Abstract
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The study investigated the influence of early childhood education experiences on primary school pupils’ listening and speaking skills in English Language. The study adopted survey research design and was carried out in Ika North-East local government area of Delta State. The population of this study was 1,272 primary school teachers and head teachers in Ika North-east LGA of Delta state. Purposive and random sampling technique was adopted in selecting 186 respondents comprising 124 teachers and 62 head teachers. The instrument for data collection was a 41-item questionnaire structured into 4 point rating scale. The instrument was face validated by three experts. To ascertain the reliability of the instrument, Cronbach alpha reliability method was used and Cronbach alpha reliability coefficients of 0.72, 0.62, 0.71, 0.69 and 0.74 were obtained for the five clusters respectively with an overall reliability coefficient of 0.83 for the entire instrument. Data for the study were collected with the help of two research assistants. The data collected were analyzed using Mean for answering the research questions while t-test statistics was used for testing the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. Based on the data analyzed, the study found out that preprimary school education to a great extent influence pupils’ speaking and listening skills in English language in the area and that location of preprimary school, age and gender of the pupils influence their speaking and listening skills in English language classes. Based on this finding, the study recommended that the state government through its Ministry of Education should formulate policy for compulsory preprimary school education for school age children in the state among others.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Education is an indispensable tool in nation building. It is a process of systematic training designed to transmit knowledge and acquisition of skills which enables an individual to contribute effectively to the growth and development of his/her society. Osakwe (2009) stated that education is a phenomenon which involves all round development of an individual which encompasses physical, moral, social and mental development. It is this belief that education is a means to an end through which an individual can grow that makes parents to send their children/wards early enough to school so as to make them acquire the necessary knowledge and skills which will enable them live as responsible members of the society. This thus necessitated the need for early childhood education.
Therefore early childhood/preprimary education is a formal education system which helps to catch the children young for all round development physically, socially, intellectually, and morally. Early childhood/preprimary education according to the policy statement in the National Policy on Education of Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN,2004) is the education given in an educational institution for children prior to their entering the primary school. It includes the crèche, nursery and the kindergarten. The Federal Government of Nigeria recognized the importance of early childhood/preprimary education in the economic development and social transformation process of the child’s life hence she gave priority to early childhood/preprimary education by stating its purpose in the National Policy on Education as to:
- effect a smooth transition from the home to the school
- prepare the child for the primary level of education
- provide adequate care and supervision for the children while their parents are at work (on the farm, in the market, offices, etc.)
- inculcate in the child the spirit of enquiry nature, the environment, art, music and playing with toys, etc.
- develop a sense of cooperation and team spirit
- learn good habits, especially good health habits, and
- teach the rudiments of numbers, letters, colours, shapes, forms, etc. through play.
It is in the light of the importance of early childhood/preprimary education that Benard (2001) contended that the child who fails to acquire early education may suffer emotionally, socially, intellectually, and even physically if he/she is trusted into primary school. Osakwe (2009) concluded that the pupils who had preschool education perform better in their in their cognitive skills, motor skills and social skills than pupils who do not attend preprimary school.
This implies that a lot of experiences are acquired in early childhood/preprimary education. Anderson (2002) maintained that when children are exposed to preschool education, they develop superior communication skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) increased cognitive and affective educational balance necessary for physical and social development needed in adults life.
Hefferman in Akpan (2000) is of the opinion that early childhood education is concerned with young child from the time that his or her informal learning at home is augmented by group experience with his peers under adult guidance. This clearly indicates that the success of the child in the preschool starts from the types of care giving to the child at home. For instance, Robinson and Robinson (1968) stated that the warmth of the mother’s affection to the children and the fostering of children’s emotional security are as more important as any form of educational programme.
When Anderson’s view is analyzed, clapping, play, dancing, singing, thinking and communication skills are experiences the child acquires while in preprimary which make the child perform better than those children who did not attend pre primary school. Researches have shown that early exposure of children to school have been found to have enormous positive and social impart lasting into adulthood (Schieveinhat 2007; Sparling and Ramey 2007).
Due to the experiences acquired in preschool, Heckman (2000) maintained that we cannot afford to postpone investing in children until they become adults, nor can we wait until they reach school age, a time when it may be too late to handle. Heckman further maintained that since learning is a dynamic process, it is most effective when it begins at a young age and continues through adulthood. Although early childhood/ preschool education as observed by the researchers plays an important role in child’s life, but its influence on the child’s listening and speaking skills in English language is not yet known. Hence the interest of the researcher was aroused to investigate the influence of early child/hood/preschool education experiences on primary school pupils listening and speaking skills in English language.
For the purpose of clarity, some concepts such as listening, speaking and English language in this research work were made explicit. Listening is the first language mode that a child acquires. Mead and Rubi (2010) defined listening as a receptive skill comprising both a physical process and interpretative analytical process. To them, this definition is often expanded to include critical listening skills (high-order such as analysis and synthesis) and non verbal listening (comprehending the meaning of tone, of a voice, facial expression, gesture and other non verbal cue). From others view, Hyssop and Tone (2010) maintained that listening involves the simultaneous orchestration of skills in phonology, syntax, semantics and knowledge of text structure all of which seem to be controlled by the same set of cognitive process. When these definitions of listening are well analyzed, listening is simply defined as paying attention to what some one is saying or to a sound one can hear. In listening, the listener is actively working while the speaker is talking. This is because listening is a communication process and to be successful in it, is to be active in the communication process in order to evaluate the message being passed by the speaker before a listener can respond to the speaker. It is as a result of this, that the researcher investigates the influence of preprimary education experience on primary school pupils listening skills in English language.
Speaking is the second language skill of the child. It is one of the experiences a child acquires in early childhood/pre-primary education system. Funk and Wagnalls (2004) said that speaking is to employ the vocal organs in ordinary speech: letter words. This can be said to mean saying something, talking something, have conversation with someone. It is to use ones voice to produce words. There are three kinds of speaking situations. These are interactive situation, partially interactive situations, and none interactive situation. This interactive speaking situation includes face to face conversations and telephone calls, in which the speaker and the one whole is listening are alternately listen and speaking. In this speaking situation, they have a chance to ask for clarification, repetition or slower speech from our conversation partner.
Partially interactive situations are situations like when giving a speech to a live audience where the convention is that the audience does not interrupt the speech. The speaker nevertheless can see the audience and judge from expressions on their faces and body language whether or not he or she is being understood. None interactive situation is such as when recording a speech from radio broadcast. In this talking/speaking situation, the speaker and the listener are not seeing themselves. Example is radio broadcast
The subject on which listening and speaking skill is to be investigated at the primary school level is English language. Hornby (2000) defined English of the language of Britain, Ireland, N America, Australia and some other countries. This language is now used as language of international communication throughout the world. Language as simply defined by Hornby, Dictionary is the system of communication in speech and writing that is used by people of a particular country. Example is English language, the Japanese language, Arabic language, etc. English language is a expression and communication of ideas between human beings by means of speech and hearing: it is a system of communication in speech and writing that is used by people of a particular country or area . it is as a result of this system of communication in speech and in writing, that English language is made a subject in schools and used as Lingua Franca in our country Nigeria. Hence Federal Republic of Nigeria (2004) made English language as one of the languages to be learnt in schools in Nigeria in the National Policy on Education.
The importance of English language cannot be over emphasized as it enables every one to express his or her opinion for the other person to understand. Elucidating further on the importance of English language, Kumar, (2009) maintained that English is the single most important language. To Kumar, other languages are important too, but not for the same reason as English is important. In kumar’s opinion, English language is important because it is the only language that truly links the whole world together. Kumar further looked at the importance of English language from the following perspective. When a person travels to other parts of the world either for the sake of business or even as a tourist, the language of communication may differ. Under this condition, English language is the language that helps people to deal with the situation or problem of communication in a country such as Nigeria, where different culture, tribes and languages exist. Therefore, English language is the only link or unifying factor for communication as others from different tribes whose language is different may not understand the language is different may not understand the language of others from different tribe.
In this research study, the independent variable is the preschool and it was extensively elucidated in the background of the study. The other dependent variables are the location of preschool, the age of pupils and the gender of pupils. Hornby (2000) defined location as a place where something happens or exist, the position of something. This shows that the location of preschool, be it in the urban area or rural area is very significant to note whether it influences the pupils listening and speaking skill in English language. Generally, primary school pupils who are in the urban and rural areas show common academic knowledge as a result of the scheme of work they do. The impart of such knowledge on the pupils from urban and rural areas differ. Eke, (2001) maintained that location of preschool affects a large proportion of people world wide irrespective of age, gender and ethnic group. In the light of this, location of preprimary in the pursuit of academics in early childhood education is very important in the life of a school child. This so because, location of preprimary determines how strong the foundation of the child’s academic may be at the onset of the child’s academic pursuit.
Without doubt, pre-primary in the urban areas have more teaching apparati like mary-go-round, slid, see saw, marker’s board, swing, etc. than the preprimary in the rural area. These teaching materials stimulates the interest of the pupils to learning better. Where there is no teaching materials, learning becomes boring. Hence the researcher is to investigate the influence of location of preprimary experience of the pupils listening and speaking skills in English language.
Age as a variable in this research work has to do with the maturity of the child. The more the age of the child, the more attention the child pays in the teaching learning situation. At the primary school level, all the pupils in same class may be of same age range but they may not be of same age. The more the age of a child, the more sense the child acquires. Hence the researcher wants to investigate the influence of age in pupils listening and speaking skills in English language.
The issue of gender in the acquisition of knowledge remains a topic of interest in this research work. Abagun (2006) views gender as a “Social Status, roles and actions ascribed to male and female as to distinguish who they are, what are expected of them by the society and how they relate to each other for a meaningful co-existence”. Eke (2011) started that this meaningful co-existence is influenced by the level of the cognitive ability exhibited by both male and female in learning. This is because education is believed to have played a greater role in furthering social solidarity, stability and integration in the society. Therefore, the researcher is spored to investigate the influence of gender on pupils listening and speaking skills in English language.
