EFFECTS OF PAIR-WORK COMMUNICATIVE TEACHING STRATEGIES ON WRITTEN ENGLISH ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF JSS 2 STUDENTS IN KADUNA SOUTH LGA OF KADUNA STATE

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EFFECTS OF PAIR-WORK COMMUNICATIVE TEACHING STRATEGIES ON WRITTEN ENGLISH ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF JSS 2 STUDENTS IN KADUNA SOUTH LGA OF KADUNA STATE

 

 

KHADIJAT YUSUF

Department of Languages.
College of Administrative Studies and Social Sciences
Kaduna Polytechnic, Kaduna State. khadijatannyusuf1@gmail.com 

and 

WILCOX ELOHO PHINA

Department of English Language
Federal College of Education (T) Bichi, Kano State.

elohowilcox@gmail.com

Abstract

This study investigated effect of pair-work communicative teaching strategy among JSS students’ written English performance in Kaduna South LGA Kaduna State, Nigeria. It was guided by one research question and one hypothesis. One group pre-test post-test experimental design was adopted for the study. The population of the study consists of JS two students from government secondary schools in Kaduna South LGA of Kaduna State. A sample of twenty-five students from Kaduna south secondary school (Government Junior Secondary school Kakuri was selected through purposive sampling technique. The instrument tagged “English Language Performance Test (ELPT) was conducted. Data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer research questions while (pair sample t-test) was used to test the hypothesis. Findings from the study revealed that there was statistically significant difference in the mean performance scores of students taught written English using pair-work communicative teaching strategy before and after treatment in junior secondary school in Kaduna South LGA of Kaduna State. Based on the findings, it was recommended that English language teachers should utilize a pair-work communication teaching strategy to enhance students’ writing achievement.

Keywords: Writing, strategy, communicative teaching, pair-work, academic 

Introduction

Communicative language teaching strategy (CLTS) is a method that primarily focuses on interaction during classroom-based foreign language classroom or an online language learning session, in which students actually produce speech and engage in conversation for most of the classroom time using the target language https://sanako.com. (2022).

According to Yano (2003), successful language use for communication presupposes the development of communicative competence in the users of that language. The   communicative competence denotes demonstration of grammatical skills, linguistic competence, strategic competence, discourse competence and knowledge of appropriate use of language in diverse situations with clarity and efficiency. Communicative competence is sine qua non to students’ academic success due to the fact that proficient speaking opens the doors of success while writing tests student’s linguistic ability”. For students to attain academic peak, mastery of English language knowledge is important.  The communicative approach emphasizes the learning of the functional and meaningful language and to use students-centered activities which focus on creating natural-like learning situations. Krashen’s assertion has been very influential in supporting communicative language teaching. Its primary focus is on using language for meaningful interaction and accomplishing tasks, rather than on learning rules, these have won support from many teachers and learners. Communicative teaching strategies comprise of information gap, language exchange, role-play, and pair-work compare to the commonly used traditional teaching methods such as demonstration, discussions, lectures, field trips among others.

Writing serves a wide variety of purposes in human life.It plays a critical role in communication, education and interpersonal interactions. Writing is an essential part of communication. It enables humans to express their thoughts, emotions, feelings and experiences on paper. Writing transcends time and space, much of information or knowledge that can be accessed today are through written communication. It is the primary basis by which culture, history, record keeping and art is made visible to all irrespective of time and space. Writing broadens and contributes to the development of critical thinking as students get exposed to a range of topics on diverse subjects. Agbum & Anule, (2013) stated that writing develop students’ critical thinking ability and offers them many opportunities in society. Whatever the academic course or subject students’ study, students are expected to put in writing the ideas they learn meaningfully. Written assignments, tests, researches and examinations are the primary means of students’ progress and achievement from pre-primary through post-secondary education. Thus, students’ achievement in education as whole is directly affected by the quality of their writing. Ukume & Agbinya, (2019) opined that the ability to write creatively is key to the success and development of students in and after school. Consequently, Students who cannot write coherently are bound to perform poorly in and after school. Cummings & Petscher, (2015) opined that progress in school is dependent on learners developing a satisfactory degree of writing proficiency and fluency. 

Writing is a vital instrument for a successful career. In all professionals, an employee may be required to write a document, report or letter as well as respond to business documents, clients etc. Good writing skills allow one to communicate ideas and messages with clarity and ease of understanding. It facilitates interpersonal interactions, collaborations among colleagues and business transactions. Writing promotes creativity in   presenting, analyzing, and summarizing information and reports. In organizations, people engage in sending and receiving written messages to communicate with one another. Sending and receiving accurate written messages prevent misunderstandings of information which could have some consequences for the progress or attainment of set objectives. Proficient writers tend to think clearly, and organize information logically while expressing ideas, making decisions and solving problems. A coherent write up helps the reader to follow the writer’s train of thought and respond appropriately.

Taking into cognizance the place of good writing skills in all aspects of life, it is imperative that students are taught strategies for improving their writing competently. Writing in English is not an easy exercise for second-language students. This is because writing is a complex process that   involves determining the purpose of writing, generating ideas, organizing and expressing ideas, selecting appropriate language, revising and editing. Ibrahim, (2019) asserted that both teachers and learners of English face several challenges. And there is a need to improve language practices to enable learning of the language. This study, therefore, examine the effect of pair-work communicative teaching strategies on students’ writing performance.

Statement of the Problem

This study is inspired by several reasons; it is observed that most students at JS 1 and JS 2 levels are unable to write simple sentences correctly. They cannot copy correctly from the chalkboard even after six years of primary school education. It becomes puzzling to think of how they passed their Common Entrance Examination and other examinations at their respective levels. It was also discovered that JS 3 students, supposedly ripe for the junior WAEC examinations, cannot write essays correctly. Thus, this study is focusing on the effect of the pair-work communicative teaching strategy on the written English performance of JSS2 students.

 There are difficulties in carrying out communicative language teaching in places where English is taught as a foreign or second language, especially in a large size of class containing 40-50 students. These difficulties come from the teachers’ English proficiency, burdened work, the students’ attitude, the educational system and communicative language teaching itself. From researcher’s observation, English learning in junior secondary schools in Kaduna state encounters the same conditions. Locastro (2001) indicates that language learning in a large class has difficulties in pedagogy, management relationship, and affection. These difficulties impede carrying out speaking, reading and writing tasks, in monitoring work and giving feedback. It also affects the setting up of communicative tasks, attending to all students during class time, and assessing student interests and moods. Finally, in organizing pair work which is often cumbersome to execute.

According to Graves (1994) teaching writing is hard and often frustrating. For decades, teachers have assigned writing, graded it, and watched pages covered in red ink stuffed into the backs of notebooks, never to be read again. Many teachers will admit to being uncomfortable teaching writing in the first place. There is the likelihood that employing pair-work in teaching writing may advance students writing performance. For this reason, the study investigated the impact of the pair-work communicative strategy on students writing achievement. 

Objective of the Study

To examine the effect of pair-work on written English academic performance before and after treatment among junior secondary school students in Kaduna South, Kaduna State, Nigeria

 

Research Questions

To address the problem of this study the following research question was posed:

What is the difference in the mean performance scores on written English of students taught using pair-work communicative teaching strategy before and after treatment in junior secondary schools in Kaduna South LGA?

Null Hypotheses

The following null hypotheses was tested at p≤0.05vlevel of significance. 

There is no significant difference in the mean performance scores on written English of students taught using pair-work communicative teaching strategy before and after treatment in Junior Secondary School in Kaduna South LGA.

Literature review

 Pair-work is a task undertaken by two people working together when they are learning something such as language Cambridge Dictionary. According to Scrivener (2005), pair work refers to a type of classroom interaction that involves a student working with another in a communicative activity to discuss issues or provide feedback. To Zaswita & Ihsan, (2019), Pair-work is a teaching technique that motivates students to collaborate with colleagues. It makes the learning and teaching process more effective and efficient, because students take an active role in the learning process. Pair-work is an interaction patterns practiced in a modern languages’ classrooms, such as English as a second language or English as a foreign language Zohairy, (2014); Achmad & Yusuf, (2014). They added that working in pairs develops students’ social skills such as turn takings, politeness and eye contact.  Students are more relaxed working, interacting and making mistakes, and receiving corrections with their partners rather than with their teachers Westbrook as cited in Achmad & Yusuf (2014).

Pair and small group work is a good technique to provide L2 learners with more practice in using the language Storch & Aldosari, (2013). Pair-work involves learners doing a learning activity together in pairs face-to-face to achieve learning objectives. The purpose of pair work in English language classrooms is to increase the opportunities for learners to use English in classroom. For example, learners could answer guided composition questions in pairs after reading a text. They could compare answers, and clarify problems encountered in learning together using English. Teachers can ask learners how they feel about pair-work by actually participating in an activity in pairs and evaluating this experience afterward. For example, each student of a pair is given a passage that has the personal account of Mr. X. Both sheets lack some information about Mr. X but what Student A lacks, Student B does not lack and the vice versa. Each student has to fill in his or her own sheet by interacting with his/her pair. Mishel, R. (2000).

Ohta, (2001) in Storch & Aldosari (2013) opined that  working in pairs aid L2 learners to use the language for a variety of functions usually meant for teachers e.g. asking questions, providing feedback  and making suggestions. Engaging learners with ample practice may provide learners with improved quality of L2 practice. Pair work activities give learners adequate opportunities for creative and meaningful interpersonal communication Touhid, (2018).

Bertrand (2010) mentions the following benefits of using pair work activities as classroom techniques:

·         It motivates students to know about the people of different cultures and gives them the opportunity to broaden their perspectives

·         It makes the students familiar to work in a multicultural environment and encourages them to appreciate the different opinions of others.

·         It provides the students a feeling of success in a multicultural setting where they have to adjust their behavior.

·         Students get more opportunity to practice the target language. In pair work activities, whole class can speak at the same time whereas it takes a lot of time in case of individual activities. Moreover, through this activity, students are learned to practice speaking in a low voice maintaining the rules of classroom disciplines.

Poor classroom control can have adverse effect on pair-work in a language classroom. Harmer 2001 inZohairy, (2014)argued that students might deviate from the main topic and talk about something else during pair work. . Also, Students may use their mother tongue in pair work instead of the target language. It is crucial that teachers facilitate, organize and monitor students during pair-work activities for the success of learning tasks.  Richards, Hull & Proctor (1986) in Touhid, (2018) maintained that teachers need to assist students task performing by clarifying the situations and tasks, perform the role of a model of the activity with the students as well as providing necessary feedbacks at the end of an activity.

There are different types of pair-work activities; Habermas (1970) outlined the following pair-work activities:

 Describe and Draw

 In this activity one student has a picture that he/she must not show his or her partner (teachers sometimes like to use surrealistic paintings, empty doorways on beaches, trains coming out of fireplaces etc.). All the partner has to do is draw a picture without looking at the original, so the one with the picture will give information and description and the artist will ask questions.        This type of activity has many features of an ideal writing activity. It is highly motivating and there is a real purpose of communication and almost any language item can be used. The language functions that can be taught are asking and giving information, instructing etc hunter, D.(2017).

Finding the Object                                                                                                      

This game can be used to practice the use of prepositions of place and it gives learners a chance to write. Each student has a list of objects and are given limited time to find them out and write down where they have found each item. This can be “The marble is on the floor; the pen is next to the brush” etc. Here the language item that the students are practicing is the location or position prepositions. The student who first completes the description of the location of different objects is the winner. Harmer, (1986).

Cartoon Trips                                                                                                 

This can be used with much creativity in language class. The teacher collects story from a newspaper or cartoon magazine or a book of language games. First, he erases the language of the bubbles. He gives the students copies of the cartoon story. The students study the cartoons and try to write down the missing language in the bubbles. The teacher goes around the class and helps the students choose correct words or phrases and so on. Harmer, (1986).

Story-telling Activity                                                                                              

Teacher puts the class into four groups calling them A, B, C and D. He gives each group one of the following pictures. The groups have to memorize everything they can do about the pictures, who’s in the picture, what’s happening etc. Group members can talk about the pictures in their groups. The teacher now collects them back and asks one student from each group to form a new four-member group. She tells them that they have seen different pictures but the pictures taken together in some order or the other tell a story. The task for the students is to work out what the story is. The only way they can do so is by describing to each other what they have seen in the picture and how they are connected.  The final stories may be different. The group tells the whole class what their version is. The teacher can finally reshow the pictures. The story telling activity can, of course, be used as a prelude to writing narrative work Harmer (1986).

Pair-work activities can improve hearing the language used by other members of the group as they recall and re-tell their partner what they remember about the task. They will produce a greater amount of language than they would use in teacher-fronted activities and their motivational level is likely to increase. They will have the chance to develop fluency, teaching and classroom materials today consequently make use of a wide variety of small-group activities.

A number of studies have investigated the effect of pair work on students’ language learning. Zaswita & Ihsan (2019) investigated the effectiveness of pair work activities technique on students’ writing ability. They reported that pairing had significant effect on extrovert and introvert students writing achievement than the conventional techniques. Zohary (2014)and Ihsan (2016) revealed that pair work activities were effective in improving students' ability and skill in learning. Zaswita and Ihsan, (2019) contended that pair work makes the learning and teaching process more effective and efficient, because it enables teachers’ and students’ active participation in the learning process itself. Zohary (2014) opined that teachers should organize pairs in a balanced way so that low-level students are given tasks that reflect their level and serve their development.

Theoretical Framework

Social Constructivism l theory of knowledge in sociology and communication examines the development of jointly constructed understanding of the world that form the basis of shared assumptions about reality. The theory centers on the notion that human beings rationalize their experience by human interaction, create views of the social world, share and rectify these views through language as Berger and Luckmann (1966) observed. Social Constructionist understands the “fundamental role of language in communication” and these understanding has “contributed to linguistic turn” and more recently the “turn to discourse theory.

Therefore a graphic illustration of the theoretical framework for this study is as follows:

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Yusuf (2016).

Methodology/procedure

The design adopted for this study was quasi experimental design involving one group pre-test and post-test design. The area of this research was Kaduna South LGA of Kaduna State. The target population of the study covers all government junior secondary schools in Kaduna South LGA of Kaduna state, Nigeria. The sample consisted of twenty-five students from Government Junior Secondary School, Kakuri through purposive sampling.

To answer the research questions and test the Null hypotheses, English Language Performance Test (ELPT) was conducted. It was aimed at assessing the performance of the students at both pre-test and post- test after instruction. The test materials consist of 20 items of multiple questions that was lasted for eighty (80) minutes. The items were made up of guided composition, filling up forms, writing personal information and vocabulary building in various exercises. The researcher administered items to the experimental group. This was aimed at determining the students’ performance before and after the treatment.

Results

The data collected through the administration of English Language Performance Test (ELPAT) was analyzed and interpreted based on the research questions and null hypothesis.

Research Question:

What will be the difference in the mean performance scores on written English of students taught using pair-work communicative teaching strategy before and after treatment in junior secondary schools in Kaduna South LGA, Kaduna State?

The research question was answered using means and standard deviations. The results of the analyses are shown below in Table 1.

 

Table 1: Means and Standard Deviations on Written English of Students Taught

                 Using Pair-Work Communicative Teaching Strategy before and

                 After Treatment, Summary of Table 1

	Mean	N	Std. Deviation	Mean difference
Pre-test scores	9.88	25	1.166	-4.08
Post-test scores	13.96	25	2.226

Source: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) output as contained in Appendix A

The means and standard deviations were computed for both pre-test and post-test performance scores on written English of students taught using pair-work communicative teaching strategy. Table 1 shows that the pre-test mean performance scores on written English of students taught using pair-work communicative teaching strategy was 9.88 which is less than the post-test mean performance scores on written English of students taught using pair-work communicative teaching strategy which was 13.96. Therefore, the mean difference between pre-test and post-test performance scores on written English of students taught using information gap communicative teaching strategy was -4.08 in favour of the post-test. This shows that there was difference in the mean academic performance scores of students taught English using pair-work communicative teaching strategy before and after treatment.

Null Hypothesis: There is no significant difference in the mean performance scores on written English of students taught using pair-work communicative teaching strategy before and after treatment in junior secondary school students in Kaduna South, Kaduna state. The paired samples t-test statistics was used to test the null hypothesis. The results of the analyses as shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Summary of Paired Samples T-Test on Written English of Students Taught Using Pair-Work Communicative Teaching Strategy before and after Treatment. Summary of Table 4

	Mean	N	Std. Deviation	Mean difference	T	Df	p-value	Remark
Pre-test scores	9.88	25	1.166	-4.08	-7.808	24	.000	Significant
Post-test scores	13.96	25	2.226

Source: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) output as contained in Appendix A

In Table 4.6, the results of the paired samples t-test showed that there was a significant difference in the mean performance scores on written English of students taught pair-work communicative teaching strategy before and after treatment. This is supported by t_cal(24)=-7.808, p=0.001<0.05. The result indicated that there was a statistically significant difference in the mean performance scores on written English of students taught using pair-work communicative teaching strategy before and after treatment; hence the null hypothesis which said no difference was rejected.

Discussion of Findings

Finding from the study shows that pair-work communicative language teaching strategy had a positive effect on the performance of students on written English in junior secondary school in Kaduna South LGA Kaduna state, Nigeria. Hence, the means and standard deviations were computed for both pre-test and post-test performance scores on written English of students taught using pair-work communicative teaching strategy. The result in hypothesis one shows that the pre-test mean performance scores on written English of students taught using pair-work communicative teaching strategy was 9.88 which is less than the post-test mean performance scores on written English of students taught using pair-work communicative teaching strategy which was 13.96. Therefore, the mean difference between pre-test and post-test performance scores on written English of students taught using pair-work communicative teaching strategy was -4.08 in favour of the post-test. This shows that there was difference in the mean academic performance scores of students taught English using pair-work communicative teaching strategy before and after treatment.

The results of the paired samples t-test showed that there was a significant difference in the mean performance scores on written English of students taught using pair-work communicative teaching strategy before and after treatment. This is supported by t_cal(24)=-7.808, p=0.001<0.05. The result indicated that there was a statistically significant difference in the mean performance scores on written English of students taught using pair-work communicative teaching strategy before and after treatment; hence the null hypothesis which said no difference was rejected. The implication of this result is that, pair-work communicative teaching strategy has positive effect on the performance of English students in junior secondary schools in Kaduna South, Kaduna State. The finding corroborated the findings of Zohary 2014; Zaswita & Ihsan (2019)who asserted that pair-work communicative teaching strategy enables an individual to explore ideas and become competent in English language writing skill.

Conclusion

The study investigated the perceived effectiveness of pair work communicative language teaching strategy on students’ achievement in writing. The result of the study proved thatpair- work communicative language teaching strategy is an effective collaborative strategy that has positive effect on written English of Junior Secondary Schools students in Kaduna South, Kaduna State. Pair-work activity also helped to motivate and improved students’ speaking and acquisition of English vocabulary as they discuss and brainstorm on writing.  In line with the findings, it can be concluded that pair- work communicative language teaching strategy was efficiently used in influencing JSS 2 students writing performance in Kaduna South, Kaduna state.

Recommendations

Based on the finding of the study; it was recommended that:

1.             English language teachers adopt and give effective guidance on pair-work communicative teaching strategy to improve students’ language skills.

2.             Government and proprietors of schools should regularly organize workshops, symposia and seminars on how to use pair-work communicative teaching strategy to improve students writing performance.

3.             English language textbook writers should incorporate pair-work communicative teaching strategy in language teaching materials. This would guide the teachers on how to implement the strategy in language class.

 

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