ABSTRACT

This study was undertaken with the aim of providing information on the levels of ability of the students of secondary schools on reading comprehension in English language in Vihiga District in Western Province of Kenya. It was meant to determine the factors that influence reading comprehension, the knowledge they have about reading comprehension skills, reading activities organized for their own reading development and problems they encounter in reading and answering questions in reading comprehension. Few studies have been carried out on the strategy students use to answer comprehension questions in English and comprehensions still present a number of problems to students at the KCSE level as evidenced in the final scores over the years. Vihiga district was selected for the study mainly because the schools from the district have consistently performed poorly in English at National examinations. The mode of answering questions in reading comprehension could be one of the factors contributing to this poor performance. In addition, the study investigated the relationship in performance between boys and girls in answering reading comprehension questions. A sample of six hundred and seventy eight (678) students and fifty (50) teachers in sixteen (16) randomly selected secondary schools were selected. Two main instruments were used in this study. The first was a reading comprehension passage for students to determine the problems they encounter. The second instrument was a teacher questionnaire to draw out some highlights about procedures and skills teachers use in teaching reading comprehension. The instruments were piloted and adjusted as necessary before the main study. The data from the main study was analyzed mainly using descriptive and basic statistics, which are the means, frequency distributions and percentages. The data was interpreted, discussed and recommendations made. The main findings from the study indicate that teachers experience limited reading materials in schools and this seems to impact on reading habits and competence of learner’s comprehension. The overall  performance as the comprehension test was rather average and in terms of gender the boys (x=59.53%) performed slightly better than girls (x=56.56%). The comprehension skills  showed varying performance. The skills on word reading, word context, multiple strings, making judgment and metaphor interpretation were performed better than those on literal abilities, inference and salient ideas. The students showed some potential and with adequate support in resources and instructional techniques there can be improvement. Some recommendations were made for further studies especially in the area of further exploration of other comprehension skills such as those associated with cloze tests.

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

C.P.E:             Certificate of Primary Education – Examination done after seven years of primary education. (1977-1985).

K.C.P.E:        Kenya Certificate of Primary Education- Examination done after eight years of primary education.

K.C.S.E :        Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education-Examination done at the end of four years of secondary schooling.

K.I.C.D :        Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development – The national curriculum development centre.

K.N.E.C :       Kenya National Examinations Council – The national examining body.

L.T.M :           Long Term Memory

M.O.E :           Ministry of Education.

S. T. M.          Short Term Memory

8.4.4                Eight years of primary education, four years of secondary education and four years of university education (the current education system in Kenya since 1985)

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

          Background to the Study

English language is the main medium of instruction in Kenyan secondary schools. This means that lack of proper skills in English language reading comprehension will inevitably affect the performance of other subjects in the school. This can even be extended further, that poor performance in English language is likely to have an impact on school leavers in their training or place of work (Mogaka, 2000). Performance in English has been linked to many factors, ranging from instructional procedures to resources (Kamau, 1996; Ndavi, 1982)

This study mainly focuses on a specific area in English language learning, mainly reading comprehension competence among secondary schools in Vihiga District. Local researchers, including Obondo (1984), Obuya-Deya (1980), Owino (1987), Wario (1981), and Wagesa (1985), concentrated on classroom reading instruction. This research aims at assessing the level of preparedness of students to independently read and answer English reading comprehension questions, and the quality of answers.

Answering questions is an important aspect in reading comprehension. It is crucial that the students acquire the minimum requirements for communicating on paper. Assuming that print is the medium of communication and learners are well prepared, there is no excuse for achieving poor grades in national examinations as a result of not being able to answer English comprehension questions properly. Unfortunately lack of knowledge and skills on how to answer questions on content, features prominently among factors that contribute to poor achievement in most of our schools. In the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) 2006 report on Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) English language examination performance (2007), many candidates gave stock answers to the questions,

answers that did not pinpoint nor illustrate the features in the reading comprehension given. The candidates lifted sentences from passages which did not respond to questions adequately.

Reading comprehension in the English language presupposes the mastery of the reading process. This process enables a student to apply his/her knowledge of reading to situations in which he/she is asked to perform hence “performance referenced” (Baker, 1985:7).

In Kenya, the assessment of English at KCSE level is done using examination paper one (1), paper two (2) and paper three (3). The composition of the papers, marks allocation and percentages are displayed in table 1.1.

Table 1.1 Marks Allocation in English Assessment at Secondary School

As seen in table 1.1, comprehension draws a considerable amount of marks (45) and therefore plays a very instrumental role in the overall performance of English at the KCSE level.

The performance of English at K.C.S.E level nationally has really been wanting for the past few years and this could be due to learner – problems in the development of English language reading comprehension. This is clearly displayed in table 1.2

Table 1.2 Performance in English in K.C.S.E Examinations nationally from 2005-2010

Source: Kenya National Examination Council

Table 1.2 reveals that there has been poor performance in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (K.C.S.E) in English language. The mean percentage in all the six years was below average (below 50%). The cause for the dismal performance calls for attention. The problem cannot be addressed unless the origin of the problem is established.

The breakdown of analysis of English K.C.S.E examination performance of candidates in the three papers offered in year 2006-2010 is shown in Table 1.3. It clearly shows a poor performance in English in KCSE Examinations Nationally.

Table 1.3: Candidates Overall Performance in English in the years 2006-2010

Source: Kenya National Examination Council.

A Summary of K.C.S.E examination report of the year 2006-2010 reveals the following:

• Candidates were unable to grasp context, grammatical inaptitude and limitations of vocabulary.
  • Most candidates gave stock answers to the questions, answers that did not pin point nor illustrate the features in the comprehension passage.
  • Candidates lifted sentences from the passage which did not respond to the question adequately.
  • Anything they were expected to deduce from facts given presented a problem.

• Most candidates were unable to explain the meanings of the expressions as used in the passage.

The worst performed paper was composition and essays based on set books, paper 101/3. This paper requires that students construct syntactically correct sentences, which should pass the message across. The second poorly performed paper was 101/2. The paper comprises comprehension, literary appreciation and Grammar. The comprehension part in this paper, in the year 2006 -2010 National examinations was reported to have been poorly performed as compared to paper 101/1 which was fairly performed.

One possible reason for poor performance in English could be due to learner’s lack of ability to respond to comprehension questions. The assessment of the passage ultimately assessed functional reading in accordance with Harris (1970:1). The assessment was  undertaken in order to obtain the information necessary to tackle a specific problem, locate information quickly and efficiently, including ability to read texts swiftly and with understanding.

Ideally the assessment was “criterion referenced”. This entailed rating the students against a predetermined standard of correct performance of some reading tasks. This was regardless of whether or not some, or all, or none of them is successful (Hughes and Porter 1983; Shipman, 1983)