use of LI. Research and teaching methods incorporating the diverse features of the target construction are suggested.

Use of Digital Tools by English Language Schoolteachers

The present study explored the use of digital tools by English language schoolteachers in Hong Kong. Using a qualitative-dominant sequential mixed-methods design, wherein an online mixed-methods survey of primary and secondary school English language teachers (N = 83) and follow-up in-depth interviews (N = 22) were employed, this study collectively explored which digital tools the participants used, why the participants used these tools, and how the participants used them. Fourteen categories of tools utilized by teachers in their professional practice were identified. These were further categorized into core, additional, and remote digital tools based on their mode and frequency of use. Affordances of the core digital tools for language teaching were identified, with examples of teachers’ pedagogical uses of the tools presented. By providing an overview of digital tool use, teachers, school leadership, and professional development providers can better understand how teachers should be prepared for the digital realities of schools. In addition, this study provides a model for understanding the context and subject-specific bidirectional relationship between tools, their affordances, and teachers’ professional tasks.

A survey of the resources senior secondary school teachers use in teaching vocabulary in Ibadan North, Nigeria

This study surveyed the resources senior secondary school English language teachers use in teaching vocabulary in Ibadan North. The descriptive research design of the survey type was employed in the study. Using the purposive sampling technique, all the two hundred and twenty-four (224) English and Literature-in-English teachers in the study area as at the time of this study constituted the sample based on the intervening variables of gender, qualification, school type and experience. Only one hundred and ninety-six (196) questionnaires were properly filled and returned. A reliability coefficient of r = 0.90 was obtained using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Statistics. This showed that the items were of high stake. Findings revealed that the teachers seemed to make more frequent use of non-human instructional resources for teaching vocabulary than the human instructional resources. Also, there were no significant differences on teachers’ qualification, school type and experience except for gender. It was concluded that, aside from teachers’ gender, no other variable had any influence on the resources used for the teaching of vocabulary in senior secondary schools in Ibadan North. It was thus recommended that teachers should employ both human and non-human teaching resources during the teaching and learning of vocabulary.

English language teachers’ conceptions of assessment

Conceptions of assessment are critical to implementing new assessment policies since they influence how teachers understand, interpret, and implement new policies. This small-scale qualitative study investigated 12 secondary school English language teachers’ views about the current secondary school assessment policy and their conceptions of assessment. The data were collected through in-depth interviews in Maputo, Mozambique. The findings suggest that most participants are unfamiliar with the current assessment policy. The participants conceive of assessment as extrinsically motivating students, improving teaching and learning, holding students accountable, reporting, compliance, and irrelevant. Some participants reported pure conceptions of assessment (either improvement or student accountability), while others reported mixed conceptions (either mixed school and student accountability and improvement and mixed student accountability and irrelevant). The emerging profiles of teachers’ conceptions of assessment are expected to provide a starting point for a discussion about designing effective professional development programs in assessment literacy in Mozambique.

Integration of English ‘teaching-learning-assessing’ in Chinese High Schools: A Literature Review

Classroom assessment has always been the focus of research on foreign language teaching, and "integration of teaching and assessment" has become a heated topic in international second language teaching field, but this topic has not yet attracted the attention of some scholars. In result, this paper retrieves the papers published domestic and abroad between 2017 and 2023 focusing on the "integration of teaching and evaluation" in English subject as data sources and analyzes the research contents. The results show that the research type of "integration of teaching-learning-assessing" is mainly theoretical research, but the number of empirical research is quite small. Besides, the theoretical research also shows an upward trend. The research objects are mainly secondary school English teachers and students. The research content focuses on the following four aspects: the definition of "integration of teaching-learning-assessing"; the implementation path of "integration of teaching-learning-assessing" in the classroom; the application of "integration of teaching-learning-assessing" in specific subjects and the investigation of "integration of teaching-learning-assessing" in the classroom. The data collection methods were mainly questionnaires, interviews and classroom observations. In the end of this paper, the future research and the development trend of "integration of teaching-learning-assessing" are pointed out.

The Cultivation of Oral Expression Ability in the Process of Learning English in Secondary Schools

In the context of globalization, the English proficiency requirements for middle school students are no longer limited to simple listening, reading and writing, and the importance of spoken language is becoming increasingly apparent. Secondary school is also an important period of language acquisition, so it is particularly important to develop students’ oral expression skills in the process of learning English in secondary school. So for secondary school English learning, how do we intersperse the development of oral expression skills? This article will examine the importance of oral learning, what is an effective and innovative oral learning method, as well as the design principles of oral classrooms, and the basic skills of oral expression. It aims to provide some effective oral expression training methods and classroom design ideas for the majority of secondary school English teachers, so as to improve the oral English expression ability of secondary school students.

Investigating ELL Teachers’ Knowledge and Practice in Vocabulary Instruction

The purpose of this study was to investigate EFL teachers’ knowledge and practice in vocabulary instruction. The study involved thirty six secondary school English teachers from three randomly selected schools. Simple random, purposive and available sampling techniques were employed for the study undertaken. Data was collected from the participant teachers through questionnaire, semi-structured interview, classroom observation and stimulated-recall interview. The findings show that, teachers’ knowledge was generally consistent with their classroom practices and this marked their knowledge guides their pedagogical practices. However, a few inconsistencies were also noticed. At the same time, the finding exhibited factors which could contribute to the mismatches between teachers’ knowledge and practices in vocabulary instruction. These factors include: Students’ lack of ability, their lack of motivation, lack of resources, large class size and others. The discussion of these findings suggests implications for practices and recommendations for future research to improve vocabulary instruction in secondary school context.

Education during Pandemic: Perspectives of Secondary School English Teachers from Malaysia, Nepal, and Bangladesh

One of the most affected sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic was education. Abrupt and sudden changes in teaching and learning practices that teachers and students experienced were unprecedented, and the effect is still felt today. Hence, the study sought to identify the challenges secondary English language teachers in Bangladesh, Malaysia and Nepal faced during the pandemic. Adopting a Comparative Case Study (CCS) research model, this was a transnational effort to explore the experiences of a cross-border ELT professional community teaching under various restrictions and limitations imposed by the governments in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Five key challenges emerged during the findings, namely: (i) teaching and learning dificulties, (ii) unreliable and invalid assessments, (iii) infrastructural hurdles in a home learning environment, (iv) student displacement, and (v) compromised teacher wellbeing. In retrospect, there was a cause for optimism as teachers acquired crucial survival skills, yet most challenges remain valid to this day. So various stakeholders must remain vigilant and devise robust measures in anticipation of future events of this kind and scale.

Challenges English Language Teachers Faced in Teaching Mixed-ability Classes at Selected Secondary Schools in the Gamo Zone of SNNPRS

This study aimed to explore the challenges English language teachers faced in teaching MACs at selected secondary schools in the Gamo Zone of Southern Nations and Nationalities Peoples’ Regional State (SNNPRS). To address this objective, we adopted an exploratory case study design. We selected 65 EFL teachers through a systematic random sampling technique for the questionnaire. Besides, we selected five teachers for unstructured interviews purposively. To organize and analyze the qualitative data, we employed inductive and deductive approaches. The results revealed a wide range of challenges from teacher-related to materials and student-related. Therefore, we concluded that secondary school English language teachers have faced multiple challenges and internalized them and tried to see inward to themselves than externalizing the problems and making other bodies responsible. Keywords: Mixed-ability classes (MACs), MACs challenges, teacher-related challenges, and student-related challenges

The relationship between teachers' emotional intelligence and teaching for creativity: The mediating role of working engagement.

Teaching for creativity (TfC) has received increasing attention as an important way to cultivate students' creative thinking and behaviors. The purpose of this study is to examine the mediating role of teachers' work engagement (WE) on the relationship between their emotional intelligence (EI) and teaching for creativity. The study is a cross-sectional design. The sample of the study is 3,307 secondary school English teachers working in Jilin Province, China. The findings show that the teachers' perceptions of emotional intelligence, work engagement and teaching for creativity are relatively high. The findings confirm the hypotheses. The results of structural equation modeling and bootstrapping show that teachers' emotional intelligence is positively correlated with work engagement and teaching for creativity, and teachers' work engagement mediates the relationship between emotional intelligence and teaching for creativity.

Investigating Teachers’ Perceptions of L1 Use in English as a Foreign Language Moroccan Secondary Classrooms: A Post-Communicative Perspective

This article draws on an online survey to collect data about the perceptions of Moroccan secondary school teachers of English in connection with their use of translation in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching and learning settings. As in previous research on L1 (first language) use, this study emphasizes the unavoidability of translation and the discrepancy between teachers’ attitudes and their real teaching habits. Uncovering participants’ lack of awareness of the communicative benefits of translation is the major contribution of this study. We recommend reconsidering the communicative prospects of translation for teachers who face the dilemma of inevitable translation, and the trepidation of its long-held uncommunicative assumption.

E-learning readiness during the school suspension caused by the COVID-19 pandemic: A case of English language teachers in Sabah, Malaysia

The quick spread of COVID-19 across the world has badly affected all aspects of human life, especially the educational sector. In Malaysia, all the educational institutions were closed to comply with the lockdown promulgated by the Malaysian government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. Yet, the teaching and learning process had to be continued during this period, and that was carried out through a full resort to e-learning. This study investigates the level of readiness among secondary school English language teachers to utilize e-learning in teaching during the lockdown in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. Psychological readiness, technological skills readiness, and content readiness, adopted from Chapnick’s (2000) readiness model, were the main dimensions to investigate. A total of 83 online cross-sectional surveys were received and analyzed using descriptive analysis. The construct validity of the measuring items was performed by the exploratory factor analysis, and the instrument reliability was obtained at an acceptable level. Results showed that although the secondary school English language teachers in Kota Kinabalu were technologically ready to use e-learning in teaching, they had unsatisfactory readiness levels for psychological, content, human resource, and equipment readiness. Importantly, the current research stresses the need to develop an up-to-date survey that technically and comprehensively addresses the various aspects of the advanced technological skills that should be mastered by teachers and educators in this era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR4.0). Limitations of the study and recommendations for future research are also highlighted.

An Investigation on the Teachers' Beliefs of Postgraduate Students in Master of Education in English

The key to a surge of interest in the study of teacher beliefs is the recognition that teachers are active decision-makers who play a central role in classroom activities and whose behavior is guided by teacher beliefs. To comprehensively understand the teacher beliefs of the 26 postgraduate students majoring in the master of education in English and the role of educational internship on the development of pre-service teachers' beliefs, we investigated and compared them with 100 in-service secondary school English teachers who participated in the "National Training Program" of the university. The data collected from the questionnaires were analyzed using the statistical software SPSS21.0. The results found differences between the two groups regarding beliefs about students learning, teaching, classroom management, and thoughts about the teacher-student role. And both groups showed aspects of relatively advanced or lagging development in all four dimensions of teachers' beliefs. At the same time, the pre-service teachers' educational internship positively impacts them to improve and establish correct teaching beliefs and stimulate their innovative teaching and research consciousness.

Exploring Secondary School Teachers’ Feedback Practices in Written English as a Foreign Language in Tanzania

This study explored the feedback practices of secondary school teachers of English as a foreign language in Tanzania. It employed the mixed approach using a concurrent embedded design to collect data from 22 secondary schools in six districts of the Kilimanjaro region. From convenient sampling, 22 Form Three teachers filled in questionnaires; six of whom participated in semi-structured interviews. A documentary review collected information on teachers' feedback practices from 176 students' written texts using purposive random sampling. Cronbach’s alpha was .800 and .766, indicating high and acceptable reliability of the questionnaire items. Besides, the reliability of qualitative data was established by interrater and member checks. Findings showed that the teachers marked students' written tasks using a holistic approach, focusing mainly on content errors. They paid little attention to form errors using indirect feedback strategies. The written comments were also controlling and judgmental. The teachers had a positive belief about feedback in writing lessons, but there was a mismatch between what the teachers perceived to do and their actual feedback practices. Such practices were influenced by inadequate training, a large number of students, a shortage of time and too many written errors for teachers to handle. Feedback practices that would help students develop writing skills in both form and content should be encouraged among teachers. Teachers also need professional development on feedback practices for effective writing lessons.

Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Reciprocal Teaching Strategies for Improving High School Students’ Reading Skills

The following study focuses on surveying teachers’ attitudes towards the four reciprocal teaching strategies (RTSs) which include; prediction, clarifying, questioning, and summarization in EFL high school classes by English Language teachers in Erbil city. Achieving this objective, the researcher needs to understand the difficulties that both teachers and students face in understanding the contents of reading texts. The present study attempts to evaluate high school teachers’ attitudes (negative or positive) towards the four RTS teaching strategies, and to detect the extent to which they apply such strategies in their teaching sessions. This is mandatory since reading comprehension is very essential skill for high school students who will move to the post-secondary (university) stage that needs more effort for learning the language and overcoming reading obstacles. A quantitative method has been used for the sake of achieving the aims of the study, thus a teachers questionnaire was distributed on One hundred EFL high school teachers were which represent the sample of the study .in addition , an observation checklist was used to observe twenty-five EFL teachers to find out the way they are using the four strategies of RTSs. The teachers were randomly selected in public high schools in Erbil Directorate of Education. The data of the current study were analyzed by using SPSS version (22). The findings of this current study for both tools reveal the real attitudes of secondary school teachers of English, and the extent to which they deal with the four reciprocal strategies while teaching reading. Finally, for helping teachers and students to be familiarized with the four reciprocal teaching strategies, a number of useful recommendations are suggested. Also, a number of suggestions for further studies are presented.

Subscribing to diverse subjects in different classes: language development dichotomy

Language teachers, yet on the other side, language enhancement is compromised for learners whose home language is not English. Further than that, for teachers lacking specialisation of other subjects allocated to them, besides English language teaching and learning becomes a monotonous activity that does not inspire learner attitudes more so that the greatest percentage of subjects underpinning the curriculum is offered in an English medium. This paper aims to explore if offering different subjects in varying classes has any significant impact on language development. The study is located within interpretivist paradigm using qualitative research appraoch and case study research design. 5 secondary school English language teachers were purposefully nominated and interviewed to study the problem’s complex phenomenon. Findings divulged that multi subject allocation in the site investigated seemed to be compromising subject specification, thus leading to a decline in enhancing language development. The study recommends that to re-build teacher and learner motivation, policies should be put in place to consider subject speciality when allocation of subjects is administered.