Gebeyehu Bidika

Difficulty of Using English for Classroom Interaction: Reasons Underlying Students' Difficulty of Using English Language for Classroom Interaction: Dire Dawa-ethiopia Gebeyehu Bidika

In Ethiopia students need to have sufficient language performance in English as the language is the medium of instruction throughout the whole course after second cycle primary schools (grade 7&8). However, majority of students are facing problems to use the target language, as it can be observed by students? difficulty of expressing their thoughts and the low scores most of them got in the English language. The truth in schools is that teachers have good subject matter knowledge but are still not good enough in using active-learning strategies to precede their teaching in a comprehensive way, allowing the students to use the language. Thus, there should be practical change from traditional ?chalk-and talk? teaching to ?open-ended? instruction, a combination of direct instruction, guided practice and independent learning, in which teachers present some amounts of material and encourage active participation of students using of English language for classroom interaction.