Assessing Teachers’ Awareness and Use of Reading Motivational Strategies at Fasilo and Bahirdar Secondary Schools grade 9- 12 in focus

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess teachers’ awareness and use of motivational strategies in reading classroom. A descriptive study which consisted of both quantitative and qualitative data were employed. In order to gather data for the study, four instruments: questionnaires to students and teachers, interview to English language teachers, observation and reading content analysis were used. The subjects of the study were selected from Fasilo and Bhair Dar secondary schools of grade 9-12 students and English language teachers. Two hundred sixty eight students were taken as a sample by using systematic sampling technique. All 24 EFL teachers were chosen by using comprehensive sampling technique for questionnaire and eight teachers were chosen for observation and interview using random sampling technique. The quantitative data was analyzed using frequency count and percentage while the qualitative data was thematically analyzed. The results of the study showed that although teachers have good awareness about most of the motivational strategies, they failed to practice them. Hence, there was a gap between teachers’ awareness and their actual practice. Based on these results, the study also found out that teachers have not awareness about strategies like summarizing the text, criticizing the text, reading aloud, explain briefly the content of the text before reading and using inference. The study, furthermore, revealed that working individually, using contextual clue, reading silently and independently, discussing the questions after reading, presenting key words before reading and locating the main ideas of some paragraphs of the text were the most frequently used motivational strategies by the English language teachers to teach reading lessons. The text book analysis result revealed that the sample 32 reading contents of the students’ text book have enough motivational strategies. It is, thus suggested that teachers need training to fill the gap b/n their awareness and practice to use motivational strategies to teach reading in a motivating way.