English Language Teaching Strategies in Libyan Basic Education Schools: What Should be versus What is Actually There

Abstract

The study aimed at investigating the strategies that Libyan EFL teachers at primary schools use in their classes and to what extent these strategies go in hand with the ‘21st century English for Libya’ textbooks, which are used for the first six years of basic education. The research methodology followed to collect the required data was a mixed research approach. Structured observations were held with (12) EFL primary school teachers, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with (6) English teachers from different basic schools in El-Ajelat city. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the quantitative data, whereas the thematic analysis method was used to analyse the qualitative data. The findings of the study revealed that the participants, as a whole, used the strategies required for the target textbooks and used many other teaching strategies. However, each of the participants used only some of the needed strategies. Moreover, it has been noticed that some of these strategies were more frequently used than the others and that strategies use in general was rather low. Teachers seemed not aware of the 21st-century skills. In addition, some teachers recognized the significance of some strategies, but they admitted the fact that they do not use them. This might be due to the lack of the necessary equipment, or the lack of theoretical knowledge of teaching strategies. The researcher recommends training programs for primary school teachers to familiarize them with the new curriculum. Furthermore, more research is suggested to compare different contexts such as public and private schools, and to examine teachers' attitudes towards 21st-century skills.