Uuveiling English Language Teaching Strategies and Assessment Practices Used by Teachers in Enhancing EFL Eighth-Grade Students' Speaking Skill

Abstract

Speaking is widely regarded as the most demanding productive skill for EFL learners, yet the way teaching strategies and assessment practices work together to support its development is still rarely examined as a single, connected process. This study aims to explore the English language teaching strategies and assessment practices used by teachers to enhance the speaking skills of eighth-grade EFL students. This study used a qualitative case study approach involving three English teachers from two junior high schools in Suela District, East Lombok, namely SMPN 2 Suela and SMP Maraqitta'limat Sapit. Data were collected through classroom observation, semi-structured interviews, and documentation, then analyzed using the interactive model of Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña (2014) and verified through method triangulation. The results show that the three teachers relied on a shared core of teaching strategies, namely dialogue practice, role play, discussion, and picture describing, delivered through a consistent model-practice-perform sequence that moved students from teacher-modeled input, through guided partner practice, to freer performance. In assessment, the teachers combined formative, performance-based, and summative practices, evaluating students mainly through the same role play and oral presentation activities used for practice, guided by a rubric and immediate feedback, although the consistency of rubric use varied between teachers. These findings indicate that teaching strategies and assessment practices function most effectively when they are directly connected to one another, and they suggest that professional development should address not only strategy variety but also consistent and manageable rubric use during live speaking lessons.