Teachers' Experiences of Developing Vocabulary Materials in Mixed Ability Classes

Abstract

I once chatted with two English teachers at one of the junior high schools in my home area and I found that not all students in that junior high school had been taught English lessons when they were in elementary school. These teachers, developed as much as possible the vocabulary material that they would teach to their students, adapting to the existing class conditions. The main objective of this research is to know experiences of the two teachers in developing vocabulary materials for class which had different background of the students that called mixed ability class, used semi-structured interview to collect the data and thematic analysis method to analyze the data collection. The result showed that there were three categories of themes on what teachers’ experiences of developing vocabulary materials for mixed ability classes in that school. The themes were; planning vocabulary learning, conditions for learning, and designing input activities to encourage vocabulary learning. From the experiences of the two teachers, readers (especially prospective teachers and new teachers) would gain additional insight into the development of vocabulary materials for learning in mixed ability classes.