Armenian EFL teachers’ challenges in public and private secondary schools of Yerevan

Abstract

EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers face various challenges while teaching English at schools. This study aims to identify the Armenian EFL teachers’ challenges in public and private secondary schools and find out the coping strategies they use. In this study, the term “public” refers to the schools that are funded by the state, and “private” refers to the schools which are organized and supported by private individuals or payments of fees. The proposed sample for the study consists of 15 Armenian EFL teachers from three private and three public schools (eight public school teachers, and seven private school teachers). The participants are secondary school teachers who teach the seventh-grade students. The data was collected through class observations, survey questionnaires for the teachers, and semi-structured one-on-one interviews. The results of the questionnaires were analyzed through the Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS software, 19), while the analyses of the observations and the interviews were discussed qualitatively, and the categories and subcategories of the challenges were defined after data collection. The results of the study have revealed that the Armenian EFL teachers face more challenges in the public schools than in the private schools. On the other hand, the study has found out that the majority of the teachers are eager to enhance their teaching skills, and there is noticeable progress in both public and private school teachers’ teaching approaches. They are more in favor of the Communicative Language Teaching method.