Assessment of Students’ Performance in Selected Prose Textbooks in Secondary Schools

Assessment of Students’ Performance in Selected Prose Textbooks in Secondary Schools.

Abstract

This study is primary on Assessment of students‟ performance in prose textbooks in Secondary Schools in Kaduna State. Seven public Senior Secondary Schools in Kaduna State where used for the study. There are a total of One Thousand, five hundred and forty-six students in the seven schools.

Three Hundred and Eighty-eight students were tested based on twenty-five percent of the whole. Four instruments were used for the test. Two African prose passages and two non- African prose passages.

The study reveals that students performed poorly on both aspects of African and non-African prose, indicating no significant differences in students performances.

The aspects of Literary devices show that it is an aspect identified as a difficult area for students, similarly, the aspect of Literary devices to posed greater problems to students. The study recommended the inculcation of Literature studies at the first year of the Senior Secondary School.

Students should be exposed to varied novels, inculcate Literature studies into recommended junior and senior secondary school textbooks. The government should lay emphasis on the training of teachers, provide varied prose texts with morals and interests.

Introduction

1.1 Background to the study

Literature is a universal phenomenon for the expression of varied life experiences. It is for the expression of a particular system of words as used by a people or a nation.

There are many views on what literature is all about, „a purely human and non- distinctive method of ideas, emotions and experiences which are passed by means of voluntarily produced symbols‟.

Reading literature is an essential activity in human lives that leads to varied experiences. Its importance has been stressed by many writers.

Literature gives the individual power to understand the world. Learning through literature means learning to understand words and get their meaning out of them.

Good literary works prepare students for quick, efficient and imaginative reading. Reading diverse literary works can assist the pupil or student acquire the speed and skills needed for practical purposes when leaving school.

Further education of every individual is determined, to a large extent, by the attitude to literature reading in the right quantity and quality.

Sustained interest continues in the investigation of factors that influence the successful reading of different literary works.

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