The Use of Vernacular in the Teaching of English: Survey of Addis Ababa Zone Four Junior Secondary Schools

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1988-06

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The purpose of this study is to find out whether or not teachers \ in Addis Ababa Zone Four Junior Secondary Schools use vernacular while teaching English, and if they do, to what extent they use it. Of the junior secondary schools in the zone, six were chosen at random and from each school, one grade seven English teacher was chosen, more or less, at random. Each t eacher was recorded, the recording time depending on the l ength of oral communication within the 40-minute period. The steps followed in the analysis of the data, in general were claBByfi~thewhole discourse into Amharic (vernacular) and English (medium of instruction) and finding out what share of it is vernacular, dividing the discourse of each side (teach ers and pupils) into vernacular and medium of instruction in the same way, and computing frequency ( the number of vernacular words used per minute) for each, and lastly, classifying the vernacular used into Bellack's four pedagogical moves: structuring, soliciting, reacting and responding. To facilitate the understanding of this analysis, full t ext of the four moves is given. The results show that, of the totil classroom discourse of teachers and pupils, 71% is English (medium of instruction) and 29% Amharic (vernacular). Of the total discourse of teachers, 69 .4% is English and 30.6% Amharic . Of the tot a l words used by pupils and t eachers, the teachers' share is 81.9% and the pupils ' share 18.1%. On the whole the pupils do less than 20% of the talking, and the teachers more than 80% of it. On the average, about ~ of the t eachers ' total classroom discourse (30 . 6%) is vernacular, and the tot a l average frequency of thir use of vernacular is 17.5 words per minute.The results, further, show that the type of English lesson (passage, vocabulary or grammar), or the type of excercise (objective or subjective) affect the extent of the use of vernacular, which varied not only from teacher to teacher but also from teachers to pupils. The total average of the teachers' move, in order, is structuring (59.8) soliciting (24.8), reacting (13.3%), and responding (2.1%). Generally speaking, almost all the responses were done by the pupils, and almost all the solicitations by teachers. It was thus ooncluded that only ~ of the time alloted for the teaching of English is really used. The pupils have developed the habit of hearing in English and speaking in Amharic. This habit is likely to increase in magnitude because teachers tend to insist on making the pupils speak in Amharic even when they are able to speak in E~ish. Translation also seems to be inefficient because there are instances of mistranslated and confusion of concepts.

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Use of Vernacular in the Teaching of English

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