EFL Teachers’ and Students’ Beliefs in Teaching and Learning English Speaking Skills in the Multilingual Classrooms: Teachers and First Year Students at Wolkite University in Focus

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate EFL teachers’ and first year students’ beliefs in teaching and learning English speaking  skills in the multilingual classrooms of Wolkite University. To this end, the research design employed for this study is  descriptive survey design which makes use of quantitative method for data analyses. Therefore, the quantitative data  were collected using a questionnaire from thirty-nine (39) teachers and two hundred fifty-one (251) students’ that were selected using simple random sampling techniques. The quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS version 25. The  results from the qualitative data analyses revealed that the teachers and students believe that teaching and learning  English speaking skills is possible in multilingual EFL classrooms provided that appropriate pedagogy which entertains  the linguistic diversity is applied. The teachers and students believe that teaching and learning English speaking skills in multilingual classroom by itself has no problem, but the inclusive pedagogy will matter to address teachers’ and  students’ interests towards learning considering the existing linguistic diversities. This inclusive pedagogy helps  teachers to let their students practice speaking skills. To overcome the challenges of teaching and learning English  speaking skills in the classroom of linguistic diversities, multilingual pedagogy that maximizes teachers’ teaching and  students’ learning capacity is recommended.