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PROBLEMS INHIBITING THE EFFECTING TEACHING OF GRAMMAR IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Good writing requires a working knowledge of grammar, a refinement of the basic or instinctive knowledge the writer has already had. Good writing is more than the art of obeying grammatical rules. It is the art of arranging words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs in such a way as to engage and sustain the reader's attention.

Under-achievement in English at the secondary and even tertiary levels is a noticeable phenomenon in the Nigerian educational system. The most noticeable indication of poor performance is in the WAEC conducted SSCE English Examination. The situation becomes worse every year. The WAEC Chief Examiners Report each year confirms this. In 1992, the report states that:

This paper was well within the experience of the candidates and the standard compared favorably with those set in the previous years. The candidate's performance however was generally disappointing. In the institutions of higher learning-universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education, the seriousness of the situation is baffling.

Nzinga (1983) lamented the low performance of new entrants at the University of Ilorin and said: The slow clear ignorance of most basic elements of logical inference. and most of the students do not have the opportunity to undertake advanced reasoning tasks.

From a number of continuous assessments and examinations conducted by the writer of this paper for the students over the years, a number of errors and deviant forms in language use have been noticed. Such errors among others include:

i. a poor knowledge of tenses and sequences of tenses;

ii. Weakness in concord

iii. Winding constructions due to illogical thinking

iv. Wrong use of prepositions

v. direct translation from mother tongue thought process to English;

vi. Inability to apply appropriate reading speed to reading material etc.

The devices which grammar uses to limit meanings are its operating principles. It is not surprising that most students in secondary schools lack the mastery of the grammatical principles which are the higher points of languages.

It is because of the various roles the English language plays in our society that the teaching and learning of English has become very important. The English language is very important in contemporary society in that it is used for communication, education, economic and social purposes. English is not only taught as a subject of its own but it is also the core subject through which many other school subjects are taught. Despite the important role the English language plays, less attention is given to the grammatical aspects in primary schools. Today, the nature of teaching and learning of grammar in primary schools has become an area of great interest to teachers, researchers and policy makers because through it, the acquisition of the four language skills ( listening, speaking, reading and writing) are greatly enhanced.

English grammar which entails tenses, parts of speech and punctuations is of great importance to the teaching, learning and mastering of the English language amongst primary school pupils. Since primary education is a better foundation on which the future depends, English grammar should not only be taught to the pupils but should be taken more seriously. According to Chomsky (1957), a child is born with the innate ability to learn. Here, he talks of the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) in which a device is a mechanism naturally built in the brain to take sounds. At a certain age, the brain starts rejecting sounds because of other sounds in the brain. Children learn more easily than adults. The device is stronger in children because the brain is virgin and is able to magnify anything coming from the world. So if the pupils are well taught these grammatical aspects, they will better understand, master and use them in their day to day activities until they (English grammar) become a part of them.

According to Saussure (1916), language is the mirror of the mind. This means that the learner produces what he or she has learned. So, if there is no teaching, learning will not take place, hence, the learner will not only be blank but also be ignorant that such a thing exists. For teaching to be effective, the teacher has to master his\her subject matter very well. Instead of most teachers teaching English grammar, which is the most important, they focus on teaching writing and reading comprehension. Some contributing factors to

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