THE PROBLEMS IN TEACHING ENGLISH IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS OF THE ENUGU SOUTH L.G.A.

ABSTRACT
Aptly knowing English has become a mandatory on the part of one and all be it in the zone of education, business or job. If they do not properly know this language, they have to have a tough time, no matter how much educated they may be. It can be jotted down that it is must to know English in order to live a hunky-dory and thriving life. It is English alone that can enable us to keep abreast of the knowledge all over the world, for the majority of the knowledge the world over is passionately preserved only in this said language. Ergo, having considered this very fact, the researcher thought it quite necessary to undertake a research work in the arena of the English Language Teaching at the secondary level in the cc in order to analytically detect the problems in the same field, thus providing logical solutions to them, so that the secondary level students of this L.G.A. could be proficient in the English language, thereby being able to keep pace with the ongoing phenomena in the universe of knowledge in the era of globalization. He chose only the Enugu South L.G.A. because it is the Enugu South L.G.A. alone which has been the worst prey to the tremendously pathetic English Language Teaching situation at the secondary level. Also, he selected only the secondary level schools because it is assumed that it is at the secondary level that Enugu South L.G.A. learners can properly learn the English language provided that they are taught properly and teaching-learning can properly be done only when the problems afflicting it can be systematically found out and solved.

1.1 Background to the Study
Results of candidates who sat for both the West African Examinations Council’s (WAEC’s) and National Examinations Council’s (NECO’s) Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) in recent times show that most school leavers performed poorly in English . Faniran (2011) states that: Candidates’ SSCE results in English Language have been embarrassingly poor. For instance, only two per cent (2%) of the candidates who sat for the 2009 November/December SSCE of NECO had five credits including English Language and Mathematics (Nigerian Tribune, March 31, 2010, p.17); and seventy-nine per cent (79%) of the candidates who wrote the examination in June/July 2010 failed to get credit passes in English Language (The Punch, October 7,p.14). These extremely poor results in English, the language of education and learning and academic empowerment point to an important fact: that the Nigerian educational system is heading for total collapse (p.2).

Given the state of English as a language of instruction in schools and as Nigeria’s official language, it is natural to express concern over these observable deficiencies among school leavers. The secondary schools produce candidates for the higher institutions therefore any deficiency in teaching and learning in the secondary schools spills over to the higher institutions vis-à-vis the quality of graduates produced for the country. Thus, it is imperative that the teaching and learning of English in the secondary schools should be given proper attention. On this basis this study was conceived to examine some of the likely challenges facing the teaching of English in secondary schools in Nigeria with the aim of highlighting the areas that require attention.

Thus, a lot of problems are at the root of the quite poor condition of teaching English in the secondary schools of the Enugu south L.G.A. To mention the major ones, the teachers are not trained and competent enough to teach learners in the way they should teach them. They are good models of neither spoken English nor written English. They are not aware of the modern, innovative, creative and efficient English language teaching approaches, methods, techniques and materials and mechanically use only the age-old and almost outdated ineffective Grammar Translation Method (GTM) extensively. Both teaching and learning are examination centered and degree driven. Neither the teachers nor the learners have any active participations in teaching and learning. The Communication Approach is hardly taken into consideration. The learners are not exposed to the target language in the classroom. The students’ mother tongue, Igbo, is the only medium of instruction in the classroom. They are exposed to it neither at home nor in their surrounding society or community. The only place where they can be exposed to it is in the classroom and that too for a short while only. Therefore, if, even in that place, they are not exposed to it, they cannot generally be expected to be good in communication in the language. They are directly or indirectly encouraged to solely depend upon rote learning only for the examination purpose. The classroom is so overcrowded that even a trained teacher cannot teach properly or provide any special care to the learner, whenever needed, in such a classroom; then, what to speak of an untrained teacher, in the category of whose, the secondary level school teachers fall? Lessons are taught through the mother tongue.

1.2 Statement of the Problem
The main concern of this study is to systematically detect the problems in teaching English in the secondary schools of the Enugu South L.G.A. and provide possible solutions to them.
The teaching of English in the Enugu South L.G.A. are bedecked with myriads of problems. Although English is begun being taught and learnt from the nursery level in the Enugu South L.G.A., most of the students fail to appropriately use the language which they have been learning for a long time.