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

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

• 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language teaching approaches, methods, techniques and materials and mechanically use only the age-old and almost outdated ineffective Grammar Translation Method (GTM) extensively.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.

• 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.

• Aim and Objectives of the Study

The focus of this research is to systematically detect the problems in teaching English in the secondary schools of the Enugu South L.G.A. and to seek their probable solutions to them so that the problems can be eradicated for the betterment of teaching English in this L.G.A.

The specific objectives of this research are to:

1. Find out whether the teachers are trained to teach English in a better way.
2. Examine the methods, techniques and materials being used in teaching English.

• Find out whether teaching English is examination-centered and degree driven only.

1. Find out whether the communicative approach is used.
2. Find out whether the Mother Tongue (MT) interference in teaching English exists.
   • Research Question
3. Can secondary school students understand others speaking English reasonably fluently?
4. Does secondary schools organize any activities in which students participate and use only the English language?

• Are students taught all the language skills: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing?

1.5 Scope of the Study

The present study will attempt to find out the problems in all the areas listening, speaking, reading and writing of the teaching and learning of the English language in the Enugu South L.G.A. only and will also thereafter attempt to give probable solutions to those problems, so that both the teaching and learning English at that level in the schools mentioned can indeed boost up.

1.6 Significance of the Study

The significance of this research lies in its attempting at identifying theprevailing problems rampantly damaging the teaching of theEnglish language in the secondary schools of the Enugu South L.G.A. so thatthese problems can be mitigated in order to better the condition. The researcherbelieves that this research will thus hugely help both teachers and learners totide over the said problems to a great extent in order to improve the English teaching in the secondary schools in the Enugu South L.G.A. To date, surprisingly enough, not even a single research work regarding thegrave problems in teaching of English in the secondary schools ofthe Enugu South L.G.A. has taken place, whereas such types of research workare the crying need of the hour in the L.G.A. named.

English is currently being unequivocally regarded to be a Lingua Franca andalso a Global Language because it is no longer the language of the inhabitantsof only the English speaking countries like the U.K. and the U.S.A. It is quitedoubtlessly too much influential. No other languages are so at all.

The worldfamousLinguist Prof. (Dr.) David Crystal commented:

“A language is dying every two weeks somewhere in the worldtoday. Half the world’s languages will no longer be spoken inanother century. This is an extremely serious concern, and Englishhas to share the blame.”

Those who use it as a second language have become more in number thanthose who use it as their first language or mother tongue. Enugu South L.G.A. directly andindirectly experiences a tremendous influence of English in almost all thefields, such as education, business, technology and medical science, though it isa second language here.It can very easily be presumed that there are, of course, problems in teaching English in the secondary schools of the Enugu South L.G.A. abstaining the teachers and learners alike from teaching English in the way it should be done. Each and every educated person here is fully aware of those problems existent scattered, but he/she cannot identify them systematically. Unless and until they can be systematically identified, the solutions to them can hardly be provided.

This research will seek to identify the problems in teaching English at the secondary level in the Enugu South L.G.A. to solve them.

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