EFL TEACHERS’ PRACTICES AND CONSTRAINTS IN IMPLEMENTING THE REFLECTIVE APPROACH TO TEACHING WRITING IN GRADE 11 IN ADDIS ABABA CITY, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate teachers’ practices and challenges in implementing the reflective approaches to EFL classes with particular reference to five selected secondary schools in Addis Ababa. The study had three research questions and employed a descriptive qualitative research design, involving eleven grade 11English language teachers. Empirical data were collected through semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The findings indicated that though grade eleven English teachers are qualified enough to implement the reflective approach to teaching writing, the data confirmed that they could not apply it to the real classroom situations as frequently as possible due to several pulling and pushing factors. The majority of them used direct feedback and meta-linguistic feedback. The salient challenges that hindered the implementation of this approach to writing classes were the English teachers’ in-bred beliefs that were transferred from their predecessors, large class size, students’ low capacity in the writing skills, lack of sufficient time for teachers to reflect on each student’ written work, students’ low appetite to learn from the reflections they received from their English teachers and students’ lack of commitment to improve their writing skills through their own efforts.