Examining teachers' awareness of effective vocabulary instructional practices: Voices from Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Vocabulary-learning activities are predominant in the English language classroom. Research examining teachers' awareness of effective vocabulary instructional practices is limited. The current mixed-methods study (explanatory sequential design) aims to elicit responses from schoolteachers and college-level teachers in the Saudi English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) context to evaluate their implementation of the Technique Feature Analysis criteria. A survey was administered to 86 EFL teachers in Saudi Arabia. This was followed by focused group interviews with a subsample of 15 teachers. Results showed that teachers at both levels frequently employed the criteria under “motivation” and “noticing.” However, most college-level teachers could not give students the freedom to select the words they needed to learn, did not use images to visualize vocabulary items, and were hesitant about using translation in their classrooms. Schoolteachers, on the other hand, did not pay attention to teaching individual unknown words in context. The results have important implications regarding teacher perceptions of effective vocabulary teaching and the design of language programs in Saudi Arabia.