Exploring teachers’ practices of using short stories for teaching english speaking skills: grade eleven of damboya preparatory school in focus

The purpose of this study was Exploring Teachers’ Practices of using Short Stories in Teaching English Speaking Skills for Grade Eleven of Damboya Preparatory School. The study employed descriptive research design. To attain the stated objectives, purposive sampling technique was used to select the target school and the targeted respondents of the study. Accordingly, sixty four students and English language teachers who have been teaching English subject for preparatory classes were used as the participants of the study. Both the students and the teachers were from Damboya Secondary and Preparatory School. To collect the data, questionnaire, document analysis and focus group discussion were used. The data were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The data in the questionnaire were analysed by calculating the percentages and frequencies. The results of the research pointed out that the short stories incorporated to teach speaking skills in English textbook of grade eleven and the speaking activities derived from the incorporated short stories of the same class according to the data attained from students and teachers were insufficient and less than the needed though there is no criteria to limit the numbers of short stories to be incorporated. Using the incorporated short stories needs teachers’ use of various techniques like grouping students for discussion, motivating them as they retell short stories orally and teaching as students complete the remaining plot of the short stories. For the reason that different major hindering factors like large class size, authors’ culture, the size of English language text book and understanding of students towards short stories role to enhance speaking skill, there was a gap in the use of the incorporated short stories to teach speaking skills. As a result, based on the findings of the study, recommendations were forwarded to alleviate the aforementioned problems in the school under study.