Arba Minch University Journal of Culture and Language Studies

Level of Instructional Clarity of English Language Teachers at Selected Secondary Schools

Dr. Abate Demissie gedamu — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 12:18:35 +0300

Instructional clarity is an essential issue for understandable and quality teaching. To this effect, this study aimed to examine the level of instructional clarity of English language teachers at selected secondary schools in Gamo Zone, Ethiopia. Accordingly, the study adopted a cross-sectional descriptive research design to collect and analyze quantitative data at one point in time about the instructional clarity of teachers. I selected 62 English language teachers using a comprehensive sampling technique from eight public secondary schools. The study employed a five-point Likert-scale questionnaire. I utilized a one-sample t-test to examine whether the English language teachers' instructional clarity was statistically above the expected mean (3.00). The study concluded that English language teachers maintained an overall instructional clarity meaningfully above average despite poor practices and ambivalent stances on some aspects of instructional clarity.

Teachers’ Practices And Students’ Preferences Of Reading Instruction: Its Implication On Reading Comprehension and Fluency

Selamawit Zewdie — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 08:15:09 +0300

The teachers’ practice of effective reading instruction may not be the one that students perceive as useful and effective reading instruction. This qualitative case study research examines the reading instruction practices of teachers and the preferences of students with that of its implication on reading comprehension and fluency. Classroom observations and Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from 2 experienced teachers and 6 students of a school in Gondar town, Ethiopia. The collected data were analyzed thematically. The findings of the study showed that teachers practice the traditional way of teaching reading whereas students prefer the interactive process to reading. Thus, it was found that there is a discrepancy between teachers’ practices and students’ preferences for reading instructions. It was also found that the teachers and students do not believe that the actual classroom instruction positively impacts students' reading comprehension and fluency. Based on the finding I argue that teachers should tune their way of teaching reading with the present theories as well as the students’ preferences so that students improve their reading comprehension and fluency. Teacher educators also should train pre-service and in-service teachers to use the reading models that are up to date.

Keywords: Reading Comprehension, Reading Fluency, Reading Instruction, Students’ Preference, Teachers’ practices

The Effect of Professional Development Training on EFL Teachers’ Perception of Research Practice at Selected Schools in Arba Minch

Dr. Endelibu Goa — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 11:00:53 +0300

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of need-based professional development (PD) training on primary school EFL teachers’ perception of research practices in Gamo Zone, Ethiopia. Employing an experimental research design, pre-test and post-test measures were analyzed using a t-test statistical procedure. The data gathered through a questionnaire was subjected to quantitative analysis. 59, randomly selected EFL teachers filled the pre-test and post-test questionnaires. The result showed that there was a statistically significant difference before intervention (M=64.00, SD=13.612) and after intervention [M= 80.52, SD=15.512, t (51) =-6.554, p<0.05]. Based on the findings, the study concluded that need-based PD practice could have great value in improving primary school EFL teachers’ perception of research practices in Arba Minch, Ethiopia

Key terms: Perception, Research Practices, Need-based, Professional development, English language, Experimental research design

Proposing Difficulty and Discrimination Indices to Validate Teacher-Made Multiple-Choice Test Items: A Remedy to Variations Observed in Scholars’ Propositions

Wendiyfraw Wanna — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0300

The purpose of this research article was to propose difficulty and discrimination indices as a remedy to variations observed in scholars’ indices and check the efficacy of the proposed indices by comparing them with other researchers’ indices. To achieve this, a multiple-choice vocabulary test was constructed and was given to 4^th year medical student at AMU. Then, a comparative item analysis was done with the researcher’s proposed indices and with one of other researchers. The analysis revealed that the test had several items that needed to be discarded and replaced by other better items as most of these items had poor discrimination index. This was due to researcher’s choosing the most frequent words from Academic Word List. As the test-takers were familiar with these words, they could easily identify them. In addition, it was found out that there were a few items that needed some revisions. The problems with these items were associated with having many non-functional distractors which attracted none or few of the test-takers. Besides, the comparison showed that the researcher’s indices were better in some respects than that of the other researcher. Eventually, it was recommended that the area needed further studies.

Keywords: multiple-choice, item analysis, difficulty index, discrimination index, distractor efficiency, stem, and distractors