Effectiveness of Transformative Intellectuals in Teaching English Skills: Ambo University in Focus

Abstract

This study examined the teacher’s practices as a transformative intellectual in teaching communicative English skills course at Ambo University. Using a quasi-experimental research design, all 253 students who were admitted to Natural Science (135) and Social Science (118) bands were considered using comprehensive sampling techniques. A pre-intervention test was administered to all the students to determine their baseline language skills. Next, the students were proportionally stratified into two groups based on their pretest results, field of study and sex category, who were later assigned to control and experimental groups using lottery system. Consequently, transformative intellectual strategy was carried out for thirteen weeks for the experimental group of students while the control group of students was taught using conventional methods in their regular classrooms. In the end, post-intervention test was carried out to determine the effectiveness of transformative intellectual strategy. The data obtained through test, classroom observation, and attitudinal survey questionnaire were analyzed quantitatively using percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test and Mann-Whitney U test to determine the effectiveness of the intervention, and qualitatively using thematic analysis. The findings (t = 7.55 and Z = 0.95) showed that teacher’s practices of transformative intellectual significantly improved students’ communicative English skills, with 17.14%. The students in the experimental group were motivated towards communicative English skills course. They were challenged in using transformative intellectuals in the course. The solution of the problem lies on the improvement of the challenges.