Abstract:
The main objective of this study was to assessing vocabulary teaching strategies used by grade nine
teachers at Ambagiorgis Preparatory and Secondary School in Gondar. The study used a descriptive
method that involves quantitative and qualitative methods. Questionnaire, classroom observation and
interview were used to gather the necessary data for the study. Four English language teachers from
grade nine were used for the interview. Four of the teachers who were only teaching grade nine
students were observed four times in their actual classroom. And data were collected from 97
randomly selected grade nine students for questionnaire. Ten students were interviewed. Thus,
descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages and mean were employed in analyzing the
quantitative data. The qualitative data were analyzed and reported. The overall findings of the study
showed that teachers did not use the various vocabulary teaching strategies in the English classes.
Teachers most frequently used; contextualization (synonyms, antonyms and definitions) strategies.
Based on the findings, it is recommended that creating meaningful vocabulary teaching opportunities
through various vocabulary teaching strategies are supposed to be practiced widely. Furthermore,
varieties of vocabulary teaching strategies should be used interactively so as to improve English
language vocabulary teaching strategies. Finally, conclusions and recommendations were made
based on the findings of the study.
