An Investigation of Classroom Management Challenges EFL Novice Teachers Face in Oral Classes

Abstract

Classroom management is a complex process in educational settings. It is an important aspect of teaching which is a source of struggle for many teachers in EFL classes. This can be due to a lack of teachers training, support and difficulties in implementing effective classroom management strategies. This study aims at identifying the difficulties first year English as a foreign language novice teacher at the department of English at the university of Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia-Jijel face in terms of oral classes‟ management. For this reason, it is hypothesized that for effective classroom management process to be achieved, novice teachers need to identify different classroom management challenges and try to solve them. The data was collected by using two tools: a structured interview and a classroom observation. On the one hand, the interview was directed to all the five novice teachers teaching oral expression at the department of English for the purpose of identifying the difficulties of classroom management faced by them. On the other hand, a classroom observation was conducted to observe how novices manage their oral expression classes in real classroom setting. The results showed that first year EFL novice teachers of oral expression module face several challenges to manage their classes due to a lack training programs, lack of collegial support, difficulties of time management and difficulties in lesson planning. Based on these results, some pedagogical recommendations were suggested to help novice teachers to improve their classroom management process