Gender And English Concord Errors Among Post Basic Education Students In Uyo Local Government Area.
Chapter One
Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
Language as a tool for communication is as old as time itself. From the Stone Age era till date, man has made conscious efforts at governing language by setting standards or rules which would define accuracy in language use. Without conforming to rules, the primary function of language as a tool for communication may be compromised since meaning can be changed merely by the addition or omission of even little element in a grammatical structure. It is, thus, imperative for the language user to aim at bettering his/her language by following prescribed rules.
Nigeria as a multilingual country, has chosen English Language as the key medium of communication. The language is used in politics, government administrative, law, mass media, commerce and education. Consequently, every facet of the country’s life depends largely on the English Language. To the majority of Nigerians, the yardstick for measuring the degree of one’s level of educational attainment is one’s performance in the English Language.
To buttress this value of English Language in Nigerian Education and Nigeria as a whole, the new National Policy on Education, section 4 and 5 does not only recommend the English Language as the language of instruction from the fourth year of Primary Education, it is also a compulsory subject in secondary and tertiary levels of education in Nigeria. Hence, a credit pass in English at senior Secondary School Certificate or General Certificate O’level Examination is a prerequisite for admission into various tertiary institutions in the country. Therefore, mastering English Language is very important to students in Nigeria. Students are obliged to communicate in English whenever they are in school but the reverse is always the case in most of our government owned schools. This attitude is not helping the proficiency of our students in the L2 since a good control of the language is a panacea for the achievement of better results in other subjects areas. In that case, everybody is expected to be competent in the language in order to function effectively in school, at work places and among other speakers of the language.
Regrettably, the downward trend of performance of students especially in English Language has been a source of worry to the parents, government and other stakeholders. This downwardness is attributed to dearth of sufficiently qualified teachers of English, lack of role models, negative attitude to the learning of the language, poor reading culture and above all, inadequate exposure to the intricacy of the grammar of the language as well as faulty application of grammatical rules. Eyisi affirms that:
… although the available position of English in the national life is waxing stronger than it has been, the spoken and written quality of the language in Nigeria, as perceived by the expert judges have deteriorated to a drastic level (10)
To buttress this assertion, the WAEC Chief Examiners Reports of 2000, 2002 and 2004 respectively, revealed that candidates’ responses to the examination questions were rather disappointing, in spite of the fact that the questions were clear. They stated that the candidates’ short-comings were their inability to express ideas correctly in English and abuse of basic rules of grammar. This alarming issues noted by the WAEC chief examiners of the aforementioned years still strife among our students as confirmed by 2016 WAEC chief examiner saying ‘’the general performance of the candidates reveal that many of them have still not grasped the rudiments of English language. The performance of the majority was disappointing’’. He observed among others the following;
Poor syntactic structure or faculty construction.
Wrong application of subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent agreements.
Use of wrong tenses.
It is also an incontestable fact that good writing stems from adequate familiarity with the grammatical competent of a language. The purification or betterment of a language largely depends on the efficient and careful enactment of its rules of grammar.
In English grammar, there are rules, which govern variations in the form of words, variation in the word order and combination of phonemes. Hardly can one make a correct statement in English without the interplay of one grammatical rule or the other. Many students, especially those who learn English as a second language (L2) are mostly caught in the web of these rules which is known as concord. Concord, unarguably, plays a major role in the right application of grammatical rules, without which one would be lost in speaking good or acceptable English. A great percentage of the errors found `in our students’ essays, speeches are concord-related. Basically, a good English student must be one who has a good grasp of concord. Despite the frantic efforts and energies that educators, particularly English educators, have invested into putting students right on the path of concord and English Grammar for that matter, much has not been achieved in this endeavour. English teachers should have kept this problem at bay but the problem still persists, if not in an even higher dimension. The conclusion drawn from the foregoing discussion, attest to the fact that the difficulties students have as regard the study and use of concord are, undeniably, a contributory factor to the poor performance in core English Language at the Senior Secondary School Level in general. It is against this background that this researcher has set out to investigate the difficulties faced by students as far as the study and use of concord are concerned at the post basic education level with specific reference to selected secondary schools in Uyo Local Government Area.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
The constant and rapid increase in the poor performance of Nigerian students in the English Language is a matter that calls for concern. The failure in English is mainly attributable to their poor knowledge of the basic rules of grammar as noted by Adeyanju (2000).
… however, many students at secondary and tertiary levels, as well as others in various professions have not mastered the English Language structure usage, mechanics, and therefore communicate ineffectively.
The knowledge of rules of concord, a central aspect of English grammar, has become very problematic among the students of today in general and the senior secondary school students to be précised. In English grammar, there are rules, which govern variations in the form of words, variation in the word order and combination of phonemes. The phonology of English, for instance, permits the combination of certain phonemes in a particular sequence to form acceptable patterns. For instance, letters “p”, “a”, “t”, when in combination, form English words such as “Pat”, “tap” and “apt” but “atp” on possible combination is not permissible in the language. In the same vein, “tables” is the plural of “table”, but “oxs” is not acceptable as the plural of “ox”. The same holds for word order, which accounts for acceptability and unacceptability of the following utterances.
I Love Apple
*Love Apple I
Emmanuel has a car
* Emmanuel have a car
Evidently, any deviation from the established and acceptable norm is termed deviant or ungrammatical represented with asterisks (*) in the above utterances.
As such, the poor nature in which students tackle problems relating to English grammar in general and the rules of concord in particular, gives cause to worry. Our students’ neglect or inappropriate use of grammatical rules in the English Language could be called to question since it will be an obvious departure from the norm as expatiated by Brown (2004) and Lord (2011). For us to maintain the age-old purity of the Queen’s language, we must seek, assiduously, to address some of the drawbacks that confront learners, especially about the grammar of it, which in the opinion of Lord, will pass for the English grammarian’s application of common sense.
1.3 Purpose of Study
The study basically sought to find out how male and female differ in committing English concord errors. In specific terms the objectives of this research are to find out the following:-
To examine the difference in grammatical concord errors between male and female Post Basic Students in Uyo Local Government Area.
To examine the difference in subject-complement concord errors between male and female students.
To examine the difference in concord with the correlatives errors between male and female students.
To examine the difference in pronoun-antecedent concord errors between male and female Post Basic Students.
To examine the difference in subject object concord errors between the male and female students of Post Basic Education.
1.4 Significance of the Study
Research on grammatical structure is important for the enhancement of language usage. Students of English as a second language (ESL) face challenges in the master of English. Therefore, an in-depth study of concord as one of the most confusing class of grammatical category of learners’ is a worthwhile contribute to attempt, to improve peoples knowledge of the value and application of structural linguistics as a tool for analyzing concord errors.
This study is significant in a number of ways. Thus, the research will help students by providing appropriate ways of using concord and correct any wrong use. The students would find it as aid to efficient communication within and outside the classroom situation. It would be useful to teachers of the English Language as a material for teaching students how to use concord correctly. Authors of English Language textbooks and those with grammar bias would find this study a useful guide in projecting the areas students need exposure and more detailed treatment. This would promote easier understanding of concord by students. Finally, the data collected and analyzed for the study is hoped in the generalization of the basic difficulty students’ face in the use of concord.
1.5 Research Questions
This study sets out to provide answers to the following:-
What is the difference in grammatical concord errors between male and female Post Basic Students in Uyo Local Government Area?
What is the difference in subject-complement concord errors between male and female Post Basic Students in Uyo Local Government Area?
What is the difference in subject-object concord errors between male and female Post Basic Students in Uyo Local Government Area?
What is the difference in pronoun-antecedent concord errors between male and female Post Basic Students in Uyo Local Government Area?
What is the difference in correlative concord errors between male and female Post Basic Students in Uyo Local Government Area?
1.6 Null Hypotheses
1. There is no significant difference in the grammatical concord errors of female and male students of post basic education.
2. There is no significant difference in the correlative errors of female and male students.
3. There is no significant difference in pronoun-antecedent concord errors of female and male post basic students.
4. There is no significant difference in subject object concord errors of female and male post basic education students.
5. There is no significant difference in subject-complement concord errors of female and male post basic education students.
1.7 Scope or Delimitation of the Study
For the sake of obtaining better result, this research work was delimited to the study of concord errors and not all forms of grammatical errors: Punctuations, spellings etc. The study was also limited to male and female Senior Secondary School Class three (SSS3) students in Uyo Local Government Area of Akwa-Ibom State.
This research work is therefore delimited to concord errors with special attention to: grammatical concord errors, subject-complement errors, pronoun-antecedent errors; correlative errors and subject-object concord errors.
1.8 Basic Assumption
This research makes the following basic assumptions:-
Post-basic education students construct sentences that lack grammatical concord. Example Idare play game every day.
Senior Secondary School Students in Uyo Local Government Area produce sentences that lack subject-complement concord. Example Mr. and Mrs. Ekanem is my Parent.
Students of Senior Secondary School is Uyo use senences that lack pronoun-antecedent concord. Example: Emeka and Ephraim wash his clothes every week.
Students of Senior Secondary School in Uyo produce sentences that lack subject-object concord. Example The girls enjoyed herself at the beach.
Senior Secondary School Students in Uyo Local Government construct sentences that lack concord with correlatives. Example Daniel as well as his sister are here.
1.9 Limitation
This research work encountered challenges in gathering data for this work. The State Secondary Education board (SSEB) posed a challenge in giving out the data for the total number of Students and Government Secondary Schools in the Local Government until the researcher proved beyond doubt that he was a post-graduate student of University of Uyo. Also, the students (SS3) were reluctant to assist the researcher until their subject teachers came to aid. In addition, the issue of scanty literature in this subject area posted a great challenge to the researcher since little or no research work was based on this subject area.
1.10 Definition of Terms
Grammar: A system of rules and principles for speaking and writing a language
Concord: A state of agreement; harmony union
Errors: A systematic deviation from norms or sets of norms.
Competence: It is a person’s ability to internalize grammar of a language.
Performance: It is a person’s ability to use language effectively.
Cohension: It is the grammatical/lexical relationship between different sentences or between different parts of sentences.
Error Analysis: This is referred to as the study of learner’s language errors in
linguistics terms in order to find the features of the language which are causing learning problem.
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