Strategies of Teaching English as A Second Language: Findings from A Mixed-Method Research

Abstract

The study aimed at examining the strategies of teaching English as a second language in Grade 4 in selected schools of the Amathole District of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. From the entire elementary schools within the Amathole District of the Eastern Cape Province, the researchers of this study randomly selected eight Grade 4 ESL instructors, from the agreed four elementary schools, which means two Grade 4 ESL instructors for each agreed school. For the data collection, a questionnaire with thoroughly designed questions and an observation checklist that entails guidelines of what to observe were used. Hence, the data were quantitatively and qualitatively analysed. The study findings particularly indicated that all the interviewed Grade 4 ESL instructors understand what teaching strategies denote and can recognise the current teaching strategies of Grammar Translation Method (GTM), Direct Method (DM), Silent Method (SM), and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) method except for the Audio-Lingual Method (ALM) and the Total Physical Response (TPR). However, the findings indicated that all the Grade 4 ESL instructors were only able to apply the features of both GTM and CLT strategies during the classroom observation, while the features of direct and silent methods were recognised by some of the Grade 4 ESL instructors were not applied during the classroom observation. Also, the findings established that the GTM is more applied by the Grade 4 ESL instructors compared to the CLT. Thus, the implication is that realistically in the teaching of Grade 4 ESL learners, the instructors only employed either the GTM or CLT, where the GTM is mostly used against the CLT.

Keywords

• esl/additional language/mother-tongue
• teaching strategies
• proficiency
• competency