In today’s globalised world, the influence of language on people’s day-to-day lives is very great, especially English, as it is widely used as the language of science, education, technology, commerce, and diplomacy internationally. Thus, the teaching of English as a foreign or second language has become increasingly important.
In Ethiopia, the English language currently plays a prominent role in the field of education. It serves as the medium of instruction from Grade 5 in some regions and Grade 7 in others (depending on regional policy) through to higher education. However, poor student competence has always been considered one of the major factors affecting the quality of learning in the country.
Many English teachers from different schools experience frustration due to students’ low level of participation in classroom interaction. As an English teacher at the university, the researcher shares the views of many fellow teachers that a significant number of students can hardly understand and follow lessons conducted in English.
The focus of the present study, therefore, was to assess the effects of the teachers’ most commonly used discourse functions on students’ oral production skills.
Objective of the Study
The main objective of this study was to assess the language functions most commonly used by secondary school English teachers and their effects on students’ oral production skills.
Research Design and Methodology
Both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed. Thus, qualitative and quantitative methods were chosen as the research design because these approaches enabled the researcher to answer the research questions posed.
Conclusion
The most frequently used language function was questioning and eliciting. Much of the lesson time was devoted to asking questions, accounting for 58.9%. This shows that the teaching method followed by the teachers was based almost exclusively on the textbook. However, the teachers were found to produce short utterances that required only students’ grammatical knowledge.
The least used language function was socialising, accounting for only 3%. The results also showed that 48.3% of the questions were display questions, 30.1% were open versus closed-ended questions, 16.4% were factual versus reasoning questions, and referential questions accounted for 5%.
This prevented students from trying to express their own ideas and was likely to encourage them to repeat facts or pre-formulated language items. However, there were very few instances in which teachers employed referential questions, allowing students to express their feelings and consequently produce much longer and more complete stretches of language.
References
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