EVALUATION OF FACTORS AFFECTING THE PERFORMANCE OF FCT STUDENTS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Given the importance of English language as a subject, common sense demands that students should perform well in it. The fact that English language is the most important subject in the secondary school curriculum is incontestable. To be able to understand his or her teachers in all other subjects effectively, a secondary school student requires at least fair knowledge of the English language. Little wonder that English language is referred to as the key to all other subjects. To be eligible for admission to universities and other higher institutions of learning secondary school student must pass English language at credit or distinction level. English is the sole medium of communication in the university communities. English language as a subject, is important and students are required to perform well in it. The statistics of results from West African Examination Council (WAEC) however reveal that year in year out. Only fewer than thirty percent of candidate who writes English language in this very important (WAEC) examination pass with a credit or distinction level. What a shameful and painful revelation owing to this ugly situation. Department of English in some Colleges of Education have established Pre-English programme for the benefit of some of the candidates that could not pass it at the ordinary level stage. I believe that there are some factors affecting the peformance of fct students in English language.

This will be discussed below. 1. Some so called English Language teachers are not academically qualified to teach it. They do not teach it well, as they are not specialists in the field of study. They are graduates of other discipline, who took to teaching English language because they could not find even teaching appointment in their respective disciplines. 2. Some students are to some extent responsible for the fact that they perform poorly in English language. They do not even practice the habit of speaking simple and correct English always-they always speak pidgin English, even when they ask their English language teachers questions about their lessons. This has in fact landed some of them in trouble before their teachers. There are some students who do not buy the recommended English language textbooks for their studies and some students among those who buy theirs do not make effective use of the books. 3. Lastly, most parents and teachers of other subjects who are seen as models by students often discuss with them in wrong English. There are causes of teachers who commit unpardonable grammatical errors when teaching. Some parents who are university graduates make such mistakes as “stop making noise”, “o the light”, “so therefore” etc when interacting with their children. Students generally take such wrong expressions for correct ones and they go a long way to affect their performance in their English language examinations.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Education is only just becoming accepted, as evidenced in the increased enrollments for the past twenty (20) years however, the consistent high rates in some major accounting and technical subjects have fair reaching consequences for national development as a result of high wastage rate of schools with private and public in the country, this arises from the number of candidates eligible for certification. Specifically, students in collaboration of corrupt teachers has always device a way out examination malpractices. Special and miracle centres becomes the order of the day aer all, the end justifies the means. This is mostly common in private schools and those schools in remote areas that lack supervision. However, the half baked students with good results but cannot defend it have serious implication of producing quality of students. There is the need to study the cause of the high failure rates bad low quality students that led to academic performance by finding solutions to the following research questions.